News: Cami Park Makes an Exit

Friday, December 10, 2010

So. The internets tell me that Cami Park has died. GUD was privileged to publish two of her poems in Issue 1, and I regret the knowledge that I won't 'hear' her again.

Cami was an exceptionally perceptive teller of stories. She had a way of cutting away all that did not serve her focus, all that did not serve to illuminate what she wanted her reader to see. And she would have hated that sentence, with all its verbosity. Her work was always minimalist, lean, clean, pure. She cut to the heart of things, she did, wielding an adroit sense of humor.

She saw things with the eye of a peregrine, and once so-sighted, her target never stood a chance. Cami Park hunted down the essence of a thing. She'd pick its bones, and once they were clean, rearrange them for the world to see, in an order that pleased her, and that was, at the same time, more honest, more vital, more lucid than before she touched it. She was sharp. She was keen. She was amazing, in her fascination with and elevation of ordinary people and things that most of us pass right by, without a second glance.

If forced to categorize Cami's writing, I'd have say she was fascinated with all the aspects of nurture. She wrote about what it took to feed a person, to shape them, to present them to the world. She wrote about triumph, and failure. She wrote about persistence, and I am truly sorry hers is done.

To illustrate, I'll leave you with this piece of hers, from Issue 1:

Sisyphus of the Staircase
Cami Park

I almost had it last time; I
was getting so close, rolling
that infernal rock up that infernal hill.

But now there's a twist, instead of a hill
it's a staircase, and instead of a boulder, it's
a Slinky^TM, but so what, for fun
it's a wonderful toy, right? Except
I have to make it go up, like the boulder,
and this way is not so much fun and

I think about God and how I want him to
sweep me up these stairs like Rhett swept up Scarlett
before committing unspeakable acts in unspeakable orifices
and shit I almost had it and I slide down the banister
to start again, praying it gives way
but it never does.