Episode 109: The Gigue is Up
b'If your story had a sound, Slushies. What would it be? A rush, a zuzz, a sizzle? David Landon\\u2019s \\u201cBach, Onomatopoeia, and the Wreck\\u201d triggers a discussion of stories and sounds, and poems that resist narrative closure. Shane Chergosky\\u2019s \\u201cHeadwind\\u201d takes us down a different path. Erasures, Slushies. Ammi right? Listen to us puzzle over the way erasures \\u201cmake it new\\u201d and simultaneously obliterate and conjure the from which they\\u2019re made. Special note: Jason reads the erasure twice. First as a robot, then as a human. We love both versions-- of the poem, and Jason. And if you are hungry for more: take this and this and this.\\n\\xa0\\nAt the table: Marion Wrenn, Alex Tunney, Kathleen Volk Miller, Jason Schneiderman, Samantha Neugebauer, Larissa Morgano\\n\\xa0\\nThis episode is brought to you by one of our sponsors, Wilbur Records, who kindly introduced us to the artist A.M.Mills, whose song \\u201cSpaghetti with Loretta\\u201d now opens our show.\\xa0\\n\\xa0\\n\\xa0\\n\\nDavid is never quite sure whether he is an actor who writes poetry or a poet who acts. And perhaps he can be forgiven his obsession with iambic pentameter: he has done a lifetime of Shakespeare, as an actor (New York, Nashville, and Alabama Festivals), director, and coach. His poetry\\u2014all iambic pentameter\\u2014has been published in Able Muse (Write Prize, winner), Georgia Review (Williams Prize, featured finalist), Southwest Review (Marr Prize, runner-up), the Dark House, Think Journal, and elsewhere. Officially, he is the Bishop Frank A. Juhan Professor of Theatre Emeritus at Sewanee, the University of the South.\\n\\xa0\\n\\xa0\\nBach, Onomatopoeia, and the Wreck\\n\\xa0\\nFor all we knew, it was a random chunk\\nof interstellar rock, the rear-end crash\\nthat brought us to a halt. Dinner was out,\\nof course, and the Bach too, I realized,\\nfeeling it in my neck, and standing there\\nin the rain, examining my totaled car,\\nthe guilty driver soaked, in tears. The cops\\nwere nice enough, did what they had to do\\nefficiently. The wrecker did show up,\\neventually, and we began to cope.\\nAnd since it\\u2019s now collision story time,\\nthe word I\\u2019m hearing in my head is \\u2018thud\\u2019.\\n\\xa0\\nThere\\u2019s \\u2018clunk\\u2019, of course, or \\u2018jolt\\u2019, \\u2018wham-bang\\u2019, or \\u2018thwack\\u2019.\\n\\u2018Thwack\\u2019 has that sudden, can\\u2019t-be-happening feel,\\nas in, \\u201cI was just sitting, reading Kant,\\nwhen suddenly, inside my head, I felt\\nthis \\u2018thwack\\u2019, and everything went blank.\\u201d But no!\\nThe word that truly bongs the knell is \\u2018thud\\u2019,\\nessence\\u2014onomatopoetically\\u2014\\nof impact, \\u2018thud\\u2019, from dice, to hand-grenade,\\nto asteroid. We need the stupid \\u2018d\\u2019\\nof \\u2018doo-doo\\u2019, \\u2018dodo\\u2019, \\u2019dude\\u2019, or \\u2018dud\\u2019, or \\u2018dead\\u2019.\\n\\u2018You\\u2019re-done-for-d\\u2019 is what we\\u2019re up against;\\nyou never know when out of nowhere, \\u2018thud\\u2019!\\n\\xa0\\nBut on the other hand, there\\u2019s Bach: the Bach\\nwe missed, the works for cello solo. Bach:\\ninitial \\u2018b\\u2019, a kind of plosive bump,\\nterminal \\u2018ch\\u2019, a bit of friction in\\nthe throat, but in between the \\u2018b\\u2019 and \\u2018ch\\u2019,\\nthe \\u2018ah\\u2019, release: sustained and open, \\u2018ah\\u2019.\\nThink of the bow colliding with the string,\\na subtle thud, a scrape, and out floats Bach,\\ngenial Bach-analia of dark\\nand light, a theory of the universe\\nas music: bang, and then the sarabande,\\nthe minuet, the allemande, the gigue.\\n\\xa0\\n\\xa0\\n\\nShane Chergosky was born in Minnesota where he was raised on stuffed cabbage and heavy metal. His work has appeared in Pithead Chapel, HASH Journal, Juke Joint, and is forthcoming in Adirondack Review. He holds an MFA from George Mason University and lives in Washington, D.C.\\n\\xa0\\n\\xa0\\nHeadwind\\n\\xa0\\n? When I think about the story she told me\\nabout that I don\\u2019t even wanna hurt the guy. I don\\u2019t\\nknow if I could meet that person and act normal.\\nI remember I did that when I was about 20,21.\\nI didn\\u2019t go into CVS with Xunaxi to \\nWhat a bastard I was . And \\xa0 \\xa0 \\xa0\\n\\xa0\\n\\xa0\\n\\xa0\\n//\\n\\xa0\\n\\xa0\\nith what courses I take.Luckily I can only take two (!!!). Maybe a lit course\\nand\\u2026an elective? It\\u2019d be SO cool to do screen-\\nwriting. Finally would have a chance to write that\\nSciFi\\u2026I ordered \\u201cThe Art of Syntax\\u201d after Phebe\\nbrought it over. I honestly get so self-conscious talking\\nwith her about sentence-l'