Poetics and Ruminations

Tern and Tern About

What better way to begin the new year than with a moral tale? The fabled Dean of Student Affairs at S.U.N.Y. Oswego and amateur ornithologist Robert Roc received a commission from National Geographic to write and photograph an essay on seabirds nesting on a small and very rocky island off the coast of Maine. It would take him all spring and summer, so he prepared himself thoroughly and built an inconspicuous camp and several blinds at strategic locations on the islet. He moved himself in before mating season started, and he began taking photographs and copious notes.

As time passed, it became clear that the various species of birds got along poorly, to say the least. They were always mounting incursions into each other’s territory, and the larger birds preyed on the smaller ones, either eating them or their eggs or forcing them to relinquish their catches. Eventually, however, Bob became aware of one small seabird who seemed to have a sense of altruism.

This bird, when it saw an altercation developing between its island mates would attempt to break it up before it got started. If the parents of a chick were somehow killed or driven off, this bird would actually try to feed the baby until it became a fledgling. The good Samaritan bird would even lend a wing in nest building if the builder were inept. Roc was simply amazed.

He began to focus on the helpful bird, and at last he became so interested in it — almost obsessively so — that all of his efforts were bent toward chronicling this feathered friend’s existence. When he sat down at his laptop to begin writing his article he soon found that he had enough material for a book. The following fall he submitted his original article to the magazine and began to write the book because, as he said in his journal, “One good tern deserves an author.”

 

The Museum of Ordinary People and Other Stories

JUST PUBLISHED

Lewis Turco, The Museum of Ordinary People and Other Stories, Scottsdale: Star Cloud Press (www.StarCloudPress.com), September 2008, ISBN 978-1-932842-16-6, quality paperback, 196 pp., $19.95 + $3.00 S&H (extra copies S&H = $1.00 @).

Welcome to the Museum of Ordinary People whose habitants are anything but. As you enter, shadowy hallways lead to empty rooms touched by shafts of slanting light, revealing, at first glance, but little: here an impress of harrowing tragedy; there an aura of sweet poignance. A sinister shadow darkens the upper floor. Some rooms are closed off, and he who enters does so at his own peril, for the museum keeps its own secrets.
The exhibits within reveal haunting stories of love and death, of fear and hope, of the most elemental emotions that comprise our days. And things here are not always what they seem. In "One Sunday Morning" we see a grim portrait of the rationally irrational and of its shattering, inexplicable consequences. In the title story, parents are caught in a cycle of ceaseless searching for children utterly vanished on a beautiful sunny day ten years before. Their journeys lead, ultimately, to a strangely disquieting house on a lonely stretch of road. "The Scent of Lilac" suffuses the museum with the sickly sweet presentiment of death, yet foreshadows a quickening, too: a release of life and love not priorly possible. In "The City of the Dead" a local cemetery loosens a flood of happy memories juxtaposed with bittersweet reflections on life's ultimate end and the desolate loneliness of the one left behind. "The Man in the Booth" is an understated story of quiet reflection whose hauntingly intimate narrative anticipates a disturbing conclusion.
These are but a few samples of the many curios within the museum. And who are its denizens? Why, very ordinary people - you, me, the next-door neighbor. People who lead ordinary lives filled with extraordinary moments. Those moments are sure to better illumine both the sunlit places and the shadowy recesses of ourselves and those around us. So step right up, buy yourself a ticket, and enter - if you dare - this museum of very extraordinary people.
Mike Whitney on Amazon.com
 
In these days when so few people have time to read long novels but still feel the need to escape,if for a brief time - I heartily recommend this wonderfully eerie book of short stories. If you love being carried off into the realm of the unnerving, disarming, disturbing, disconcerting and downright spooky world of simple ordinary people ... this book is for you. The stories are thought provoking, they pull you in and just when you're completely mesmerized- it suddenly ends leaving you to draw your own conclusions or agreeing/disagreeing with Mr. Turco's ending. If you're a fan of Rod Serling ... you will most definitely become a fan of Mr. Turco.
Ann Badach on Amazon.com

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READERS' COMMENTS:

Hi Lew,
I am enjoying Museum immensely. The ending to the title story is chilling and makes a great story even better. It is unquestionably one of the most eerie stories I've ever read. It should be anthologized widely, especially in those anthologies of the eerie and uncanny. "An Old Fashioned Kind of Guy" is a story for our post-sixties' screwed-up times, when roles are reversed, no one seems to know whom he or she really is, and the world exists in a state of utter chaos. My favorites remain "Museum" and "the Man in the Booth," but I'd put "The City of the Dead" right there with them. What a beautiful story it is, and it makes me muse ruefully on the loneliness ahead for my wife, who is ten years younger than I. I'm still reading, as I've not quite read them all. The book deserves a wide and intelligent audience (at least to the extent that those two adjectives aren't contradictory). I have left a review at Amazon.
Regards,
Mike

Lew, 

Sounds good. Will have to get a copy for the Belfast 
library. 
Steve Norman, Director


Lew,
I've been reading The Museum of Ordinary 
People and Other Stories much of the day. 
It's great! The stories are complex, and I 
don't want to stop reading them! The 
poison story, “Salt,” is a real gas (as one 
used to say). In “The Master of Cerements” 
I see Wesli Court gets a plug. I stayed up 
far too late reading these stories: a sign 
of how riveting they are.  The wind-up 
bird is a great choice of symbol.
Best,
Mir (See the "Per Contra Interview"
under "Lynx" on this blog for Ms. Kotzin's questions about
my fiction writing.) L. T.

Lew,
I'll start by saying overall that The Museum of Ordinary People and Other Stories is the best stuff I've read in a long time. I love the stories that come out of your childhood, like "Lemon Ice." I live them. They come up around me and engulf me in the neighborhood, asFantaseers did.
My favorites were those where you get into the haunting poetic vein I've always loved. Stories like “The Little God's Eye” and the title story drew me in and moved me. "Savants" is just masterful. Wow. It's a treasure. You nailed it. I loved reading the “Shipmates” again. “The Chair” gave me the shudders because it took me back to that awful time when I didn't know what or whom I was dealing with. “The City of the Dead” was incredibly evocative and sad. “The Chimney in the Sand” — you could have kept going and I wouldn't have minded at all. Where did you get Henry, the guy in “Carousel Mall”?
There were the fun ones too. “The Master of Cerements” and “The Catalog Idea,” and “Salt” made me shout "Yeah!" when it ended. “Tontine” — another character like Henry who was so real — you really finessed the recurrent reunion idea and the war between the two women. One of those stories in which I don't even bother trying to anticipate what's coming next because I love staying open to the surprises in their responses.Museum is a great set of stories. Thanks again for sending it. And you snuck Wesli Court in there too. Wouldn't be you if you hadn't.
Max Zimmer

Lewis!

Love! & thanks, 
thanks, thanks! 
You are superb! 

Ray Bradbury

Lew,
I am having such a good time with your stories! I'm up to "The City of the Dead," and am bowled over, among other things, by the variety among them. They differ in tone, in effect, in technique, in every which way — and yet the book coheres because some single thread runs through them. I can't quite put a name to that thread, but it has to do with the hypnotic use of small details in incongruous surroundings: the little god's eye, the ice cream bucket, the husband's newspaper under the arm, the movie popcorn, Liberace, the music box with the terrible bird in it...the list goes on and on, and each detail is just right for its story, just dream-like enough to be frightening and almost funny.
I love them all, and the title story is a masterpiece, but the one that has moved me most profoundly so far is "Lemon Ice," because of what it does with the passage of time and the folding of the whole narrative inside of that "let's pretend" condition foretold by the "Pick a day" opening. They remind me of magic realism, but with a peculiarly American flavor that alters the style completely. There is a melancholy buried in all of them, like a musical theme that underlies a series of jazz riffs with different tempos and in different keys. Wonderful stories: as good as the poems, and that's saying something!
Rhina Espaillat

Lew,
Having taken fiction writing classes with you, I always knew you were more than a poet! Not that being "merely" an internationally-known poet is NOT enough for anyone! :-) I always liked the title story myself (well, "like" isn't the truth…it's a bit disquieting! A BIT!..but  respected it, and remember it 20 years  later). I recall those classes when you were introducing some of these stories to us, and now a compilation is overdue.  Good for you, Lew!
Debbie Engelke

Murgatroyd Tries Again

Murgatroyd and Mabel were butterflies. That is to say, Mabel was a butterfly, but Murgatroyd was still a caterpillar, in a way. They had both been caterpillars once. Murgatroyd had been a sort of spring green in color, with bright orange spots. Mabel had been covered with soft brown fur, and she had two pretty yellow tufts on her head, like a hat.

Then, one day, Murgatroyd and Mabel had spun their cocoons, and when they came out Mabel had worn two lovely lavender wings on her slender pink body. But when he came out, Murgatroyd looked just the same as before. He still looked like a caterpillar, except for one thing. Instead of growing wings, Murgratroyd had grown a propeller on his nose.

Murgatroyd could fly very fast with his propeller, and he could do loops and other tricks. "I wish I could fly like that," Mabel told him, and that made him happy. As Mabel would flutter by, Murgatroyd did barrel rolls and loop-the-loops around her so that they could get where they were going at the same time.

But one day as Murgatroyd and Mabel were sitting on a green twig in an apple tree he said to his friend, "Mabel, I think I'd like to try again."

Mabel was quite puzzled. "What do you mean?" she asked him, waving her wings delicately in the summer breeze.

Murgatroyd spun his propeller a little bit. "I'd like to try to grow wings again," he said.

"Oh, I see," Mabel said. "But you fly very well. Why would you want to do that?"

"Just to see if I can do it," Murgatroyd replied.

"You'll have to spin another cocoon, then," Mabel said.

"That's just what I had in mind," Murgatroyd said, and then and there he began to spin a new cocoon on the apple tree twig. Mabel sat and watched, and when he was through he poked his head out of the door of his cocoon and said, "I'll see you in eleven days."

"I'll be waiting," Mabel said, and Murgatroyd closed the door.

The sun rose and set ten times, and ten days passed, but there was hardly a sound in the apple tree except when a robin perched near the cocoons to look out over the green fields. On the eleventh day, though, something began to happen to the cocoon. Slowly, slowly, the door opened, but it was so dark inside that Mabel could see nothing at all.

Then, at last, Murgatroyd came out — only, he didn't look exactly as Mabel remembered. When he had come all the way out and stood on the apple tree twig Mabel said, "Oh, Murgatroyd! It didn't work! And, and...."

Murgatroyd looked down the length of his body, but it seemed to be just as it had been before he went into the cocoon. He looked at Mabel and said, "And what?"

Mabel felt very sad. "And you've even lost your propeller. Now you won't be able to fly at all."

Murgatroyd crossed his eyes to look at his nose, and, sure enough, the propeller was gone! "Oh, no!" he said. "I should have left well enough alone!" He was so dejected that he forgot to hold on to the twig, and he fell off.

"Murgatroyd!" Mabel cried, but there was nothing she could do. He was heading for the ground lickety-split. Then, suddenly, something happened. There was a roar, a blast of flame, and just as he was about to hit the ground Murgatroyd began to climb into the sky leaving a vapor trail behind him.

Mabel watched as her friend roared through the branches of the apple tree and disappeared into the sun, and she was still watching when Murgatroyd reappeared in a flash and settled onto the twig beside her.
"What was that?" she asked him.

"Look at me again," Murgatroyd said. "Don't you see?"

Mabel looked at him very closely, and then she saw it — Murgatroyd had lost his propeller, and he hadn't grown wings, but he had grown a jet pod instead!

"Oh, Murgatroyd," Mabel laughed, fluttering her lavender wings as she flew away from the apple twig. "You're twice as fast as you were before!" But Murgatroyd had no time to answer, for it was all he could do to shout "Whee!" as he did power dives and triple barrel rolls around her in the sweet summer air.

From The Book of Dialogue, How to Write Effective Conversation in Fiction, Screenplays, Drama, and Poetry, Hanover NH: University Press of New England, copyright © 2004 by Lewis Turco. All rights reserved.

NOTE: The original installment of this story, Murgatroyd and Mabel, with full color illustrations by Robert Michaels, published in 1978 by the Mathom Publishing Company, is still available at $9.95, shipping included, from the author, Wesli Court, at P. O. Box 161, Dresden ME 04342-0161.

The Cherub

In Albrecht Dürer's engraving "Melencolia I," executed in 1514, Melancholy sits staring into space, her head leaning on her left fist, her left elbow resting on her knee. Her right hand, lying in her lap, holds a pair of compasses. Her face is dark, in shadow, the whites of her eyes showing starkly. About her head is a laurel wreath, so she is not sad, as the observer might believe; rather, she is lost in thought — a poet, perhaps. She appears to be blonde. At her left shoulder a bird with a long tail is perched.

Her gown is long — only her bare toes show beneath it. At her feet there is a plane, a rule, some nails and other tools of the artisan, cast aside. A large white ball is before her on the floor as well, perhaps a crystal ball, and a censer — or is it an ink pot? Between it and her right leg a starved hound is curled up: it is the emblem of the physical body for the moment forgotten. Behind the dog there is a large polyhedron, and behind that a ladder stretching up a column and out of sight overhead. It is the ladder of Jacob, the ladder of aspiration. On the column there is a set of scales hanging, an hourglass, and a bell suspended over a square on which are graven numerals and cabalistic symbols.

In the background there is a body of water, parts of a coastline, and on the horizon, shining out of a black sky, a sunburst beneath a rainbow. The only other figure of significance in the engraving is a cherub sitting on what looks like a smooth stone with a round hole struck through it.

In the early 1960s I was teaching at Fenn College, at that time a private, downtown engineering school located in Cleveland, Ohio; it has since become Cleveland State University. The instructorship in English was my first job after finishing graduate coursework in the Writer's Workshop of the University of Iowa, and it was at Fenn where I first met a colleague in my department whom people called "The Cherub," because of his surname, Cherubini, which in Italian means “cherubs.” He was anything but. Tall and thin, with a saturnine face, he was clearly a votary of Melancholy. He became my familiar.

People assume, perhaps, that melancholy is the state of the depressive personality, and to a degree this is true, but it's also the state of creation. In the Dürer print Melancholy is in what used to be called "a brown study." Her trance is caused, not by dejection, but by contemplation, the condition of the artist or philosopher. Her eyes are focused not outward, but into herself where she sees the condition of mankind, of the world lost in the vacant regions of the universe.

As the occult philosopher Agrippa saw it, the humor melancholicus, when it takes possession of a soul, creates the furor poeticus which leads to revelation and wisdom, in particular when the influence of Saturn combines with it. The melancholy humor attracts demons that enable the possessed person to prophesy or create. The force of melancholy takes three forms. When it is concentrated in the imagination, its possessor will be a poet; when it is epitomized in the reason, he or she will be a philosopher; in the intellect, a prophet.

Artists of all kinds are generally what we call today bipolar or "manic depressives," but those terms ought to be reversed, for the "depression" or melancholy comes first — the inward gazing, the contemplation. Then the physical act of creation takes over, and the artist puts visions on canvas or paper, or works it in stone or some other substance; hence, the tools lying unused, for the moment, at Melancholy's feet.

I've been contem-plating The Cherub for many years now, and I feel the time has come to put him into words, yet I still don't know at this moment exactly what it is I have to say about him, nor why he has for so long inhabited my imagination, for he wasn't a major portion of my life in those old days, yet he is today much more vivid to me than most of my other colleagues at Fenn.

Savants

Oh, hi, hon! Come on in! When did you and Harry get back? Come in and sit down — the coffee's all ready, see? A fresh pot on the stove. Funny I didn't hear your car come in next door last night. I must've been busy with Timmy — honestly, he's been driving me crazy lately. I wish he could hear, at least, so I could get through to him.

So tell me all about it — where'd you go on vacation? How long's it been, now? Only two weeks? Seems it's at least a month. I didn't have anybody to talk to. Jim's no company at all — he's either watching TV or at a bar, or out bowling with the guys or fishing — but I don't have to tell you. Lucky you! You had Harry all to yourself for two whole weeks! Oh, well, sure, to yourself and the kids. I bet they were out in the woods all the time while you stayed with the camper, right? Oh, sure, you and the girls. Still, I bet it was nice.

What'd I do? Not much, let me tell you. But you know, I saw something on TV the other night that just made my eyes open up like a can of cat food. Oh, ignore him, that's just Timmy again. I give up trying to figure out what ails him. Let him cry. It's all he does all the time anyway. I'm about at the end of my rope. Maybe Jim's right — it's probably time to put him in a home or something. I can't cope any more.

What was I saying? Oh, yeah, the TV. I was watching a rerun of "Sixty Minutes" the other night. We never watch that show, but we saw everything else that was on last fall, all reruns, so I watched it. Jim wasn't home, just me and Timmy. Honestly, hon, let me tell you, it was the most amazing thing I ever saw in my life — no, really, the most amazing. It was all about these retarded people, so of course, on account of Timmy, I was interested. But you never saw such retards in your life!

The Hillsdale Epistles Revisited

August 2, 1964

Prof. Arnold Tew
Department of English
Fenn College
Cleveland, Ohio

Dear Arnold,

Well, how are things back there at Old Swampy College? We're starting to settle in here at Hillsdale, and it should be a real experience next month when school opens. It's pretty hot here right now, but not half as hot as in Cleveland, I bet. At least we've got grass and trees and a big front yard now. Man, are we glad to be out of that crummy third-floor apartment. Hillsdale College has given us a big seven-room house right on the campus — no more driving ten miles down the freeway for this kid! Nothing but squirrels here (we've got a black walnut tree right out in the front yard)!

The guy who lived here before us asked me how come I got special treatment on the house. When I said I didn't know I had, he asked me my name. I told him and he said, "Oh, the new celebrity!" Dig that, me a celebrity! He told me the College had been wanting a poet on campus for a long time...and I'm it! Quite a different attitude from Fenn, eh wot? But that's all water over the dam. Here we are in our Midwestern Valhalla, at a neat little liberal arts college, and I'll be having real students with backgrounds for a change. Give our best to everybody. Jean and Melora send their love to Sheila and the girls.

Best,

Lew

P. S. You know what the graduating class here painted on the front stairs of Central Hall (with its big old wickerwork Victorian tower)? "The world's never-closing door / Is open to the class of '64." That sounds a little funny to me. Oh, well.

The Bard and the Machine: A Memoir of the Early Computer Age

Preface to “The Bard and the Machine”

On Sunday, 22 July 2007, a fan sent me an e-mail message out of the blue; “Dear Mr. Turco,” he wrote, “I have read many eerie stories, stories of the uncanny — NOT mere ghost or horror stories, but stories much stranger and more enigmatic than that. The best of these convey a subtle suggestion of dread or discomfiture, often so subtle as to baffle conventional definition. These stories vastly transcend popular contrivances of clairvoyance, voodoo, exorcism, demons, satanic possession, and other equally dismal, banal absurdities. No, the stories I admire are much more original and provocative in both concept and execution. The best of these, for me, are Shirley Jackson's 'The Lottery' and two of hers I like more, 'The Summer People' and 'The Bus'; Bradbury's 'The Town Where No One Got Off' and 'The Lake' (if you ignore the hackneyed, 'ghostly' ending); Roald Dahl's 'The Landlady'; Yvor Winters's 'The Brink of Darkness'; and H. E. Bates's atmospherically beautiful and enigmatic 'The Station.'

“Yet none of these are more uncannily disconcerting than your own 'The Museum of Ordinary People.' What a chillingly bewildering story! It is as troubling as it is perplexing, yet in such an ordinary, insidious manner. I really am not sure what it means, I just know it disturbs me with its feeling of quiet, soulless dread. Everybody here is a little too ordinary, as if they (we?) are all mannequin-like automatons, sentient but lifeless. What really happened to the children? What was the gas station attendant about to ask Howard? Why won't Howard go into the last room in the museum? What's there, or what is he afraid he'll find there? Your commentary, if you please, on these and other elements of this story, as well as how the story came to you would be much appreciated. I'd also like to know if you've written other stories.”


”Sincerely,


”Mike Whitney”

Naturally, we struck up a correspondence, and during the course of our exchange of messages I asked him why it had taken him so many years to write me, for the story had been published originally in an anthology of new writing, American Fiction II edited by Michael C. White and Alan R. Davis for Birch Lane Press in 1991. He replied,

“It took so long because at the time I first read your story (mid-nineties) I did not have a computer and it thus would never have occurred to me to write any author until I realized the information power the computer enables. Literature is my one passion (vice?) and, living on a remote old farm, the computer brings books to my doorstep from various internet vendors, books that I'd never find in the stores 45 miles away in Pensacola. I do not believe that this, however, justifies its ubiquitous proliferation in our society, as I fear it has dangerously compromised our privacy and in the future will be used increasingly as a tool to control and conform us, both by our employers and the government. In fact, it already is. I believe it the most corrosive invention of our time, and I'd gladly give up the books it brings to be rid of the thing. I realize I'm conservative in my thoughts and preferences (I much prefer the quiet stability of the 1950's over this fragmented and tempestuous time) but I don't feel that opposing the computer makes one a Luddite; that kind of label is simply the intimidation propaganda of management and the computer
 companies. I only bought one myself because my employer requires it.”

I replied, “Our experiences with the computer are quite different. Far from turning me into a slave, it liberated me as a writer. I remember all those typing marathons I experienced and how difficult it was to make corrections if I erred, and I erred often. Rewriting a typescript was onerous, balefully onerous most often; carbon copies; ditto masters and copies; oh, the bad old days!

“And much more likely than turning us into slaves, the computer has ushered in an age practically of anarchy if not chaos. The world of the blogger has already changed our elections. I'm an old man, but I'm in the process of giving up the world of the journal for the world of the e-zine. It's going to be hard for young writers to make a name for themselves in this new age, but it will happen, no doubt, and I, for one, am having a ball with the Web.

“I attach an unpublished memoir (I think I'll soon put it up on my blog) about the early computer age”:

The Three Sheep

A Cautionary Tale by Wesli Court

Once upon a time, in the town of Drey's Den, Maine, there were three sheep who were sisters. The first was named Baaabara, the second was named Ewenice, and the third was Belle who wore a bell and had a black face. They lived on a nice farm, in a large meadow with a fence around it. Their friend, who lived with them, was a pig named Slabsides who thought she was a sheep too.