Ask the Author: Jan Steckel
Answered Questions (13)
Jan Steckel
In the sense of overuse certain words, I'm sure I do, Michael.
Jan Steckel
My grandmother had always told me that my great grandfather, her father, would leave the family at times after he lost money gambling, and go away until he could make enough money to come home in style. She was angry that her mother always took him back. In doing genealogical research recently, however, I found a US Census during my grandmother's childhood showing him as an inmate on a prison/asylum island in New York's harbor. Apparently he and my great-grandmother kept from my grandmother and great-aunt where he really was during at least one of these absences. Someday I'd like to write about him and how he ended up on that island.
Jan Steckel
Dear Linda,
Thank you so much for reading the poem and for your response. I am grateful to you for sharing your grief, outrage and fury with me. To help with that leaden weight, I really like what actor Bradley Whitford from The West Wing said recently:
"Elections are commas, not periods. The people we love can't afford cynicism and apathy. Action is the antidote to despair. Re-engage. Now."
The poem's been solicited by several journals and is now out on at least four web sites and one hard-copy venue. I already curate my own website and several Facebook pages, in addition to other activism and my creative work. I don't really have the bandwidth, emotionally or physically, to start another site now.
Perhaps this is something you would like to take on? If you do, you are most welcome to use "Waking in Trump's America," as long as you mention that it first appeared in PoetsReadingTheNews.com. I would certainly mention your site on my own web pages.
For keeping your spirits up, http://www.poetsreadingthenews.com has a number of poems in response to the election, and I hope you can go over there to take a look at them. If you belong to Facebook, I'm finding that the Facebook group Pantsuit Nation at https://www.facebook.com/groups/pants... is giving me a lot of ideas for action to keep the torch aloft. I post a lot of actions on my own Facebook pages, too. It would be lovely to have you as a Facebook friend.
Thank you so much for reading the poem and for your response. I am grateful to you for sharing your grief, outrage and fury with me. To help with that leaden weight, I really like what actor Bradley Whitford from The West Wing said recently:
"Elections are commas, not periods. The people we love can't afford cynicism and apathy. Action is the antidote to despair. Re-engage. Now."
The poem's been solicited by several journals and is now out on at least four web sites and one hard-copy venue. I already curate my own website and several Facebook pages, in addition to other activism and my creative work. I don't really have the bandwidth, emotionally or physically, to start another site now.
Perhaps this is something you would like to take on? If you do, you are most welcome to use "Waking in Trump's America," as long as you mention that it first appeared in PoetsReadingTheNews.com. I would certainly mention your site on my own web pages.
For keeping your spirits up, http://www.poetsreadingthenews.com has a number of poems in response to the election, and I hope you can go over there to take a look at them. If you belong to Facebook, I'm finding that the Facebook group Pantsuit Nation at https://www.facebook.com/groups/pants... is giving me a lot of ideas for action to keep the torch aloft. I post a lot of actions on my own Facebook pages, too. It would be lovely to have you as a Facebook friend.
Jan Steckel
Honestly, Cyndy, I don't think "Grow up, snowflake" merits any kind of answer. However, if you recognized a feeling when you read my poem, then the poem has done its job.
Jan Steckel
Dear Jennifer,
Thank you for your comment. I've seen quite enough of Trump to understand what kind of leader he is. Why the "histrionics?" I'm Jewish, and we've seen this before. There's a reason everyone in my family keeps a bag packed. That said, I sincerely hope that you prove right and I prove wrong. I refer you to this poem of mine about what happened to my relatives for an explanation of my feelings.
The Maiden Aunts
by Jan Steckel
My grandmother was alive again,
the one who said to me on her deathbed,
“You must write!” and
“Don’t waste your life cooking, honey,
it’s all over in ten minutes.”
She told me again
about her rich Latvian aunts
who visited her in the squalor
of the Lower East Side.
Dressed in black, the maiden aunts
bent and kissed her eight-year-old head
saying, “Never forget, Selma,
you are one of the heher menschen,”
you’re one of the higher people,
a gentlewoman.
What they meant was,
you come from a line of ten chief rabbis
of the city of Riga.
Your grandfather wrote a treatise on Maimonides
that is in the Library of Congress.
Your family, the Widow Romm and Sons,
is the largest publisher of Yiddish books
in Eastern Europe. They own the lumber mills
that make the paper that makes the books.
Though you live in poverty here,
you are part of a civilization.
They kissed my grandmother’s head
and sailed back to Europe.
For two decades they wrote monthly to their faraway niece.
My grandmother sailed on a steamer to California
and joined the Anti-Fascist League,
but she couldn’t make her gentile neighbors understand
what was happening in Europe.
She remembered the day the letters stopped.
After the war, she learned
that all the Romms in Europe,
every last one,
had perished in the concentration camp
outside of Riga.
She and her sister
were the only ones left.
She dreamed of the last Rabbi of Riga,
turning from the door of the gas chamber,
as he shepherded his congregation in.
Beyond him, her two old-maid aunts
clutched each other’s hands
and stared at her past the Rabbi’s shoulder,
whispering “Never forget, Selma….”
"The Maiden Aunts" first appeared ” in The Pedestal Magazine online, Issue 30, October/November 2005. Also appeared in the anthology Blood to Remember: American Poets on the Holocaust, 2nd edition, edited by Charles Fishman, Time Being Books, 2007. Reprinted (in print and online) in Sage Trail Poetry Magazine, Vol. II, No. 4, April 2009. Appears in my chapbook The Underwater Hospital (Zeitgeist Press, 2006).
Thank you for your comment. I've seen quite enough of Trump to understand what kind of leader he is. Why the "histrionics?" I'm Jewish, and we've seen this before. There's a reason everyone in my family keeps a bag packed. That said, I sincerely hope that you prove right and I prove wrong. I refer you to this poem of mine about what happened to my relatives for an explanation of my feelings.
The Maiden Aunts
by Jan Steckel
My grandmother was alive again,
the one who said to me on her deathbed,
“You must write!” and
“Don’t waste your life cooking, honey,
it’s all over in ten minutes.”
She told me again
about her rich Latvian aunts
who visited her in the squalor
of the Lower East Side.
Dressed in black, the maiden aunts
bent and kissed her eight-year-old head
saying, “Never forget, Selma,
you are one of the heher menschen,”
you’re one of the higher people,
a gentlewoman.
What they meant was,
you come from a line of ten chief rabbis
of the city of Riga.
Your grandfather wrote a treatise on Maimonides
that is in the Library of Congress.
Your family, the Widow Romm and Sons,
is the largest publisher of Yiddish books
in Eastern Europe. They own the lumber mills
that make the paper that makes the books.
Though you live in poverty here,
you are part of a civilization.
They kissed my grandmother’s head
and sailed back to Europe.
For two decades they wrote monthly to their faraway niece.
My grandmother sailed on a steamer to California
and joined the Anti-Fascist League,
but she couldn’t make her gentile neighbors understand
what was happening in Europe.
She remembered the day the letters stopped.
After the war, she learned
that all the Romms in Europe,
every last one,
had perished in the concentration camp
outside of Riga.
She and her sister
were the only ones left.
She dreamed of the last Rabbi of Riga,
turning from the door of the gas chamber,
as he shepherded his congregation in.
Beyond him, her two old-maid aunts
clutched each other’s hands
and stared at her past the Rabbi’s shoulder,
whispering “Never forget, Selma….”
"The Maiden Aunts" first appeared ” in The Pedestal Magazine online, Issue 30, October/November 2005. Also appeared in the anthology Blood to Remember: American Poets on the Holocaust, 2nd edition, edited by Charles Fishman, Time Being Books, 2007. Reprinted (in print and online) in Sage Trail Poetry Magazine, Vol. II, No. 4, April 2009. Appears in my chapbook The Underwater Hospital (Zeitgeist Press, 2006).
Jan Steckel
Thanks so much for reading my poem and for your kind comment, Michael! I looked at your website -- with your campaign, I can see why you don't have time to waste. Best of luck with all your endeavors! Warmly, Jan
Jan Steckel
Thanks for a great question, Paige. Connecting with other bisexual people has certainly helped my work. Bi folk want to see ourselves in literature. My new short fiction collection, GHOSTS AND OCEANS, has several bi characters. I'll emphasize that when promoting the book to bi readers. My new poetry manuscript THE SEA THAT SOMETIMES FRIGHTENED US only has about 10% poems on bi themes. Since unfortunately many writers who are bi don't feel safe putting their "bi" work out in public yet, that's still a lot of bi for the buck/book.
Jan Steckel
I just had a bunch of poems published in magazines, and a dear friend lit a fire under me and said "it's time you had a book out!" She actually paid me by the hour to work on my own book, so I could afford to take the time out from my paying copyediting job to do it. I don't know how I got so lucky or what I did to deserve her, but she's one of the best things that ever happened to me.
Jan Steckel
It's not a matter of getting inspired for me, but of making the space in my life. It's about not getting distracted by all the other things I think I have to do, and about protecting my time. I feel like I have more than enough things to write about, but that I don't protect my time well enough.
Jan Steckel
Glue your butt to the chair and write.
Jan Steckel
Not having to fear that if I make a mistake, someone might die. That possibility was agonizing for me when I was a physician.
Jan Steckel
When I don't feel I can write, I work on submissions or on promoting my work.
Jan Steckel
I recently finished a collection of short stories called GHOSTS AND OCEANS. I'm busy now looking for an indie publisher for it, preferably with some queer cred (many of the stories are queer-themed) and national distribution.
I'm in the process of putting together my second full-length poetry manuscript, currently titled THE SEA THAT SOMETIMES FRIGHTENED US. I've picked out about 60 poems and have got 50 of them published in various periodicals, so it's time to work on the the order, format a manuscript, and start sending it out. I really love the publisher who put out my first two poetry books, Zeitgeist Press, but unfortunately they don't have national distribution, which I feel I need at this stage. I'll probably never again get the kind of personal editorial attention I got from Bruce Isaacson, owner of Zeitgeist Press, for which I'm exceedingly grateful!
I'm in the process of putting together my second full-length poetry manuscript, currently titled THE SEA THAT SOMETIMES FRIGHTENED US. I've picked out about 60 poems and have got 50 of them published in various periodicals, so it's time to work on the the order, format a manuscript, and start sending it out. I really love the publisher who put out my first two poetry books, Zeitgeist Press, but unfortunately they don't have national distribution, which I feel I need at this stage. I'll probably never again get the kind of personal editorial attention I got from Bruce Isaacson, owner of Zeitgeist Press, for which I'm exceedingly grateful!
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