KD Rose: Author Tales: The Circles of Writing Life

Thursday, July 5, 2012

The Circles of Writing Life

Our circle starts with my book, Heavy Bags of Soul about 90 degrees away. It's brilliant! It's original! Very few will "get" it! It doesn't fit in a genre! It's a hard sell! It's almost unnoticed!

Wait- did the exclamatory hyperbole change?

First books usually have the author's internal organs indelibly attached, and whether the books are avant-garde like mine, or simply lost among the growing number now published each month, most author's still wouldn't change a word.

The circle moves to writers who've had better fortune. Or talent. Or both. And those special authors who have used said talent to accomplish even more. For example, Dave Eggers. Dave Eggers does not need another article written about him. (Wouldn't the rest of us like to say that too.) Yet, Eggers continues to be one of the most deserving. Eggers is now known for his work with 826 National Nonprofit and McSweeney's Publishing House. His actual award-winning first novel, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius, almost takes a backseat.

Eggers is one of the co-founders of 826 National, a nonprofit that uses pirates, superheroes and mysterious voices booming from the back of rooms to create a learning environment for kids that actually produces results, while almost tricking them into increasing their reading and writing skills. The kids write books. Real books. Titled, bound, printed and sold books. As authors know- that's a heck of an incentive.

When we forget, when we're so busy selling our wares and ourselves on social media, pleading for unknown strangers to just take a chance on our book, building buzz, and marketing, marketing, marketing-it's fitting and rejuvenating to return to the beginning of the circle.

"826 helps young people learn that language can be play, that work can be joyful, and that they, themselves can be the inventors and caretakers of their world." - Michael Chabon, Pulitzer Prize winning author and 826 volunteer.[1]

So in the middle of this authorship, this selling off pieces of ourselves-but hopefully not our souls, we can think back, and thereby forward. Words are play. Writing, (even marketing) is creating. A writer is a caretaker who bears responsibility for all his or her words touch.

Then perhaps the pen becomes a little lighter. Facebook becomes a way to share information that matters. Twitter becomes a tool to express wit and connect with other minds- minds that are enigmas yet have unlimited potential. And maybe, just maybe, one of those minds will add play to words, authenticity to redundancy, and launch a caretaking campaign that touches future generations. After all, who wouldn't want a career like Dave Eggers?

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Readers can find more on 826 National at: http://826national.org. 826 National also has 8 satellite chapters. There may be one near you!

Originally posted as a guest blog on Tripp Randomly Writes. Check out LA Trip's site and guest posts at http://tripp-author.weebly.com/

[1] 826 National Media Kit

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KIRKUS Review of Inside Sorrow

In 11 bare-bones, free verse poems, Rose (Heavy Bags of Soul, 2012) refines a yearslong grieving process into a heartbreakingly potent distillate of sorrow.“I am at a loss,” declares Rose’s bereft narrator after her husband’s death. Ostensibly referring to her uncertainty about what to do with his belongings, the narrator is also confronting an existential fact; she has arrived at loss and seemingly has nowhere else to go. This technique—the evocation of loss on one level to imply an unspeakably more profound loss beneath—is one Rose frequently employs. She writes that “No one ever thinks of tragedy / the other way around / when nothing is left but shoes,” noticing that the “space between my fingers / is ever present. / At any moment, / small slivers,” and other fingers will never interlace with hers again. The sparseness of her verse—often a single beat or two per line—borders on gaunt and serves to codify the body’s and psyche’s inward collapses under the weight of grief, the instinctively protective drawing inward until “we are balled up in the fetal position.” She also structurally simulates the simultaneous, and paradoxical, scattering of self that accompanies a loss of this magnitude. Upon her husband’s death, she is at once “a wall” with “no door,” “the I’s that must witness” and the peripatetic who has “been bleeding out / all over the house. / I can walk / up and down the stairs / tens of times.” The difficulty of relationships—“So much compromise / when it comes to another”—urges her to acknowledge that “some part should feel like freedom / it should feel like freedom / it should,” yet what she finds is that his absence has become a violation of self: “Sorrow has left me naked / in a way I couldn’t have imagined, / leaving my life open to all. / Every nook and cranny.” The recovery of self, the poems reveal, is a long and always incomplete process. Though slightly marred by a handful of prosaic moments, the overall force of these poems is such that lines as simple as “I see a blue sky today. / It seems like a triumph” will, in context, shock readers with their cathartic power. Startlingly touching poetry; be prepared to step inside the sorrow.

Reviews of Inside Sorrow

"This book is a gift to anyone who is dealing with the grief of a loved one,
whether recent or past, and without a doubt will bring them comfort." Danielle Marie, Amazon.com

“Inside Sorrow” is a stellar little book of poems..." Erica Lovett, Goodreads

"K.D. Rose has captured the internal world of grief in a way that very few people
share - the parts that western civilization tells us to suck up and move on, as
if the death of a loved one has no bearing on who we are, that grief doesn't
change us, that life must go on at breakneck speed." K.J. Pierce, Amazon.com

5 Stars

“This book is for girls. This book is for women. This is a book to empower females from teenagers through adults.” I Am: Poetry In Motion by K.D. Rose is not what I expected; a pleasant surprise and a fresh twist on the self-help book genre. I absolutely love the pictures that accompany each poem and writings. They are not merely for you to look at. They definitely capture the vital messages that we should embrace rather than ignore. You will definitely want to look at them more consciously, and the meaning of each picture will resonate in your mind.

It touches on every subject that the female sex is familiar with: what is the perception of beauty in today’s world, limitations that society often impose on women, women’s status in politics and so much more. There is something for everyone, and everything is layered with deep yet clear words of inspiring encouragement. This book is good, not because of the above-mentioned issues we females have to face, but because it softly compels us to confront them. I gravitated to one of the poems, the melancholic and alluring Vinyl Lines – “We are vinyl lines / We have our own groove / We require diamonds / We scratch easily / We cascade melodies.”
K.D. Rose gives us a book with a compelling message that will change the way we see life. Forty-four pages of pure, poignantly beautiful, and thought-provoking empowerment. To all my fellow females, I Am: Poetry In Motion is invigorating and engaging. It is definitely for us." Reviewed by Lit Amri for Readers Favorite

Heavy Bags of Soul 4 Stars

"Heavy Bags of Soul" paints a rather dour picture of the modern world. In this engaging collection of poems and prosody is chronicled the trials and pitfalls of an oppressive world that is as absurd as it is tiring. Yet despite this dim outlook on life the book does offer a sense of hope and unity that serves to offset the nihilism of the main theme. Woven throughout the collection - most notable in the author’s modernizations of the classic Socratic dialogue - this theme of unity maintains that although the road of life is an exhaustive one and that all on that road are laden with their own heavy bags, everyone is in this together and only through tackling the challenges of this world together, only through tapping the resources of the equally heavy bags of soul, will everyone can make it through. Structurally, the aforementioned Socratic dialogues are just one of a variety of literary forms through which the collection’s themes are conveyed. The genre utilized here include both metered and free verse, terse maxims, essays on pop philosophy and cultural movement, and even the occasional bon mot as a punctuation point. This mix of literary formats not only manages to show each and every topical point in a number of different lights, but also challenges the readers who must themselves view each literary format in its own light. Also challenging is the author’s trust in her readers’ intelligence. Though not outwardly acknowledged, that trust is implicit in the author’s habit of using the most diverse and arcane cultural references possible. Citing sources that extend in relevance from Greek taxonomy through quantum physics and on to Top 40 Radio, the topical references may at times have readers wishing they had Wikipedia on speed dial, but do provide for an entertaining, esoteric and intellectually stimulating read."