Hey — I’m having the sort of month (upon writing this, months, plural) where everything seems to be new and memorable. This sudden summer heat in early April, the ice storms, the resigned, clean beep of the power coming back on, new seasons of TV I can’t keep up with, the slant of light coming in every single window, a clear bolt of certainty, like, I will be committing this to memory and then to my life and then promptly forgetting. Other things I’ve forgotten — to claim all my expenses on my tax return, how to park the car neatly, even with generous space, how to live without a calendar, the itch and relief poetry shakes awake in me when I read it, and to update this newsletter.
To start with, What the Living Do by Marie Howe, a collection that cuts a line clean through you and then through you again. Its titular poem, What the Living Do, an all-time favourite, so alive, but never overwritten. It’s bare and fleshy in a way that I love.1 So is the rest of the collection.
For weeks now, driving, or dropping a bag of groceries in the street, the bag breaking, I’ve been thinking: This is what the living do. And yesterday, hurrying along those wobbly bricks in the Cambridge sidewalk, spilling my coffee down my wrist and sleeve, I thought it again, and again later, when buying a hairbrush: This is it. Parking. Slamming the car door shut in the cold. What you called that yearning.
Then Himawari House by Harmony Becker, which I thought was sweet but didn’t really enjoy. Earthling by Aisha Franz, which was deliciously drawn; I wanted to eat the pages. Then I had to return my books to the library, so it was back to the e-reader: Easy Beauty by Chloé Cooper Jones, which I filled up with highlights, and which I still think about now; Educated by Tara Westover, which I obsessively read over a few days but think about much less often; for book club, The Death of Ivan Ilych, which was dry and funny but also creepy and wet. For some reason the good-natured, farmboy-adjacent character who holds up Ivan’s legs when he is ill sticks with me and probably will stick with me forever.
Work rages on; I read Brandon Taylor’s Filthy Animals and was shaken up by some of his lines. He is one of those writers where I whisper to myself, god I wish I wrote like you. Same with the next book, Franny Choi’s The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes on, which I chew on for a while, and still that same burning feeling and desire to write that goes on, aflame.
A month passes. I read Heather Havrilesky’s Foreverland: On the Divine Tedium of Marriage, which was saucy, which felt like the Ask Polly columns but also made me miss the Ask Polly columns. Then Daniel Sloss’ Everyone You Hate is Going to Die, which made me laugh but made me wish it were over in that it was not very nice, but then Very Nice by Marcy Dermansky, which was JUICY IN ALL WAYS !!! WHAT A SUMMER READ!!! To me it feels like her writing just comes right out of her head and lands perfectly on the page, though I know that can’t be true. This, followed by Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth, which was dirty and funny and made me laugh out loud on the plane home from my first ever vacation. My friend J told me that it came recommended from his brother, and I told him it was banned and he said Shut Up. They Ban Books?
A month passes. I walked into a new library branch with lions parked at the archway and left with a pair of free socks and new poetry books: Living Under Plastic by Evelyn Lau, which I thought had some really gorgeous lines but also made me think about things I dislike in my own writing. After, Gary Barwin’s Moon Baboon Canoe, which was interesting and playful.
Been a while. I’m getting back into poetry and it’s a good feeling.
please read that poem i am begging you please