UFR Weekly Newsletter #7: Grievances
David Cotrone
Thanks to everyone who shared their playlists in December. Hopefully we can run another interactive feature again sometime soon. If anyone has any ideas, feel free to share. We want to hear from you.
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When Maya Angelou was a little girl she huddled up in her small bedroom with a book of Shakespeare’s plays. She knew nothing about him as an author, only what was on the page. She imagined he was like her because of what he was saying. Of course he wrote for me, she says. She saw herself in his tragedies. I know that William Shakespeare was a black woman. His words were made for her to read. That is the role of art.
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Three poems by Tiff Holland
Tom Grimes talks with furniture, saying, “Since I completed Mentor I haven’t felt lonely, though; I’ve felt utterly estranged from myself. I have no idea who lived my life up to this point. In a sense, I no longer have a past, and I have no idea what my future might be. I’m not writing and when I’m not writing I don’t know who I am.”
Exquisite Quartet writes a story called Couple’s Counseling. Contributors to this month’s quartet are Sheldon Lee Compton, Nancy Stohlman, Karen Stefano and Meg Tuite.
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Once when I was young I went a couple doors down and asked the old woman living there if she wanted me to clear her driveway. She looked confused, not sure if I was asking for money, not sure of where I came from. I held out my shovel to show her I meant to help. The snow was a few inches high. She was shivering. She said no, she didn’t need help. She said someone was coming, that they would be there soon, any minute.
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Have you heard anything more honest than this? I love when things are so bare they’re true, when Robert Pollard says, “At times I wish I were dead” or when Will Oldham sings, “Why be inhuman? Why be like me?”. It’s not melodramatic or overdramatized, I don’t think. Sometimes you hear stuff like that and it doesn’t feel right. It’s too much. But it's good when it comes from somewhere honest. You can tell when someone’s being honest. At least, Maya Angelou can.
Thanks for submitting your work and thanks to Curtis Smith and Susan Tepper for advertising their books with us. Both titles look really great. If you have time, suggest our facebook page to your friends, tweet about us, forward this message to someone you love.
Be well,
David