![\"OLYMPUS](\"http:\/\/sites.miamioh.edu\/oxmag\/files\/2014\/04\/it-felt-right.jpg\")
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By<\/i> BRENNA YORK<\/p>\n
The roster for OxMag\u2019s final reading of the school year (and I\u2019m probably not supposed to say this) features writers and poets I am most excited about right now. Bios not provided. You will be able to snag whiffs of their unsettling grandeur on April 16th at 7pm in Miami University\u2019s Shriver Bookstore.<\/p>\n
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Do you dream?<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n
ANTHONY RAMSTETTER
\n<\/i>I don\u2019t really dream. I used to, very often. But now I fade to blackness every time. I have a good bed, so I don\u2019t often dream.<\/p>\n
ELIZABETH MIKESCH
\n<\/i>This week\u2019s dreams:<\/p>\n
-ex-lover hugging me overly hard so I could feel in my body, asleep, how compact his body was, in a time crunch while he is annoyed at how long I take to order soup or salad and a cheddar roll<\/p>\n
-ex-lover\u2019s new lover breaking into the house begging to sleep with the both of use say no, she becomes very deeply tan and her tan is her embarrassment from a whole-room glow of purple tanning bed light<\/p>\n
-everyone tells me my mother is dead and I\u2019m and orphan\u2026 \u201can ORPHAN\u201d, and I ask them to please not say it with such emphasis, as it has just happened.<\/p>\n
ZAN DE PARRY
\n<\/i>Parties were only bad in like the fifties because either your neighbor was trying to get your wife or sell you something or buca-buca religious. Now they always suck! I didn’t dream last night because I had a lot of bell pepper cocktail from a keg party. I’m excited for us friends at a best party on a big scale.<\/p>\n
BRET NYE
\n<\/i>Most likely, but I don\u2019t remember them.<\/p>\n
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How come you didn\u2019t become an inventor?<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n
ANTHONY RAMSTETTER
\n<\/i>I\u2019ve invented poems. I create words. Poetry is the best way to invent. Much better than fiction. No one likes fiction writers, anyway.<\/p>\n
ELIZABETH MIKESCH
\n<\/i>I didn\u2019t become an inventor because I think you have to be electrically smart to pull this sort of shit off. It takes delusion and belief. I\u2019m not smart at all. I have good instincts. I don\u2019t think instincts are inventive. They\u2019re like leftovers.<\/p>\n
ZAN DE PARRY
\n<\/i>Like a baby, like a baby doesn’t know his arms are his until they are, his brain invents the relationship between itself and the arms, not the arms themselves but the relationship, the realizing. I invent hatred every day. And stress. We invent it for ourselves, not to say it’s immaterial. It’s in the too much that all of us should be eating should we be cut wide open.<\/p>\n
BRET NYE
\n<\/i>I\u2019d rather help fix the shit that people invented badly.<\/p>\n
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Would you ever marry one of your fans?<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n
ANTHONY RAMSTETTER
\n<\/i>One of my fans? I don\u2019t know. Probably [Alex] Friedman. I sent him a postcard and he hasn\u2019t sent anything back. He has to work for it.<\/p>\n
ELIZABETH MIKESCH
\n<\/i>If I married one of my fans, I would feel very put out by the attention they were giving me. Compliments make me feel really fat.<\/p>\n
ZAN DE PARRY
\n<\/i>I hope I’m on that path. But not a fan of mine. A fan of my hunka.<\/p>\n
BRET NYE
\n<\/i>Yes; in fact, I plan to.<\/p>\n
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What are you reading right now?<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n
ANTHONY RAMSTETTER
\n<\/i>I\u2019ve been reading the Norton Anthology of Postmodern Poetry… Dana Ward, Bruno Latour. Plus lots of disability studies.<\/p>\n
ELIZABETH MIKESCH
\n<\/i>I am reading May-Lan Tan. She my one and only. I don\u2019t want to tell you what she\u2019s like because I want you to read her by yourself, and I want you to know what I mean. I don\u2019t ever want to talk about it with you. I want to know you read it. Fuck everyone who ever wrote anything before she did.<\/p>\n
ZAN DE PARRY
\n<\/i>I got M Sarki’s Shorter Prose in the mail and it’s signed! Graham Foust’s Anacreon in Heaven and Other Poems, always Loren Goodman’s Famous Americans, always always always Patchen, and Joe Wenderoth is buck.<\/p>\n
BRET NYE
\n<\/i>A Fan\u2019s Notes by Frederick Exley, The King in Yellow by Robert Chambers, and tons of\u00a0 literary criticism about haunted houses and ghosts.<\/p>\n
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Who would be your literary dream date?<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n
ANTHONY RAMSTETTER
\n<\/i>I would say Gertrude Stein. In Paris.<\/p>\n
ELIZABETH MIKESCH
\n<\/i>It would be so hard to come up with what to say to a literary date. Writers are so critical and sharp. They\u2019re thinking about what you said and picking it apart.<\/p>\n
I think I\u2019d just have to stare at them from across the table and practice blinking. I faint for Diane Williams, Danielle Dutton, and Noy Holland. I love May-Lan Tan. I think I\u2019d want to be the waitress graciously bringing them the wine they need to be geniuses, and that role would better suit. Keep me in the apron around these babes.<\/p>\n
ZAN DE PARRY
\n<\/i>I would like to talk to Patchen about putting himself on the line for money to his friends. His letters ask.<\/p>\n
BRET NYE
\n<\/i>Probably Flannery O\u2019Connor: I\u2019ve always wondered what it would be like to go on a date with God. Or maybe F. Scott Fitzgerald, since I\u2019d sell my soul to write like him. I\u2019d settle for a few pointers over dessert.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The OxMag Interview\u00a0 By BRENNA YORK The roster for OxMag\u2019s final reading of the school year (and I\u2019m probably not supposed to say this) features writers and poets I am most excited about right now. Bios not provided. You will be able to snag whiffs of their unsettling grandeur on April 16th at 7pm … <\/p>\n