Dan Domench

dandomench.com has moved: OPEN HERE

2012-01-04T10:59:00.000-05:00

Search engines are still bringing up the old site: sorry for any inconvenience.

It's all here now.

2011-12-26T11:10:00.000-05:00

I have closed the site dandomench.com and will be at this site going forward.

FALL WITH EDIE

2011-09-16T20:34:00.001-04:00

"Fall With Edie" is my new story in the September 2011 issue of Portland Magazine.

Photo by Billy Name

2011-01-11T18:23:00.001-05:00

This is the pitch perfect illustration by Robert Witkowski

for the short story:
"I Regret I Could Not Attend Your Holiday Party"
that appears in the new "Winterguide 2011" issue of Portland Magazine.

Stay in touch.

New chapbook "Hold Me Fast" released.

2010-10-25T07:57:00.001-04:00

Available as a trade size paperback and as a Kindle ebook. This book contains additional stories not available in the audio book "Hold Me Fast". Write a review on amazon.com and drop me a line. It is always good to hear from you.

Read This:

2010-06-04T11:55:00.005-04:00

I know of no other book that is both a historical document of the recent past of American Fiction and a primer on what it takes to be read seriously in this nation. I would recommend this book to anyone who cares about writing.

NEW SHORT STORY

2010-02-11T08:07:00.003-05:00

The December Issue of Portland Monthly published "ICE" a new short story.

WHAT'S THE STORY

2009-12-19T16:08:00.009-05:00

First, there were the paperbacks scattered here and there. I found them in friend's garages, in parking lots, and once, I found one in the weeds at a fishing hole. These were "dirty books" banned by the Church. I grabbed them and read them. I had no idea what was I reading.

I was in 4th grade. I didn't really understand that these books were written by anyone. It felt to me that they were some kind of debris that I had discovered. Dog-eared and dusty and falling apart.

I would stay up all night sneak into the laundry room and read Ian Fleming's work by the light of the clothes dryer. I was in 6th grade. I was amazed that one man was writing the entire series. The first book I every purchased was Ian Fleming's "From Russia With Love". I was scared as I walked to the drug store counter. Was the blue-haired lady really going to let me buy this book? Does she know what is in this thing? Sex and mayhem.

Then Ian Fleming does something different. I buy a James Bond book and in the preface Ian Fleming claims he found the manuscript on his desk. I read the book and it is in the first person voice of a woman and it is not a spy story. It is a gritty and small town crime story like the first books I read. This does two things for me. One, it shows me that writers can write in any voice they want. Two, that a writer can pretend that his characters are real. This makes me feel giddy and a little crazy and excited. This is the book:

I am assigned to write a story in the 8th grade. The first time a teacher had ever asked any class I had ever been in to write a story. I wrote an 11 page single spaced hand-written-in-ball-point-pen (and there were like at least 7 drafts to get the thing right) James Bond-like car chase that I imagined taking place in my neighborhood. My mother read it and said, what the hell is this? She had no idea what was in the paperbacks I was reading. My dad read it and said, this is good. And then smiled like, what the hell are you doing? I read it aloud to my brothers and they said, what the hell is this? My teacher read it and called my parents and asked them if they had seen me write it because it must be something I had copied from somewhere.

Here is the man himself.

I started going to the library downtown because people were willing to take me and the thriller books did not work for me anymore. I discovered Hemingway's short stories and his essays. There was something important and real in his writing. He was serious and I could feel it. Listen to this short speech.

I found Sherwood Anderson and "Winesburg, Ohio" knocked me out. I also found his wild short stories which were like nothing I had ever read before.

Here is one of his dream-like fables.

I also had written some lyrics to existing songs or commercials. Playing with rhyme. Then my writing got a little darker. I started singing in garage bands. I knew the feeling I wanted my audience to feel. Writers were combining music with words.

Jim Morrison could get it right at times.

Then I was old enough to drive into San Francisco. I had heard that a poet, Kenneth Patchen, was reading in clubs with a live jazz band. His novel "The Journal of Albion Moonlight" was out in paperback. It felt amazing to read Patchen's book.

Listen to the first few paragraphs: two minutes of this and you are in his world.

It has the grit and the suspense of the early stuff I was reading and magical realism and paranoia and poetry.

I started writing poems and reading them aloud at open mic events.
I was also trying to read everything that mattered. I was educating myself. I was reading a novel a week. Maybe two. Every magazine I can get my hands on.

I met Robert Hass. He wasn't much older than me and had just won the Yale Younger Poets Award. His writing was so good. And he read poetry aloud like it mattered.

Here is a great short vid of Hass reading live.

Bob read a stack of my poems and said, maybe you ought to send your writing to publishers.

I was published in a couple of small literary magazines.
It was exciting and it was what I wanted to do.
I wrote a short novel and applied to Iowa Writers Workshop.
I was accepted and met Ray Carver and we became friends.

He told me to read Isaac Babel.

I did.

When he introduced me to others he would sometimes say, this is Dan, he's a helluva writer.
When he said that I felt strangely baptized and appropriately afraid. Because by then I knew what I was into. It was hard work to get something on the page and make it right.
It was difficult to do that day after day. And I knew that for me there was no going back.
I even tried to quit writing a few times, but it never lasted.
I have to do it and I have to do it as well as I can.
And it has to be something that I haven't read before.
And I read a lot.
Listen to that Hemingway speech again in the post. He says it all.
I write fiction six days a week, 2-3 hours a day. And I read fiction every day.
I am constantly looking for the new connections. Music with words. Words with images.
Characters that speak with a music of their own.
This is my life's work.

I sometimes imagine that there is a large dining table cluttered with the remains of a good meal and around that table some writers are talking and drinking their favorite beverages and being themselves. They will be forever around that table. There are many tables like this in the mansion I imagine, but in this room there is now and will be forever: Hemingway; Anderson; Morrison; Patchen; Carver; and Babel. Fleming drops by for a visit, but he prefers the room with McBain and Chandler. There are many other writers that come into the room and sit down for awhile. Some talk, some listen, all of them give.

Maybe there is a table like this in your life. Or in the life that chooses you.
If you have to sit in, you will.
For me, it is about leaving a body of work that these writers wouldn't mind reading.

Small Press Diamonds

2009-12-13T08:42:00.007-05:00

I was a teenager when I came across a book of poems by Robert Lowell in the Stockton Public Library. I felt thrilled and scared as I was drawn deeper into his world of failed love and alcohol and threatening madness. His courage, and the music of his lines, kept me reading even as I held my breath.

The trend in poetry right now seems to me to be about entertainment. Humorous, cute, ironic, and conversational poetry is the ticket. Maybe that is needed right now to draw more readers in. Poetry is not so popular. But this trend is having an effect on the publishing of books of poetry. If a fine, serious book does not address an issue that can be easily communicated in the title or in the blurbs, then it often does not make it to the printer.

Here are two strong books of poetry from the small independent press Settlement House. "Within the Shadow of a Man" by Dennis Sampson and "It was the Orange Persimmon of the Sun" by Louie Skipper. They are both written by master poets and in my opinion, there is not a weak line in either of these books. In the past, perhaps these books would have been picked up by a large press or a university press. Now, it is up to people like Joseph Ruth, the founder and publisher of Settlement House, to bring such great books forth at his own expense. He deserves praise for releasing these well-made, well-written, beautiful books. He offers them and others at $12.00 each on his web site. He clearly does this for love. You can order them by mail.

"Dissipation" and other free words

2009-12-09T19:34:00.001-05:00

When I was in college, I carried around a beaten paperback vocabulary book. I still have the compulsion, but a new delivery device. Here's an example of what I get in my email every morning from Vocab Vitamins. They deliver a new word for my improvement and select a variety of quotes, like the one below for the word "dissipation", so that I may better understand any possible usage. The service is free and they do not hesitate to hammer a word into your skull.

"Dining-out is a vice, a dissipation of spirit punished by remorse. We eat, drink and talk a little too much, abuse all our friends, belch out our literary preferences and are egged on by accomplices in the audience to acts of mental exhibitionism. Such evenings cannot fail to diminish those who take part in them."

Cyril Connolly (1903-1974). British critic. The Unquiet Grave (1944).