1
My first experience with literature (more of a false start, really) came beside a pile of old second-hand books on the shelves of a TV armoire in Raymour & Flanigan.
To a two-year-old, the furniture store is probably up there with flu shots and NPR on the NO scale. But all the NO’s in the world wouldn’t stop my parents from their search for the perfect end table, so there we were.
At the top of the modest stack of outdated self-help books and Windows 96 For Dummies lay a single paperback volume, creased to all hell on the edges and spine, bearing the likenesses of a certain Jerry Seinfeld, George Costanza, Elaine Benes, and Cosmo Kramer.
I had partaken in the almost ritualistic watching of Seinfeld reruns with my dad for as long as I could remember. After all those nights in front of the TV enjoying the show simply because my dad was and laughing whenever he did, I recognized the gang immediately.
“Seinfeld,” I said to my mom, brandishing the book above my head to show her.
It was the people from Seinfeld, their faces were right there. The letters at the top of the book never really registered as anything. Didn’t all books have them? They were probably there for decoration.
The bewildered look on the sales lady’s face suggested otherwise. It seemed the entire home office department was under the impression that this little kid had just read the English language with remarkable cadence and ease. My mom, privy to my actual (nonexistent) reading capabilities, took my hand and led me away to some other section of the store. I didn’t know why she was stifling her laughter behind a furniture brochure, and frankly, two-year-old Owen didn’t care. I had just seen Seinfeld on the front of a book—if that doesn’t make a kid’s day, I don’t know what will.
Books have been making my day ever since.
2
For some people, a good book is like a bowl of oatmeal. Some enjoy it, some choke it down because it’s good for them, but it sticks with them for a while regardless, even long after they’re done.
To me, a good book is a lot like junk food. I’ll finish the book, closing the back cover with great satisfaction, taste still in my mouth. I’ll tell other people how good it was, maybe rave about it on the internet, maybe leave a five-star review somewhere. And in fifteen minutes, I’ll be hungry again. And the soy sauce packets just keep piling up.
When I was young, I was always dissatisfied with literature.
In first grade, I had no patience for Cam Jansen, with her open-and-shut mysteries and gimmicky “photographic memory.” Junie B. Jones was just so whiny all the time. I gave the Magic Tree House a chance, but it was just the same thing over and over again.
“The tree house started to spin. It spun faster and faster. Then everything was still. Absolutely still.”
Every. Single. Book. And Mary Pope Osbourne could churn out a new 100-page installment faster than you could say “James Patterson.” One needn’t have worried if Jack and Annie made it out of their most recent predicament alive; there were always forty more books in the series.
Of course, I read them all anyway. They were there. At the dinner table, during class, in the bathroom, reading. Before school, after school, past my bedtime, reading. At one point, I yelled indignantly down the steps that my parents had to be the only parents on the block who got mad at their kid for reading.
Admittedly, I should have been doing the dishes, but hey—The Chronicles of Narnia don’t exactly read themselves.
But one day, the flow of books dried up. There just weren’t any more books for a kid to read, at least not in the places in the library I was accustomed to looking. Nonfiction was off the table. I needed stories, and with nowhere else to turn, I had but one place to satisfy my hunger for literature: the YA section.
Excuse me while I cringe a little.
Young adult literature admittedly has its flaws. Sarah Dessen, I’m looking at you. But the real reason I had a hard time with this whole new world of literature was that I was entirely in over my head. I had no concept of teen angst; I felt no connection to love triangles and could never understand why the main character chose to kiss their obvious love interest when there was a world to save or a giant zeppelin to pilot. They fed my voracious appetite for words, so I couldn’t complain.
In retrospect, I realize this was the point where I started to chew books just a little bit slower, savoring pages more than ever. At this point, whether I understood what I was reading or not, I started to realize how good literature could actually be. And maybe I could do that, too.
3
How to Bullshit Poetry
Owen Roche
She looked away
The leaves fluttered
In
The
Dappled
Sunlight
The cigarette was a bullet between his lips
And it sang.
The coffee was cold.
He only knew the name they told him was his
was his
Was mine.
Your eyes were Dalmatians.
Where is the rain?
Where is your rain?
The sweet roar of bellowing roses
That You p r o m i s e d
For
All
These
Years?
4
It took me a while to realize that while I could take in all this literature from all of these different authors, I could make some of my own. But I’m glad; if it weren’t for all the out-of-my-league books I struggled through, I wouldn’t have the infatuation with commas, unhealthy obsession with the em dash, or fascination with the rhythm of prose I possess today. Before I knew what any of those things were or how to quantify them, I simply took them in in their rawest form, subconsciously stockpiling an arsenal of punctuation and sentence structure.
My first literary work I remember was a piece called How to Escape in the Middle of the Night that I wrote in second grade. I didn’t have any experience in the subject matter, but I didn’t let the details stop me.
Whatever I was doing, I knew I enjoyed it. I could tell stories and weave the intangible out of pencil, paper, ink, and crayon. The language that had been a part of me from the beginning went from being an exhibit behind a red rope to my own personal tool that could stay in my back pocket for the rest of my life.
My problem with writing is that I want whatever I put on paper to sound like a final copy the first time. I think I’ve surrounded myself with so much of others’ good writing that my own writing voice wants to sound as polished as the great ones on the first pass. There’s some part of my brain that refuses to believe my favorite authors have backspace keys on their laptops, or trash cans filled to the brim with crumpled-up paper.
I know that I’m at my best when I can just vomit words all over the computer screen, then go back to the beginning and start to mop up the mess like some sort of literary janitor. It’s a lesson in humility, I know—hubris doesn’t lend itself well to writing or reading.
Good talk.
5
Block
Owen Roche
From the conveyor belt riveted to the walls of my mind
Come chunks
With serifs poking out
At disjointed angles,
Lumpy and raw.
Grotesque, really.
There’s time, I know
While the globs of brain-stuff are still wet
To mold
And coat my hands in excess like
A potter at the wheel
And leave the ghosts of long-lost thought
Like dirty, dingy coffee rings
But why would I
Disgrace
A page so white and fresh
As this?
6
Maybe I’d write something. Poetry isn’t really a guy thing; y’know? Sure, there are all those famous male poets, but no other guy in the class raised his hand when they needed people to read for Poetry Day.
Reading in front of all of those people? Is high school really the appropriate venue to showcase my sensitive side? Would it be weird?
Well, I’ve written some good stuff in the past. I mean, I thought it was pretty good. I think I have some talent, maybe not enough to read out loud—
I saw her twist around in her chair, hair falling to the side of the desk.
Her eyes sparkled as she mouthed a message:
I can’t wait to see what you write.
I’m definitely writing something.
Hell, maybe I’ll make it rhyme.