Writing's Writing by Rebecca Ore

 

I'm pleased to announce the release of Writing's Writing, a book of memoirs and poetry by Rebecca Ore, the ninety-ninth volume in our Conversation Pieces series. It is available in both print and e-book editions from Aqueduct Press here:  https://www.aqueductpress.com/books/978-1-61976-284-8.php.

  In Writing's Writing, Rebecca Ore engages in what she calls "fishing in memory," in which strange short scenes float up, things forgotten for decades, linking to names and to scenes she has to thread with words to connect them. Memory never delivers everything it holds along a particular thread of words, but it can tell a tale. Ore knows that someone else from those days might see her thread of words as only one link in a different narrative of those times. Her memoir is personal, and it reflects and reflects on how she herself changes over time.

You can read a sample here:  https://www.aqueductpress.com/books/samples/978-1-61976-284-8.pdf

Advance Praise 

"With Writing's Writing, Rebecca Ore takes us back to the 20th century, to life as a woman in the southern United States and life as a poet in New York City, to life as a student, a writer, a teacher, a person — to life. In memoir, prose, and poetry, she evokes a lost world, maybe even an alien world, with exactness and without rosy nostalgia. I caught my breath on the vertiginous sweep of some sentences. In this book, Ore returns to us a writer we might otherwise have lost: Rebecca Brown, a young poet who deserves to be heard and remembered." —Matthew Cheney, author of Changes in the Land and The Last Vanishing Man and Other Stories

 "I first noticed Rebecca Ore when her first SF novel came out: Becoming Alien. I liked it a lot, and I liked the two sequels. I have all three in my bookcase, carried safely through many moves. Ore is a fine, intelligent, individual writer, who covers topics not usually covered in SF: for example – in the Alien Trilogy and her stand-alone novel Slow Funeral -- life among working and middle-class whites in the American South. Slow Funeral uses magic as a metaphor for class power in the South. I found it amazing. 

"The longest essay in this book is a kind of autobiography: how Ore became a fiction writer through living in the rural South as a child, then in New York City as an aspiring poet, working clerical day jobs and going to poetry readings at night.  She moved on to the poetry scene in San Francisco, then back to the rural South. Those moves and her experiences explain how she has such  a good sense of regional and class differences. A lot of SF is about disjunction, about reality that is in some way broken or uncertain. It helps if your own life has taught you are there is more than one kind of reality. You learn about sexism working clerical jobs and going to poetry readings, if you didn’t know about it before. (Men often dominate at readings and on the job. Or did in the 60s and 70s and…) The difference between how you are regarded and what you want to be is another disjunction.

"The. second essay is about a bicycle tour of New Jersey. I haven’t figured out why I like it, but I do. The bicycle tour was hard work and not entirely safe, since Ore was riding alone. She describes her stops and the people she met. As is true of her other work, she has a good sense of the variety of people in the US.  Finally, there is some of her poetry. Ore was not moving among amateur poets. She knew Diane Wakoski and Gary Snyder, people I have admired from afar and who are major American poets. Though Snyder seems to have lasted better than Wakoski. (Women artists often fade from history and are discovered later.) Ore’s work was being done among professionals. 

"All in all, this chapbook tells you interesting things about an interesting writer. If you haven’t read her other books, find them and read them. Aqueduct has brought out new e-versions."--Eleanor Arnason, author of Ring of Swords and Hwarhath Stories
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