Pop Quiz: Brian Eckert

A NEW POP LIT Q & A WITH A TALENTED WRITER

TODAY’S QUIZ IS WITH ONE OF THE BEST WRITERS NO ONE KNOWS ABOUT, BRIAN ECKERT.

1.)  Favorite writer?

BE:  I’m far too mercurial to have a favorite anything that lasts for very long. I’m currently stanning mountaineering nonfiction and philosophical pessimism, which, I suspect, are deeply related.

2.)  Why did you become a writer?

BE:  About ten years ago, while working on my first novel (which never saw the light of day), I wrote the following, which is as good of an explanation as any: “To not write is to submit without a fight to that external authority which some attribute to the divine, others to the intractable laws of nature. To not write is to live without a voice. It is to live as a ghost.”

3.)  Year the world ends?

BE:  The world ended in 2012. We dropped out of history and nobody noticed.
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NOW read Brian’s new Featured Fiction with us,  an excerpt from Into the Vortex.

Whores Are Always Melancholy by Jess Mize

A Review by New Pop Lit

“She looked forward to the day of her funeral
As if it were her wedding,
And she was Grace Kelly.
But really she was the bride of death”

WHORES ARE ALWAYS MELANCHOLY is a chapbook of poetry/prose which is both rhythmic and visual. Jess Mize has incandescent talent, of a kind which comes by once a generation. This is not an exaggeration. Think Fitzgerald or Plath. Words and lines jump off the page with emotion and meaning.

Anais Nin once wrote:

“–the writer dares to dig into hidden worlds, dares perilous explorations in which he might lose, first of all, his contact with human life and possibly his sanity. But he is looking for treasures of another kind.”

This is what Jess Mize does in her writing.

“Gilded sculptures and horrible romantic novels of the 19th century echo from the shallow depths of my past imagination.”

“She loved the bright vermillion flushings of the fresh blood.”

Her words connect our inner selves to the world.

“The love you crave cannot be purchased. To satisfy your desires you need an annotated trucker’s atlas and a serious deficiency of remorse.”

The question is what to do with the overflowing talent. Limiting it to poetry is too easy. She writes her explosions of emotion as if they come easy. But among the rush of words there is pain and despair, so it can’t be easy.

Her fiction, unfeatured here, bursts with a deluge of words. The chapbook gives a strong taste of it. Good writing– no, great writing– but can the flow be directed? Channeled? Should it be?

The chapbook may be all that’s needed. Receive it in short blasts full of compacted energy.

Whores Are Always Melancholy is Hurricane Harvey put onto the page. If you survive the encounter, it’s a thrilling experience.

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Whores Are Always Melancholy is available at Finishing Line Press.

(Photo of Jess Mize.)