peer-reviewed journals. They said the liminality work lacked focus. He blurted out, âThatâs the point!â Which was when they suggested he stop drinking with the adjuncts in the Poetry Department.
He was given three years to shape up. Burr surprised himself at how industrious he became following their censure. During his three-year probation he trotted out significant textual analysis in the biggest journalsâthe Journal of Hellenic Studies, Classical Quarterly, Hermes, Classical Philology , and the American Journal of Philologyâ thereby moving from the fringes of classics to the center. Joseph Burr was now the authority on Homerâs use of the aorist middle, which is to say, as mainstream as classics professors come.
The black carry-on he wheeled into his next committee hearing buckled under the weight of peer-review journals. He stacked them high in three ecru columns and then sat with his hands folded before him, conscious of looking a bit too much like the chip leader in a poker game. The university didnât mind the swagger; it was publish or perish, and he had published. On the day he was promoted to associate professor, he had a following of eager grad students compiling several words per day for the ill-fated Hapax . Gone were the days of even the slightest excursus. He was scrubbed of liminality and academically sober.
B ut the drinking still came in waves. Burr waited at a neighborhood stoplight, looking at the passenger seat, tracked back to fit Owenâs knees and reclined to make room for his head. He wondered how many months would pass until someone else would adjust it back. After today, no one could blame him for needing a drink. Once the Volvo was docked in his garage, dripping oil on the concrete slab and panting, Burr shuffled to his local.
He wrote on napkins while boisterous kissers and fancy handshakers bubbled around and jostled his bent elbow:
           Our ground is birth. Our death is sea. Two things our mind will never know, birth and death, things that are uniquely ours yet things we never have, things we are not there to inhabit, define the mind before we are given the chance. This curling throw, ripped back at once. We are the liminal. We are the wash. But he. His birth set stakes, two stakes, birth and different death implied. Always tightroping those two spikes in the ground. He jumped. And when he landed, itâs no wonder he ran .
THREE
ITâS BERLIN, WEâRE ALL MONSTERS HERE
Through a wet March, Owen breezed across Berlin on his hostelâs beach cruiser, pedaling the one-speed bike with firm unhurried strokes, leaning into turns and sidewinding from Ostkreuz to Charlottenburg. Over the rain-slicked roads of the Tiergarten park, asphalt dolphin-smooth, he skimmed quarter miles of cosines with broad sweeps from curb to curb.
Each morning at the Tiergarten he joined images, paired words, and left with something glazed and sharp, more pottery shard than poem. With a handful of shards he pieced a bright mosaic of memories against the grey Berlin sky: lurid storefronts splashed with ancient yellow; Helvetica shouts in stoplight red; stockinged women stenciled to walls in dripping royal blue; canary-yellow bugle calls of the Postbank; kiosk green and construction orange on every corner; a full spectrum of brick from red to brown; Army-Navy stores spilling seaweed wares to the curb; consignment shop employees with purple-red bob cuts sitting on molded plastic chairs; the plumes of squinting smokers; the expired green of shutters climbing to roofs and tiling the sky.
He was the metal comb, and Berlin was the music boxâhis fingers extended to plink each note of color and spin the dayâs melody. Everything was becoming clear except his vision of himself as an artist. He wanted to play with memory and maps, but had no specific plan about integrating them into an artwork. In art libraries and bookstores he
He was given three years to shape up. Burr surprised himself at how industrious he became following their censure. During his three-year probation he trotted out significant textual analysis in the biggest journalsâthe Journal of Hellenic Studies, Classical Quarterly, Hermes, Classical Philology , and the American Journal of Philologyâ thereby moving from the fringes of classics to the center. Joseph Burr was now the authority on Homerâs use of the aorist middle, which is to say, as mainstream as classics professors come.
The black carry-on he wheeled into his next committee hearing buckled under the weight of peer-review journals. He stacked them high in three ecru columns and then sat with his hands folded before him, conscious of looking a bit too much like the chip leader in a poker game. The university didnât mind the swagger; it was publish or perish, and he had published. On the day he was promoted to associate professor, he had a following of eager grad students compiling several words per day for the ill-fated Hapax . Gone were the days of even the slightest excursus. He was scrubbed of liminality and academically sober.
B ut the drinking still came in waves. Burr waited at a neighborhood stoplight, looking at the passenger seat, tracked back to fit Owenâs knees and reclined to make room for his head. He wondered how many months would pass until someone else would adjust it back. After today, no one could blame him for needing a drink. Once the Volvo was docked in his garage, dripping oil on the concrete slab and panting, Burr shuffled to his local.
He wrote on napkins while boisterous kissers and fancy handshakers bubbled around and jostled his bent elbow:
           Our ground is birth. Our death is sea. Two things our mind will never know, birth and death, things that are uniquely ours yet things we never have, things we are not there to inhabit, define the mind before we are given the chance. This curling throw, ripped back at once. We are the liminal. We are the wash. But he. His birth set stakes, two stakes, birth and different death implied. Always tightroping those two spikes in the ground. He jumped. And when he landed, itâs no wonder he ran .
THREE
ITâS BERLIN, WEâRE ALL MONSTERS HERE
Through a wet March, Owen breezed across Berlin on his hostelâs beach cruiser, pedaling the one-speed bike with firm unhurried strokes, leaning into turns and sidewinding from Ostkreuz to Charlottenburg. Over the rain-slicked roads of the Tiergarten park, asphalt dolphin-smooth, he skimmed quarter miles of cosines with broad sweeps from curb to curb.
Each morning at the Tiergarten he joined images, paired words, and left with something glazed and sharp, more pottery shard than poem. With a handful of shards he pieced a bright mosaic of memories against the grey Berlin sky: lurid storefronts splashed with ancient yellow; Helvetica shouts in stoplight red; stockinged women stenciled to walls in dripping royal blue; canary-yellow bugle calls of the Postbank; kiosk green and construction orange on every corner; a full spectrum of brick from red to brown; Army-Navy stores spilling seaweed wares to the curb; consignment shop employees with purple-red bob cuts sitting on molded plastic chairs; the plumes of squinting smokers; the expired green of shutters climbing to roofs and tiling the sky.
He was the metal comb, and Berlin was the music boxâhis fingers extended to plink each note of color and spin the dayâs melody. Everything was becoming clear except his vision of himself as an artist. He wanted to play with memory and maps, but had no specific plan about integrating them into an artwork. In art libraries and bookstores he
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