UFR Weekly Newsletter #20: How the Metaphor Ends

[David Cotrone]

There’s that old metaphor about what you should do if you’re with someone on a boat and the boat starts to go under, which person you should save first. There’s a song where Springsteen talks about going down, down, down, down, a cliché that starts with sink and ends with swim, a quote that goes, Come live in my heart and pay no rent. That last one might seem unrelated but it isn’t. It’s not just talking about love; it’s talking about everything. Nothing you touch should have to live in you like a weight. It works the other way, too. You shouldn’t have to treat anyone like they’re in debt, not even yourself.  

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Two poems by Meg Pokrass and Three poems by Cassie Mannes

Kyle Minor talks with furniture, saying, “I sit down every day and I do the work. I want to do it in the abstract, but it’s difficult to decide to do it every day. Often I would rather play with my children, or play music, or read, or watch TV, or walk down to the river, or drink beer, or go to the gym, or surf the Internet. There’s something monastic about writing that doesn’t agree with me. But there is a pleasure in having made something good that justifies the work, for me. And there are things I really want to make. So I press on.”

The Other Guest by Matt Marinovich

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The metaphor ends by saying you should save yourself before the other person, that you can’t really help anyone if you can’t take care of you. I’m not sure I buy that. I’m not sure what that says about the metaphor.

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Roxanna Bennett chats with photojournalist Mike Berube in a new column, Coffee with Mike.

Brian Oliu has a book of Craigslist Missed Connections. It’s called So You Know It’s Me and it’s coming out soon and it looks amazing.

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We almost have 600 followers on twitter. Thanks so much for helping to spread word of what we have to offer. Sorry you didn’t get one of these letters last week; I hope you missed me, that you weren’t just saying that.

Be well,

David