Two books worth rescuing

Originally printed July 28, 2011.

When we checked in with Rescue Press this time last year, the Milwaukee-based organization was celebrating its inaugural book offering: "The Smaller Half," a collection of poetry by local Iowa Writers' Workshop graduate Marc Rahe.

Managing editor Daniel Khalastchi and editor-in-chief Caryl Pagel -- both Workshop graduates -- said Rescue Press came about because the more they spoke with their writing colleagues and students, the more they realized there are more good writers out there than there are publishers to print them.

"It's so difficult to get good work into print," Khalastchi said. "There's really a state of emergency in print media. ... We're just trying to rescue the world from the absence of pieces of literature."
In the past year, Khalastchi and Pagel have managed to rescue a few more books from non-existence, the most recent being:

» Andrea Rexilius' poetry collection, "To Be Human Is To Be A Conversation."

» And fellow Workshop graduate Madeline McDonnell's short story collection, "There Is Something Inside, It Wants To Get Out."

Rexilius's collection lives up to the "conversation" in its title. Not only do many of the poems explore the duality of mind/body, twinning and sisterhood -- including a whole section on "Sister Sutures" -- and not only does Rexilius include lengthy quotes from Martin Buber on the I/Thou relationship, but some of the pages feature prompt-like questions followed by so much white space that they all but require readers to respond with their own essay-length replies.

"One unifies by splitting the beginning of the other," Rexilius writes in one of the many poems titled "Essay On Sisterhood."

The three stories in McDonnell's collection are ever more worthy of rescue.

The first, "Wife," follows a 26-year-old graduate student named Wednesday who is having trouble telling her mother, a second-wave feminist professor who has written several articles on the the theme of "Marriage as Legalized Rape," that she not only has accepted a marriage proposal from an unacceptable History Ph.D. candidate, but also that she is actually toying with the idea of becoming "just a wife ... a bad wife, even."

"'Convinced as you are that I should never marry,' Wednesday once asked, 'why on earth did you give me a name that starts with "wed"?'" Wednesday asks, only to discover that her mother wanted to name her after Tuesday Weld, star of "Sex Kittens Go to College," but decided Wednesday was "more original."

The second story, "Physical Education," tells the story of a high school girl with cancer whose middle-age father begins to attend gym class with her. At first she is bemused, if not actually pleased, with his act of solidarity -- as she is with his insisting on praying for her even though he doesn't really believe in God. But his all-or-nothing competitiveness slowly complicates an already complicated situation.

The third story, "Trouble," tells a haunting tale of Lucy Penrose, née Burke, whose current pregnancy triggers unresolved memories of an unwanted pregnancy when she was 16.
As fellow Workshop graduate Kevin Brockmeier writes in his blurb, "(McDonnell) approaches the story as a hang-glider approaches the wind, bending herself to its movements."

Both recently "rescued" authors will be on hand to read at 7 p.m. today in Prairie Lights Books.

Opinion editor Jeff Charis-Carlson can be contacted at jcharsic@press-citizen.com.

Khalastchi making sure 'all is accounted for'

Originally printed March 22, 2011.

The world is simply too disjointed for Daniel Khalastchi to put his faith in line breaks alone as a means of giving form to his poetic vision.

In his new collection, "Manoleria" (Tupelo Press, 2011), the Iowa Writers' Workshop graduate invites readers to absorb his poetry through drips and drops. As suggested in his long-titled "Small There. The Screen Was. Out: (Morphine Drip)," Khalastchi uses his poems as if they were IV drips directly hooked into to his readers -- providing short bursts of linguistic experiments that are allowed to puddle on the page. It's a poetic world in which images "Combine as Assets" and yet celebrate how poets and readers are left with "Insufficient Funds."

The Khalastchi persona presented in this collection usually is deprived of the necessary sustenance that he seeks (as in, "By a Fallen Tree I Wait for My Salesman"). He often finds himself ruminating while playing the victim of medical procedures (as in, "With Regret, They Make Moves to Sell My Kidney" and "The Doctors Believed They. Were Out of Rubber: [Recovery])"). Or, as in the many titled "Manoleria," Khalastchi provides long lines of poetic prose that capture an extraordinary moment's quiet panic and confusion.

"The box is then sealed with Saran Wrap," Khalastchi writes. "I am reminded to be conscious of air supply. I'd say something back, but I'm already worried."

Several of the poems in the collection are mere puddles of fragments and half-finished phrases all beginning with the word "Because."

"Because rain. Because hard. Because / pain in my ribs. Because buckle and / wait. Because cramping. Because / kneeling low. Because pause," begins the introductory poem, "The Maturation of Man."

In these poems, the lists of "because" clauses seem to build to the last line:

• "Because from a bench I / step to the air -- watch as my city / folds down to a circle."

• "Because under the branches / they tell me we find it."

• "Because bugs in my / cuts I yell out for new moon."

• "Because children with / smiles they let out the lions."

• "Because / deep the incision we fall back the night."

But unlike the "whereas" clauses in official resolutions and proclamations, none of those last lines offer any official pronouncement. The poems, instead, suggest that resolution isn't possible. They simply connect what otherwise would be unconnectable.

As D.A. Powell blurbs in his praise for the collection, "Formally, the poet is literally taking us through the emotional work of picking up pieces. Despite the splintering, despite the hemorrhage, somehow 'all is accounted for.'"

Khalastchi, one of the founders of the Wisconsin-based Rescue Press, will read from "Manoleria" at 7 tonight in Prairie Lights Books.

Press-Citizen Opinion Editor Jeff Charis-Carlson can be contacted at jcharisc@press-citizen.com.

Reading provides a glimpse of Iowa City's future

Originally printed July 15, 2010.

The Iowa City Book Festival officially kicks off Friday night with a chance to dine with many of the authors participating in the weekend's events -- the dinner already is sold out. The festival then begins in earnest Saturday with a host of opportunities to meet with authors, filmmakers and publishers. And Sunday -- titled "A Day in the City of Literature" -- the readings move out from university settings and bookstores and in to jewelry stores, clothing shops, churches and museums.

But every great Iowa City-linked writer, poet and publisher had to start somewhere. And where the book festival offers an opportunity to celebrate the Iowa City's literary past and present, local residents have an opportunity tonight to observe a literary experiment in progress and perhaps to catch a glimpse of Iowa City's literary future.

Mark Rahe, a local graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, will read from his first book of poems, "The Smaller Half," at 7 p.m. in Prairie Lights Books.

Rahe is the type of poet who always notices "the entrances to homes / where a wheelchair couldn't go" ("Summer"). Who proudly announces, "I've signed the petition against me" ("Petition"). Who bemoans to a friend that he "would have responded sooner, / but they didn't allow smoking on the train" ("Dear Paul"). Who contemplates, "How the stretch is not yet a yawn / but yawn becoming" ("Outstretched").

And with titles such as "Hangover at the Family Diner," "There Are Cabs That Will Come Too Late" and "Felix's Helixes," Rahe's poems bear all the marks of a workshop graduate. Christina Mengert, in her review of "The Smaller Half" for www.constantcritic.com, lists those tell-tale workshop signs as: "(The poems are) slightly narrative, with the occasionally surreal image twisting our sense of time and place; (they employ) explosive, Donne-like openings followed by short, well-crafted lines, and an ending that lifts off the page as the poem gently but firmly settles into heavy silence."

It's not surprising, then, that "The Smaller Half" isn't merely the work of one workshop graduate; it represents the collaboration between three graduates. Not only is "The Smaller Half" Rahe's first book of poetry; it's also the debut publication of Rescue+Press, a Milwaukee-based operation run by workshop graduates Caryl Pagel and Daniel Khalastchi.

"We really felt that the book chose us and that it would give us a wide audience," Khalastchi said in a phone interview last month. "We approached Marc and asked him he wanted to help us get all this off the ground. And he entrusted his work to two people who had never done this before."

Khalastchi said Rescue Press came about because the more he and Pagel spoke with their writing colleagues and students, the more they realized there are far more good writers out there than there are publishers to print them.

"It's so difficult to get good work into print," Khalastchi said. "There's really a state of emergency in print media. ... We're just trying to rescue the world from the absence of pieces of literature."

Although Khalastchi and Pagel so far have saved only one book from a non-print existence, Khalastchi said they are working to ensure that Rescue+Press isn't limited by their contacts and aesthetic preferences.

That's why the call for submissions on the press's website (www.rescue-press.org) reads: "We are interested in small collections of artwork, comics, compositions, essays, experiments, how-tos, interrogations, lectures, lists, manifestos, notes, outlines, poetry, procedures, questions, reviews, sketches, stories, technical prose, textbooks, travel writing and anything else that transforms us."

It's unclear what the future holds for either Rescue+Press or for Rahe's poetry. But the collaboration among Rahe, Khalastchi and Pagel is just one small, recent example of the many such presses and literary partnerships that have dotted Iowa City's history. Observing this present day example is an opportunity to watch a little bit of that history unfold.

Or, in Rahe's words, it's an opportunity to lift our faces and to open our eyes to "something carried in the cold / some trivia brought down from above / that gains weight as it approaches" ("Stray").

Press-Citizen Opinion editor Jeff Charis-Carlson can be contacted at 319-887-5435 or jcharisc@press-citizen.com.