And here’s where I throw a sort of pop quiz on myself. And I’ve managed to let months slip in. Ah, me. Now 40-odd books later, what can I say to pick up where I left off?
126. On being a dodo by Michael Dennis (burnt wine press, 2009)
Bought at a house reading.
It feels nutritious and warm like stew. Relatable. (Is that a bad word still or can we use it now?) Poems that feel like a conversation rather than some cleverkins trying to scamper for attention.
the long walk
people don’t intend
to be the bad version
of themselves
but it happens
all the time
there is much confusion
about what is need
and what is want
and selfish often wins
all the bet of intentions
doesn’t mean much
when the lights go out
and you are far from home
people lie to themselves
and believe it
we are the only animal
who knows that trick
those “what was I thinking of” moments
when the real thinking starts
the clarity that only guilt
can crystallize
and then that long walk
back to the place
where you used to trust
yourself
127. Between O and V: Poems by Maria Scala (Friday Circle, 2008)
Given a review copy when it came out. Finally read it. (Oops.) It has stories of her mom and grandmother. Kind of lyric prose memoir of what is worth bringing forward.
Nonna
Nonna died thirteen years to the day
I see the strain on my mother’s face.
She busies herself with
one of the projects: marmalade.
By six, she is still transferring
the hot orange goop
into the mason jars and bottles.
Who will eat all this jam?
I for for the day
when I have to make myself
forget this way.
128. Small as Butterflies by Lesley Strutt (Tree Press, 2015)
Bought direct from author. I missed the launch. But I got a copy in the end. The poems surprised me. They were more west coast, less anecdotal, than when I last heard poems from her. Minimalist, oblique, kind of abstract but wih moments of insight like these,
from p. 4 What’s in too?
as if a journey us what I am—
a thing
I can arrive at
and p 11
“Treading Water in the Unknown
“inside my love, bone and sinew
what is to be free I love
my love carapace bursting So it is that
broken open So it is that
pulse, the drunken
saturation
of the cells
129. The 6.5 Practices of Moderately Successful Poets: A self-help memoir by Jeffrey Skinner (Sarabande Books, 2012)
Found browsing the library. Figured it either will live up to its title or won’t. (It did.)
This was so bookmarked that it’s tempting to buy my own copy. It amused. It made me laugh. I read it for a month or so but now can’t readily recall a thing apart from the cynical cover of the empty poetry reading, except for the homeless person and knitter, and the clever take-offs of periodic tables for poetry.
There was this: (p. 7) “if you’re writing for yourself, your audience will always be too lenient, too quick to reply, yes, yes, I know exactly what you mean! even if your words on paper do not say anything near what you mean.”
This would be fun to try:
130. Once in the west: poems by Christian Wiman (Farrar, Strauss and Girroux, 2014)
Found while browsing the library. The poems were formal, water-tights as drums, dark, in the stance as a skeptic-raised-religious way.
Wondered what his prose was like. So,
131. Ambition and Survival: Becoming a Poet by Christian Wiman (Copper Canyon, 2007)
Found while browsing the library.
Fascinating, extremely well-researched and considered. Part memoir, part literary criticism, part essay. Any essay here is a mind-boggling amount of knowledge of authors. He is angry and highly opinionated and passionate and self-revealing. He is a fan of a history of literary critics which is not a pattern I knew anyone watched. I read it for almost 3 months, sometimes because his rage short-circuits me, sometimes because his views of writers satisfies. His life story is illuminating. For example, Wiman: in the chapter “The Limit”, “Some families accumulate self-consciousness in the way other families accumulate wealth (and perhaps one precludes the other).” touches a truth button.
Fascinating stuff.
And later, p. 57 “we might remember the dead without being haunted by them, give to our lives a coherence that is not “closure”, and learn to live with our memories, our families, and ourselves amid a truce which is not peace.”
