Image source: http://thisgurllovesjune.blogspot.com

This week’s poem featured at Slate is entitled Dear Friend: I have nearly died three times since morning, and was written by Alex Dimitrov. You can hear Dimitrov read his poem at the Slate website, and this is something I highly recommend that you do because to hear a poet read their work is an opportunity we should all take advantage of. When you hear a poet read their work aloud, you are hearing the words as they first heard them in their head. You are hearing the words the way they intended for you to read them. So, check it out!

Now, who is Alex Dimitrov? According to his blog, Alex “was born in Sofia, Bulgaria in 1984. His first book of poems, Begging For It, is forthcoming from Four Way Books in early 2013. Dimitrov is the recipient of the 2011 Stanley Kunitz Prize from The American Poetry Review. His poems have appeared in the Kenyon Review, American Poetry Review, Yale Review, Boston Review, Tin House, and Slate, among others. He is the founder of Wilde Boys, a queer poetry salon in New York City, works at the Academy of American Poets, teaches creative writing at Rutgers University, and frequently writes for Poets & Writers magazine. He received his MFA in poetry from Sarah Lawrence College, and his BA in English and Film Studies from the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor. He lives in Manhattan.”

Dear Friend: I have nearly died three times since morning, by Alex Dimitrov

You’ll remember those months and the sky
like the tip of a finger dipped in wax.

Every time I felt pleasure I held my breath—

why did you write over that line in your letter?
The snow made me forget how hot the blood is.

How another person can step into a room,
as if out of a painting,

and offer me a life.

Can you feel which part of your body this poem goes to?
Your fingers or teeth,

the top of your chest—
does it touch your face?

Well. Move over Expert on Mars, I’ve found a whole new dream occupation. It’s called Explorer in Residence. 

I was first introduced to this title through BoingBoing, that font of awesome that I get daily updates from. BoingBoing was showcasing the office where the Explorer in Residence — a person who resides at National Geographic’s Washington DC offices and who probably wears a pith helmet — works. Brace yourself, and  feast your eyes on what BoingBoing has called “the apotheosis of writing-caves.”

http://boingboing.net/2012/02/10/writing-office-for-national-ge.html

Is that not the most amazing office you’ve ever seen? There are books in the ceiling! There is a ladder with which to reach those books! I mean…wow. Last week I wrote about finding the perfect setting in which to get some writing done. I think I found my perfect setting. Surely, if I was cloistered in this “writing-cave,” I would get oodles of writing done. Right?

Or maybe I would sit around and marvel that I was called the Explorer in Residence. 

In any case, this is your Awesome Literary Thing for the week! What awesome occupational title would you like to be placed below your name? Did you ever dream of being the ‘Expert’ on something or did you have other, more illustrious ambitions? Share in the comments! Do you have any Awesome Literary Things to share? Leave it at our Facebook page!

– Jet Fuel Editor, Mary Egan

http://livinginamediaculture.blogspot.com

“Jacqueline Ess: Her Will and Testament” is an odd story by Clive Barker about a woman who can change the shape of peoples’ bodies with her mind – kind of like a psychic, only much grosser and unpleasant. After accidentally killing her therapist and not-so-accidentally killing her husband, Jacqueline becomes a prostitute, giving men one night of ultimate pleasure before killing them, twisting their bodies into mockeries of humanity. A man named Vassi becomes obsessed with her, following Jacqueline as she exercises her power more and more.

This story in interesting in that it manifests female empowerment in a nasty, yet ironic way: Jacqueline uses her body to get what she wants – something many people would consider degrading. Yet, she always comes up stronger and more powerful than before. The men she deals with aren’t likable and hold a lot of conventional power, but they are (unknowingly) being controlled by Jacqueline. It’s a nice twist on the usual gender relationships.

Still, Jacqueline’s powers are a curse as well as a gift. She unwittingly self-mutilates as she sleeps. In addition, Vassi becomes so enamored with her that his quality of life deteriorates rapidly. The reader is caught between sympathy and revulsion for Jacqueline Ess: while we like seeing some of the horrible men get their comeuppance, we’re aware of how unnatural her powers and that, in many ways, she’s as much a monster as the people she kills

– Michael Malan

Editor’s Note:  Mike Malan is in his last year at Lewis. He transferred to Lewis from Joliet Junior College in 2008. He is an English Major with a sub-speciality in Creative Writing.  Mike especially enjoys writing gothic, Poe and all things that chill your bones. He is a dark writer but you can find him dabbling in politics. He is also interested in the editing process and hopes that you will enjoy his work.

http://bbc.co.uk

I don’t know about you, but my everyday life is a mess of cultural consumption. I wake up and almost immediately spend time on the internet getting caught up on what happened while I was asleep. On my way to work I read and listen to music simultaneously. When I arrive at work it means more internet time to catch up on what I missed during my commute. At lunch time, the internet is booted up for even more catch up. When I get home in the evening, I’m usually racing to watch television shows that I generally stay caught up with, reading through blogs from the day, and catching up with friends on social media sites. My entire day means consumption, so when do I have time to create?

This topic comes to you courtesy of a blog post by David Tate, where he outlined his own day of crazy consumption. For most of us, I think this is typical. In this digital age, we all feel compelled to keep up with things and we often bite off more than we can chew. I currently subscribe to a whopping eighty blogs, I follow 200 different users on Tumblr, and my brother and I watch at least five different YouTube video bloggers each day of the week. That doesn’t even include emails that I need to respond to each day. This is an insane amount of information — who could keep up will all of this? It certainly seems insurmountable, yet we all subject ourselves to this incoming stream of information and content.

Eventually, we have to break away and decide that it’s time for us to create something of our own. In his blog post, Tate talks about over-consumption cultivating a filtering skill that allows you to quickly decide whether something is worth your time. The internet is full of fast-paced decisions about contents’ quality, so Tate advises us to use that cultivated filter to create better content of our own. In his blog post, Tate offers up what he thinks creating does for us and how we can become better creators. Click the cut to see what Tate is talking about.

Here is what Tate says creating things does for us:

• Let’s you filter to something you like: You can create things that please you and you only.
• Frees you: Helps you let go of the downsides of quick judgment of others since it allows you to appreciate the absolute difficulty in making original things.
• Makes you happy: creating is something that is core to human beings. Just watch a child drawing pictures.
• Plays to strengths not weaknesses: Most people consume things to fix weaknesses like reading about how to better spend your money if you are bad with money. When you create it flips around and you tend to draw, write, or make movies about things you are passionate about.
• Changes the way you think: I can’t say it better than why:

And  here are the tips Tate offers for how to optimize your creation output:

• Cease input – turn your cellphone off, stop reading every stupid blog post about productivity, just stop.
• Get off the popular train – teach yourself not to judge based on anything other than your own view. Stop listening to the mainstream radio or to popular music channels. Try college radio. Browse an actual bookstore for books rather than the Suggested for You or Popular sections of some website. Stop only reading popular blogs.
• Have a system for capturing ideas – no matter where you are – a paper notebook, your phone, whatever. You think it you capture it. When you have an idea, any type, any quality, record it without judgment. Separate idea generation and filtering into two phases.
• Put some structure around making things – give yourself some time to write, to record, to photograph, to think. Schedule a lunch break to just sit and think.
• Change your mind about your mind – overcome common mental barriers to making things.

So why not take a day away from the internet, away from your pressing emails, and away from that guy or girl who keeps texting you. Just take a day for yourself and your creations. Write, dance, sing, compose music, paint…whatever your artistic expression is, spend more time doing that and see if your creation overcomes your consumption.

– Jet Fuel Editor, Mary Egan

Image source: http://editorialiste.blogspot.com

Another great week at the blog has passed us by. I hope that you enjoyed everything we had to offer you this week! I know the intro of this weekly post is beginning to sound like a broken record, but I’d like to remind you again about the spring 2012 submission period for the Jet Fuel Review! If you’re looking for an outlet to publish your poetry, fiction, non-fiction, or art, please check out our submissions page on the Review’s website. We’d love to read your stuff, so find out how to submit today! And now on to our weekly posts!

The writing advice post at the very beginning of this week was all about the perfect setting in which to write. Mike’s horror blog this week talked  about Survivor Type by Stephen King. On Tuesday, the blog’s discussion post featured another awesome literary thing —  a bathtub made entirely of books!  Linda covered this week’s Writing Excuses podcast, which talked about the principles behind writing historical fantasy.

For his film blog this week, Lucas offered a very interesting analysis of The Artist, an Oscar-nominated film that has no sound…or does it? In the storydome this week, Tim compared the movie and book versions of All Quiet on the Western Front. Mark’s awesome word of the week was obsequious. And Linda continued her Ekphrastic blog.

Don’t forget to submit to our spring 2012 issue and check out the Facebook page for the Jet Fuel Review!

– Jet Fuel Editor, Mary Egan

Reading the article I found interesting tidbits of information involving those people who ignored the famous violinist and those that could not help but stop and listen. The people that seemed to notice the beauty the most, and tried very hard to stay and listen were the children who had no choice but to leave with their parents, who ignored the beauty their children instinctively heard. Billy Collins is quoted saying that, “all babies are born with a knowledge of poetry… life starts to choke the poetry out of us. It may be true with music too.” A truth that surrounds me, a poet by nature, with morose dread for the general society that has, in a sense lost the baser quality that I find necessary to call ourselves human.

What is more interesting is the fact that the venue, L’Enfant Plaza, a metro lobby in Washington D.C.. Many people that either commented on the experiment or were there said that had it been done on the streets of other countries, on the boardwalks, brick walks and pavements of Brazil or France, any passerby would stop. But in Washington D.C., Joshua Bell was, by all accounts, ignored. The tragedy of a human condition begins when the heart that made us so unique is cut out of us. This is something that is acknowledged daily by artists who strive to reconnect their audience, with themselves.

Joshua Bell realized that this irregularity, this lack of a captive and riveted audience, that the challenge to connect tthem with thier humanity is exponentially harder than he thought. In order to pass on a gift of any kind, when it comes to art, you have to have an audience that is presently an audience, and nothing else. The people that walked by the internationally acclaimed violinist, were mothers, fathers, businessmen, businesswomen, someone getting from point A to point B. Overlooking them, there is hope in the smaller more captive audience, as it seems children are the key to the hope for the future in humanity. As they have the ears to recognize the beauty that many others have been hard-wired by life to ignore. I would like to dedicate this Ekphrastic to those tiny ears. Enjoy!

Music played in  full 45 minutes: “Chaconne,” composed by Bach, “Ave Maria,” composed by Schubert, Ponce’s sentimental “Estrellita,” then a piece by Jules Massenet, and then a Bach gavotte.

His concert performances

Children’s Recognition of Beauty

Editor’s Note: Linda K Strahl is a transfer student from University of Wisconsin- La Crosse, where she was studying Archaeology and minoring in Creative Writing. She came to Lewis University in Fall of 2010 to major in Creative Writing. After participating in the production of two plays at Phillip Lynch Theater she has become an enthusiastic dramaturg, and is contemplating a career as a researcher and playwriter.

obsequious

Rolling one’s eyes is usually rude.  Well, it might always be rude, but that doesn’t mean it’s not sometimes rather called for (the way violence is always unpleasant, but not exactly optional when it comes to self-defense… but I digress).

One of the occasions on which you might be quite justified in optical gyrations is that of observing an obsequious (uhb’SEEK’we’us) individual.  Such persons are usually annoying to almost everyone around them.  Ironically, this is done because they’re trying far too hard to be anything but annoying to someone else.

To be obsequious is to be pathetically compliant with someone else, even if that someone isn’t an authority figure.  Obsequiousness implies an ingratiating, fawning, servile sort of compliance.  This affectedly brown-nosing attitude is brought on either by a desire to appease someone to an unrealistic degree or by being entirely too submissive to begin with.  Usually, however, the latter case is less one of being obsequious and just one of not having a backbone.  An obsequious person makes a point of pandering to someone else’s wishes and desires, to the point where those around might—as suggested above—roll their eyes and wonder just how far this total sell-out of an individual hopes to get by living at the beck and call of someone else.

It should be pointed out that often, even the individual being pandered to will find the obsequious person obnoxious.  You have to a pretty obtuse operator not to notice when someone eagerly rushes to do things for you or at your bidding which you not only could have done yourself, but, in any ordinary circumstance (such as not having the obsequious person around) would have.

Editor’s Note: This post was written by Mark Jacobs.  Mark is an advisor for The Jet Fuel Review and Blog.  He is an Aviation major, but the left side of his brain is an avid writer.  Mark is a sophomore and works a few hours a week as a tutor in the Writing Center in this school year.

http://oscar.com

Death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it. 

The entire world is at war for the first time, but not the last. We all know something about The Great War (World War I) and, depending on your level of knowledge about history, you are probably aware of the more worldwide effect of the war, but do you know how it affected the soldiers on the frontline fighting? Let’s take a glimpse at the human element of war, at the men who kill each other simply because they were commanded to.

It’s an all-out war between these two the anti-war stories. The novel and the movie head to the frontlines to battle it out.

Two stories enter, one story leaves when All Quiet on The Western Front steps into the Storydome.

The Contenders

It should go without saying. There are SPOILERS ahead.

Paul Bäumer is an enlisted German soldier serving on the front lines of the First World War. He is serving alongside some of his schoolmates, and at only 20 they are the old men in their company. The two primary concerns when serving on the front are death and food. The men spend most of their time hungry, and any chance they get they seek out whatever food is available. This is a skill the commander, Kat, excels at. Kat is able to endear himself to the men because it seems he is always able to locate food, it is said that if there is any food left unattended within 2 miles of him he could sniff it out.

Slowly, one by one, the company starts to thin out. They are not lost to the battles big enough to be given names; they are lost in little skirmishes, battles fought over a piece of land no bigger than a football field. They are lost to cabin fever. Trapped inside the trenches, some men can no longer stand the sound of the bombardment and simply run out into the battlefield. Bäumer and the other soldiers find no adventure, no glory, and none of the promises that were made to them are fulfilled.

There might be some of you thinking that this story breaks the fourth rule of Storydome: Keep It Fiction.

It doesn’t. Yes, World War I actually happened, and yes, Erich Maria Remarque was a German soldier in the war, but this story is fiction. I think it was Remarque’s way of trying to make sense of all that happened, and to let people know that war is not leaders giving moving speeches, it is soldiers dying.

Like last week, the movie is a direct translation, for the most part, of the book. But it isn’t a problem for me this time around. This is not the kind of story a movie should take liberties with. Remarque’s novel focuses on the monotony of the war, on the numbness that happens from facing death every day, and on the destruction of youth. You risk missing all of that in a movie if you take it in a different direction.

Fortunately, the movie retains the heart of the novel, and its message. The movie does change a few things from the book, but they are minor. The book starts off when the soldiers are already on the frontline, then, throughout the book, Bäumer talks about what it was that led him and his friends into the war. The movie simply drops out the backstory element, and presents the story in a more linear fashion. Nothing is lost, the movie just tells the story chronologically.

The movie does have a few drawbacks, though. Primarily, it was made in 1930. I know there are classic movie purists that don’t see this as a problem at all, but it is. First off, the technology was very limited, so the movie couldn’t show the violence of war. At the time of its release this was considered an exceptionally violent movie, but times have changed, and it does a disservice to the reality of war. Soldiers don’t simply fall down if a mortar lands next to them, they are blown to pieces. I know that isn’t a pleasant image, but it is necessary if you want to properly convey the horror of war. The book does not shy away from the violent imagery, and to be a true representation of the book, the movie shouldn’t shy away from it either.

I think what this fight comes down to is longevity. The book is able to age, and it can still be more widely appreciated today. It’s more difficult for the movie to do that. There might be a generation gap or two in my point of view. I know young people today simply can’t appreciate classic movies, but this movie needs some of today’s technology. That’s not my opinion, that’s a fact. Violence is an unpleasant reality of war, but it should be portrayed accurately.

Beyond the lack of violence, I have some stylistic problems with the camera work. During the scenes when the soldiers are in the trench waiting for the enemy charge, the camera bounces around from shot to shot to shot. I don’t know if they were trying to capture the confusion felt by the soldiers, but it’s annoying. I think a better idea would have been for them (them being the director and cinematographer) to pick one great shot and stay on that shot. That way it builds the tension, which is more in line with what the book was talking about. The soldiers were tense, they weren’t confused.

Winner of Storydome: The book, by submission.

This was a harder decision then I had initially thought. Both the movie and the book get the essential message across, but the book does more than just get it across, it hammers it home. There is a scene in the book that almost encapsulates the point of the entire book. A few soldiers are resting in-between their time at the front, when the Kaiser comes to inspect them. After he leaves they ask each other what it is that starts a war, because it certainly wasn’t the soldiers that started the war yet, it is the soldiers who are fighting. I think that is something that would be true no matter what war you are talking about, from the Trojan War to the War on Terror.

I can imagine there are some who are a bit apprehensive at feeling any empathy towards a German soldier, but they were people too. And, this is World War One, not Two.

Disagree with my assessment? Let me know about it in the comments section.

I’ll be back next week, as a new story steps into the ring.

– Tim Fitzpatrick

Editor’s Note: Tim Fitzpatrick is an English major at Lewis University with a focus on creative writing. Tim is 26 and is only just now starting college. He has always enjoyed telling a good story, and he is at Lewis to learn to do that better.

The Artist  is a film that tells the story of a silent film actor, George Valentin, who falls into a pit of despair following the invention of “talking pictures”. Beyond the basic plot though, The Artist is a story of life imitating art. When the film opens we are at the premiere of the latest Valentin silent picture. We watch the film within the film, and in front of the film within our film we see the orchestra playing. Bows rise and cymbals crash, and when the film within our film ends… there’s silence. That’s when I realized that The Artist wasn’t really a silent film but a film that uses an aesthetic associated with silent film to paint a psychological portrait  of it’s main character.

The technical term is solipsism or “the philosophical idea that only one’s own mind, alone, is sure to exist.” Another way to put it is its George Valentin’s world and we’re all living in it, and since George isn’t ready to accept diagetic sound outside diagetic sound associated with silent films the neither is the audience. One critic on the Siskel Film Center Oscars panel, Vincent Anzalone, tweeted “Dujardin, Bejo & the dog are good but why make a silent movie with nothing new? Stupid.” Another critic, Glenn Kenny,  admonished the director, Michel Hazanavicius, claiming that The Artist was inept at capturing the technical beauty of silent films; however, I think that both of these critics are missing the mark.  The Artist is a contemporary story about silent films, it is not a film that tries to reinvent or even be a silent film itself even though George would like it to be; so The Artist is shot like a contemporary film because as much as George denies reality nobodies delusion is strong enough to cover it up completely.

The Artist is a film that has gotten plenty of praise as well as its fair share of flack. It’s far from a perfect film but I found it very charming and surprisingly relevant. Today media is malleable and nothing is guaranteed to last forever. As a result of this it seems everybody is running to nostalgia for comfort. Considering the list of best picture nominee’s for this year’s academy awards this notion of running away to the past is couldn’t be any more prominent. So just as we sometimes fear our own fluid future, George fears his own too and The Artist is a film that handles that fear with grace and beauty. If you haven’t yet seen The Artist , or have been avoiding it in fear of its “silence,” I encourage you to give this picture a try. On the other hand, if you have seen The Artist what did you think of it? Did you find it difficult to watch? Or were you as charmed as I was? Please leave some comment below so that we can continue our discussion on ignoring the outside world, and how fun it is to disagree with film critics.

http//itunes-support.com

Editor’s Note: This post has been written by Linda K. Strahl, an editor at the Jet Fuel Review. Her full bio can be found at the end of this post.

To start off the podcast, the group decides to define the best version of, “what we know as Historical Fantasy,” and this podcast is about almost everything they could come up with. In comparison with a more known genre, Alternative History, it’s a science fiction based version of what the group is presenting. In Alternative History, “you are changing one little thing in history, and trying to extrapolate,” explains Brandon. In understandable terms, it’s the alternate version to the story we know.

Historical Fantasy, in comparison, has more to do with the whimsical. I paraphrase the definition the group gives by saying, “think of a historical period with an additive of magic. It doesn’t matter if the world you create is hidden or set in the time period that you found it in, the magic is what makes the topic a Historical Fantasy.”

What the group mentions that I thought was interesting was that, “You can pick the period you love,” and just want to add some fun sparkly fireworks show of magical elements. “But the fact is that this is entirely based on what never happened,” they say. The fact that it’s fantasy — the key term here — tells the readers that though there is that element of historical familiarity, the fact is that we would not be here today if magic existed. Kick-in-the-gut-fact with no magic lands us in a present day world, which is why writers are so necessary to spin the tales of the “what if” side of life.

The landmarks of the conversation that give us the chance to grapple with the topics particularities are given and I will list a few here. Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, shows the influence of magic on a regency society. Mary states the question Clarke is trying to answer by saying, “If magic existed in this society, how would that affect this society?” And it is a good, basic term that leads the process in creating the basic plot to her story. This is a genre based question that can be altered for each element an author has to implement into their story. “If I add this… what will that affect?” is a common and essential question that facilitates any greater and lesser plots in the story’s progression. The Prestige, another example, casts an underlying element of magic in historical events. Mark Chadborne’s Silver Skull, is the Renaissance England James Bond. Jasper Kent’s vampire series in the Russian Civil War called, Twelve, is another excellent example.

The enticement of Historical Fantasy novels is found in the familiar, with an added pinch of genre fiction. The familiar and the strange are interlocked and give the, “what if, escapist factor,” that many want these days. In a way, there is less to do with creating something from scratch, a new world, and more to do with research in this genre. The dangerous part about the topic is the amount of research that becomes necessary if you as an author decide to take on an historical setting. Because there are history buffs that will nitpick an author to death if they don’t do what history says happened. Mary’s solution in her book, Shades of Milk and Honey, is burning down the building that everyone expects Roosevelt to be in on this time of this day in this particular year of her book.

Here is the “how-to” of it all. Just in case you are wondering, here is the process that some of these mentioned authors and genre buffs might approach their work. Look at the culture and society (i.e.RESEARCH). Mary looks at the fiction of the period she is studying. Experts are good tools to help with the details of all the things you need to know, and whether or not you can get away with some of the more detailed aspects of the time. Mary tells one of her more insane processes of accurate “words of the period,” which you should check out in the group’s podcast on iTunes for free.

Audiobook Pick-of-the-Week: His Majesty’s Dragon: Temeraire, Book 1, by Naomi Novik, narrated by Simon Vance.

Writing Prompt: Identify a historical period that you like, and write a story in that setting. Don’t bother researching anything until you’re done.

Editor’s Note: Linda K Strahl is a transfer student from University of Wisconsin- La Crosse, where she was studying Archaeology and minoring in Creative Writing. She came to Lewis University in Fall of 2010 to major in Creative Writing. After participating in the production of two plays at Phillip Lynch Theater she has become an enthusiastic dramaturg, and is contemplating a career as a researcher and playwriter.