Blog

  • Rockin’ Out in the Car

    You know how much Taylor Swift I listened to this weekend? And this has nothing to do with the Kansas City/Baltimore game on Sunday. I was the “Dad Taxi” and, oh, did I get my own version of The Eras Tour in the car. Yes, two Tween-girls were eating candy, chatting non-stop between singing Taylor songs, and it was like I wasn’t even there.

    And I couldn’t have been happier.

    I had no idea what to expect when I found out the kid was going to be a girl all those years ago. I had two older brothers, so my childhood was nothing but boy things. I can admit I was nervous about raising a girl, but not afraid to do it. I just knew that I was going to enter a place of parenting that I had no frame of reference, and that’s not bad – it’s just a challenge.

    I know that I only have a few years left of her openly acting like she likes me. I know what will come next and that’s okay. I want her to be her own person, and she has to pull away from me to accomplish that. It’s not like she’s going away, but if she’s just a little bit like the adolescent that I was, then she will be in her room all the time, listening to really “deep” music, and no one will be able to understand her. (I was pretty pretentious and obnoxious all at the same time.) But if she’s also like me, she’ll come to the other side of it, and will still talk to me. I got closer to my parents the older I got.

    But for now, I got be witness her getting excited about music and being with her friends. Maybe I did eavesdrop, but it was surprisingly reassuring to hear her voice her opinions and make some pretty funny jokes. Watching the kid grow up.

  • Walking the City (Unedited)

    I’m not giving anything away here, as my kid’s birthday isn’t too far away. It’s a known secret in our house, and the kid is expecting something from us. And I want to do something for her, because birthdays should be fun, no matter how old you get – Everyone should get to have at least one day a year where they feel special. But being that she is still a kid, birthdays mean that other children will be involved.

    Today, my task was to complete the acquiring of items for the goodie bags. To accomplish this, I would have to leave Harlem and head down to the Lower East Side and the Village. And I was looking forward to this because I don’t leave my neighborhood as much as I used to.

    I don’t mind the subway ride down to Delancey Street, and popping out on the street, I always feel turned around, even though I have been down there hundreds of times. One of the first rehearsals I had when I moved to New York wasn’t too far from there, and in 2006, I think there was only one condo tower around. I walked over to Economy Candy (The greatest candy store on God’s sugary Earth!) to get the treats for the goodie bags, and that joint is just down the street from the Paul’s Boutique corner.

    Over in the Village I stopped by a local party store to pick up signs, and other stuff to decorate. I was struck by how many closed up store fronts were around there, even though there’s lots of construction happening. It seems like people are willing to spend millions on condos down there, but there won’t be anywhere to go and shop, or hang out.

    All that said, even on a rain and not so cold January overcast day, I still enjoy walking around this City. I am still fascinated by the people, and the sounds I hear, and the way each block can have a different vibe and attitude. At one of my lowest points in my life, when my mother was sick and I knew what was coming, I would walk all over Manhattan, and just be in and around people and the City. There is something comforting for me in being enveloped by this place, and just walking along and experiencing it. It was true for Poe, and Whitman, and even Brando and Kerouac; all walking the streets, seeing what they could see.

  • Short Story Review: “Poor Houdini” by Anne Carson

    (The short story “Poor Houdini” by Anne Carson appeared in the January 29th, 2024 issue of The New Yorker.)

    Illustration by Lauren Peters-Collaer

    Well, yeah!

    “Poor Houdini” by Anne Carson is the type of short story I love falling into. Why beat around the bush here; This is a fabulous story that happily reminded me how much fun it is to be engaged and enthralled by the ways a writer takes words, and language and plays with it, creating mood, atmosphere, and a lyrical mist which surrounds their story. I wasn’t sure what I was getting into with that first paragraph, but by the end I was ashamed that I wasn’t aware Anne Carson before today.

    I guess there is a through line of a story here; a female poet, romantic entanglements, a crow, the rescue of a woman from a collapsed balcony, and the writing of sonnets. Picking apart this story seems antithetical to what this story exudes; which is a sort of lived life that is filtered through a poet’s eyes, and their reactions to those events. And these events can and should be explored more, but I only have so much time.

    Because what grabbed me was the language and how it danced to life. “There is stillness after rain. Rank risings rise. Trees drip. Street lamps loom. Night takes on a polish, a pure power.” I know this feeling, this setting, and it’s as if I can touch it with my fingertips, yet it stays magically elusive. Carson weaves these words, and I couldn’t shake the feeling of melancholy, as this is a world of people looking for connections with each other, but nothing seems to land the way they want or expect. But they keep moving forward, not exactly flailing, but grasping – at least the poet does.

    I know that I am not doing the story justice, and this isn’t so much a “review”, as it is more a “gush.” I think part of my reaction to “Poor Houdini” is that it also brought up in me the memory of being young, in college, and the world was still able to be discovered, emotions could be surprisingly new, and it mattered to attempt to create something out of that jumble of life. I can’t completely put my finger on it, but it felt very close to what Anne Carson wrote.

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  • That’s a Good Name

    This isn’t a new idea of mine, you see, as I have been thinking about it since high school, but what if I started a lit journal? Nowadays, it would be an online lit journal, but in the back of my mind I can hear M.M. Carrigan over at Taco Bell Quarterly yelling that I should just do it.

    And I might…

    But that’s not why I am here. (Though I could always use the unsolicited encouragement.) The reason I bring all of this up is that, besides figuring out what the mission of the lit mag would be (It needs to be original, like, the only place to get whatever it is that I will showcase,) but most importantly is to come up with a name that stick in people’s minds, and encapsulate whatever it is that I am selling. Now, logically, I need to come up with the mission or purpose statement first as that will make it so much easier to find a name… Yeah, but that’s not a whole lot of fun.

    What I am reminded of is when I was in a terrible, just awful punk/blues/jam band, and all the hours in rehearsal we’d spend rockin’ out, and then yelling possible band names at each other;

    No Refund, Lost Weekend, Areola, Bacon on the Side, Webbed Toes… You get the idea.

    Now, I don’t want to sound too much like a grandpa 90’s punk, but it should still have a literary name, but with an edge… like…

    Poochie

    Inked Well

    The Blurb

    Atmost

    Humph

    Dead Spot

    Dead Cart

    Mark Two

    And then the title might need a good one liner to follow up, like…

    “Nothing But Illustrious Writers”

    Or

    “It’s Norse for Quality”

    Or

    “Putting Your MFA to Use”

    So, you can see, this has been a fun mind walk of an… Oh!

    Mind Walk (That’s a good one…)

    Anyway, you can see this has been a fun exercise in…

    Ellipses (Ah… maybe not…)

    Point here people is that making an online lit journal might not be the easiest thing, but picking out a name is a good way to kill an hour of writing time.

    (And all these journal names are copyrighted by me, Matthew Groff, 2024. Can’t use it unless you get permission or pay me.)

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  • Making a Point with This Post

    Today has been nuts. Even though I got up early and tackled the day, seems like something kept popping up and cornering me from getting to what I wanted to do. That stuff stopping me was my responsibilities to my family.

    Like right now, I am on the couch helping my daughter with her homework as she has a big test at school tomorrow. I want to be there for her. I mean, I am here, literally sitting next to her, trying to make sure she understands that I am behind her, support, and believing in her to do well. Because she is working hard, and I want her to know that I see how hard she is working.

    But, I am supposed to write everyday, and damnit! That’s what I am going to do.

    I did write in my journal this morning, but that’s different.

    It’s about the habit; creating the habit, keeping the habit, sustaining the habit… If I don’t put something out, then I feel like I have let myself down.

    That’s the point of this post, to make the point that I did something. I didn’t give in and say that I will make it up tomorrow, but I pushed through it, and got it out.

    I’m not sure about much anymore. The older I get, the more I understand that I never really understood as much as I thought I did. I thought by midlife, I would have some wisdom and clairity on a few things. Maybe have an insight or two. Really, I know a couple of things.

    I know I want to be a good father. I want to be better at it. I want to be dependable, so my daughter knows that I will be there if needed.

    And I want to keep the promises I make to myself. If I say that I will post five times a week, then I will posy something five times a week.