Pittsburgh Authors in the News:
Pittsburgh’s own Nathaniel Philbrick has written a review of Philip Hoare’s The Whale in this week’s New York Times Book Review. Philbrick writes acclaimed historical nonfiction, and his parents lived in Point Breeze. We’ll be talking more about Philbrick, he’s a great writer and a really nice guy.
Michael Chabon has a funny, self-deprecating interview in the Wall Street Journal, that focuses on the literary life in San Francisco. I’d argue that ours is just as great.
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Pittsburgh Literary Events:
I haven’t read The Girl Who Fell from The Sky by Heidi W. Durrow yet, but I really want to. She’ll be reading at University of Pittsburgh on Monday, April 12, time TBA. I’ll update the time when it’s determined, but you can also check here for details.
If you like mysteries, mark your calendar for May 3 at 4pm. Laurie King will be at the Festival of Mystery at Mystery Lovers Bookshop to sign her new novel, The Language of Bees, along with many other authors in this field.
For something totally different, there’s an event at Chatham on April 24, where author Tovah Martin will show “gardeners how to express themselves through their plants”. Here’s today’s Post-Gazette article on her book, The New Terrarium: Creating Beautiful Displays for Plants and Nature & event.
Patricia Dobler is one of my favorite Pittsburgh poets—probably my favorite poet, period. She taught at Carlow College and was head of a writing workshop called “Madwomen in the Attic”. She passed away in 2004, you can find her obituary from the Post-Gazette here.
I love her for her poems that never fail to make my eyes prickle, even in the least poetic of circumstances: reading Talking With Strangers while eating cold Chinese food for breakfast, or stranded at an airport.
I first met Dobler when she read her work at an assembly when I was in middle school. I remember her reading “False Teeth,” and realizing that poems can be more than just images to decipher, but stories—with characters, plot, emotion.
Some poems brimming with the ‘burgh influence are:
“On Murray Avenue”
“My Father’s Story”
“Steel Poem, 1912”
“Lessons”
“The Mill in Winter”
“The Persistent Accent”
…
Many of her poems hearken back to the steel mill days of Pittsburgh, and the lives of Hungarian immigrants. Whether that history makes you nostalgic or not, I dare you to read her work without feeling a stirring of familiarity or recognition. As Maxine Kumin writes in the foreward of Talking to Strangers, “Dobler’s view of her origins is free from sentimentality or idealization, but full of feeling. Images, sounds, smells, sparks of connection fly in these poems.”
Some of the poems (“Lessons”, “Steel Poem, 1912”) describe the steel mills as as hell for the workers, but there is pride in these poems instead of the expected despair. “The Mill in Winter” takes the steelworkers’ experience into another direction:
“…They taste metal on their tongues
and yearn toward the mill’s black heart.
To enter, to shut out the bright cold air
is to enter a woman’s body, beautiful
as ashes of roses, a russet jewel,
a hot breath grazing their arms and necks.”
She explores themes of family, girlhood and womanhood, language and identity in her work, and goes beyond the Western Pennsylvania/Ohio experience. I recommend “The Rope” and “Aphasia”.
…
Talking With Strangers
Patricia Dobler
0-299-10834-1
The University of Wisconsin Press
Madison, WI
1986
There are so many great Pittsburgh poets, screenwriters, playwrights, and authors of fiction and nonfiction. Here’s a quick list—by no means comprehensive—of writers who are either from the ‘burgh, lived here for a time, or have set their work in our fine city. Please let me know of any authors you’d like to add.
Rachel Carson
Silent Spring…
Michael Chabon
The Mysteries of Pittsburgh*, Wonder Boys*, Werewolves in their Youth: Stories,A Model World and Other Stories, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Summerland,The Final Solution: A Story of Detection…
Willa Cather
My Antonia, O Pioneers!, Death Comes for the Archbishop…
Annie Dillard
An American Childhood*, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek,Teaching a Stone to Talk, For the Time Being,The Writing Life and more …
Patricia Dobler
Talking to Strangers*, Collected Poems…
Anne Gibbons
The First Human: The Race to Discover Our Earliest Ancestors…
Samuel Hazo
The Pittsburgh That Stays Within You, Holy Surprise of Right Now,One Poem at a Time…
Magaret Hodges
Saint George and the Dragon*,If You Had a Horse, and over 50 more children’s books…
David McCullough
John Adams, Truman, The Johnstown Flood…
Nathaniel Philbrick
In The Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex,Sea of Glory…
August Wilson
Fences*, The Piano Lesson, Jitney, King Hedley II,Three Plays, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom…
