The Best American Poetry 2020

One way I'm celebrating National Poetry Month this year is by reading the most recent installment in The Best American Poetry series. I've done this a few times before; it can be fun to see to whether the selected poems (about 75) seem to complement or contrast with the guest editor's style. I'm not familiar with the work of Paisley Rekdal, guest editor for the 2020 volume. I'll come back and read her forward after I've finished the anthology (the introductions often quote from the included poems, and since most of these recent poems are new to me, I like to come to them fresh first).

I won't read the collection in one sitting; generally, I'll read batches of 5 or 10 poems, first the poems and then the contributors' notes. All of the poems in the first batch of 5 (they're arranged alphabetically by poet's last name) are interesting, though none will probably make my personal favorites list. The author notes were particularly engaging; Reginald Dwayne Betts writes of reading past editions (and notes sections) as a young man "sans MFA program, sans writing mentor, sans a functional library" and being inspired. His poem "A Man Drops A Coat on the Sidewalk and Almost Falls into the Arms of Another," capturing a moment between two drug addicts, is probably the most lyrical. The title bleeds into the opening lines:

            as in almost Madame Cezanne in Red,
            almost falling, almost no longer--as in
            almost only bent elbows, almost more
            than longing, almost more than unholy,
            more than skag, white lady, junk, almost

            more than the city eclipsing around them,
            Winchester Gun Factory's windows as broken
            as the pair refuse to be ...

Julia Alvarez' opening poem, juxtaposing the public responses to the Thai soccer team trapped in a cave and the children imprisoned at the U.S./Mexico border, is more narrative. "We can become the good people we already are," she concludes in her contributor note.

Iranian American poet's "Invention of I" seems ghazal-inspired, with couplets contrasting English and Farsi/Persian grammar and cultural values. The longer excerpt from Rick Barot's "The Galleons" is also comprised of couplets, here with more of a prose-like tone. He writes of his mother's experiences as a Philippine immigrant, sometimes speaking on a grand scale ("Maybe history is a net through which/just about everything passes."), sometimes quoting directly from recorded interviews, sometimes describing archaeological history, sometimes family history ("You know  that wedding ... dress in the picture, we had to borrow it from our neighbor.").

Brandon Amico's "Customer Loyalty Program" uses the dense, generic-seeming language of commercialism ("The opposite of not existing/is shopping. ... I am my credit score") with some (kind of black) humor. I enjoyed spotting a reference to the Beatitutes ("...I withhold./I charitable contribution. I put into/a MEEK fund so I inherit whatever's left/when the wars are done. ...").

Charlaine Harris' Latest

Oh, do I hate spending hardcover money on a book I consider a "beach read"--something relatively short & fluffy, probably a romance or urban fantasy. It's not that I won't re-read these books eventually; it's just penny-pinching plus a bred belief that some books were just made to be mass market paperbacks. Still, I knew I was risking some new-release spending when I picked up An Easy Death and A Longer Fall, the first two books in Charlaine Harris' new-ish Gunnie Rose series. 

I'm a big fan of Living Dead in Dallas & the Sookie Stackhouse books (sure, they fall off a bit toward the end) and I found the Midnight, Texas trilogy middling but enjoyable. I was in the mood for something relatively light that wouldn't require an epic commitment, and Harris seemed to fit the bit. I also thought there was a chance the stories in the first two books would be self-contained enough I wouldn't feel I absolutely had to buy the latest. (In fact, that build of telling a contained story, episode-style, while also building up higher stakes in the larger fictional world is a skill of Harris', notably deployed in the Southern Vampire series.) And I suppose I could have stopped after the first two installments: the particular job is fairly well wrapped up at the end of each novel, but the larger stakes and questions--the relationship between Liz & Eli and the question of succession in the Holy Russian Empire--remain hanging. And The Russian Cage, just from the title, has to address some of that, right? (Part of me wonders if this could turn out to be a trilogy; it seems to have the potential to sustain a longer series, but I imagine things are going to escalate quick after crossing the border into the HRE.)

The books are urban fantasies in Western clothes, or vice versa. In a world where the United States fragmented after FDR's assassination, various droughts, and influenza (and the Romanovs fled Russia to eventually take over California), Lizbeth Rose is a gunnie, a gun-for-hire guarding settler caravans and other travelers. The likable heroine is probably the series' best feature, though the shoot-outs (Lizbeth may have a moral compass, but it's remarkable how often it points to justified killing) and the worldbuilding are a lot of fun. The secondary characters are sometimes sketchy but usually interesting--you can appreciate Harris' mystery-writing bona fides & while the initial security job generally seems straightforward, there always ends up being an element of mystery.  And suspense ... think I'll get back to it now ...

Basically a 21st Century dime novel, but awfully pretty.

April Blog Along?

So, earlier this week I was surprised to get a "ready to dust off your old blog?" email from Effy Wild, a fabulous artist and art instructor who I have been following for more than a year now. I knew she was very much a writer, though I don't always think of her that way because right now I am using my art journaling as a creative outlet that doesn't require writing or editing or proofing pretty much at all. Apparently, every so often she runs a "30 posts in 30 days" blog challenge, and this year's starts today.

I have not been in much of a writing mood, but I have been thinking about doing something for national poetry month, including reading some poems and perhaps challenging myself to incorporate poetry into some journal art once a week (or 4 times in April). I guess I got in the mood early when I was arting along to Effy's journal jam at the beginning of week and trying to think of words to scribble. I thought of Ryuichi Tamura's "Every Morning After Killing Thousands of Angels" (a longtime favorite poem that I hadn't read in a while and that I also associate with high school forensics) and, while Googling, came across this very springy Robert Frost poem in the gather-ye-rosebuds-while-ye-may tradition.

Anyway, I didn't hate the idea of maybe trying to blog daily in April. I don't know that I'm officially going to set that as a goal, because I don't want the pressures & there are other things (work, cleaning, taking time for art journaling that has been making me happy) that are more of a focus for me right now. But I think I'll give it a whirl. I may post some poetry or some poem reviews or book reviews or some art if I feel like it. If I stick with posting, I may even have to learn how to add a button (there's a cute one for the "blog along").  

Reflections Begun on New Year's Day 2019

It would be good to get the book blog going again this year, so I thought I'd start with a "Top 20" list of last year's reads. This is also probably inspired by the XM radio we've been listening to in the car over our New Year's Pittsboro trip — the top 22 (of the top 40) songs of 1970; listeners' favorite 100 Beatles songs. This was going to be a Top 10 list, but that felt painfully exclusionary, so I thought about adding some Honorable Mentions & anyway ended up here. There's some good stuff on this list. My goal is to blurb some of these favorite reads briefly (probably in installments) — if you want to know more, read the books!

#1 All the Crooked Saints by Maggie Stiefvater There aren't many books that explore the Jungian concept of the shadow with as much nuance and sincerity. Also, it's a lot of fun — it's 1962, and the teenage scions of a family known for its miracle workers are trying to run a bootleg radio broadcast out of a truck in the desert. 
Bonus points: The hardcover jacket and book design are gorgeous, and the author is currently living and writing in Virginia!

#2 The Breath of the Sun by Rachel Fellman 
A jacket blurb for this unconventional fantasy novel (by author Sarah Tolmie) says, "Not since The Left Hand of Darkness has any book conveyed the profundity of the winter journey and the relationships forged in it." Ursula K. LeGuin's Left Hand of Darkness is a favorite of mine, but this book lives up to the hype of the comparison. In part, it's a book about the thrill, danger, and hubris of mountain climbing. Lamat, from a sherpa-like culture, is a sought after guide when then the defrocked priest Disaine comes to her with an ambitious plan. The book is saturated with complex world building and deeply concerned with religion. There are strong Buddhist influences, though the quotes from somewhat-contradictory gospels and the hints of Messianism also speak to Christian parallels. Fellman has a gift for writing characters who really seem to see the world differently from each other and the reader. The central characters stand apart from most genre tropes, compelling if not always likable. Ultimately, this  is a story about relationships.

#3 Beartown by Fredrik Backman (translated by Neil Smith) This is a book that made me care about sports, namely hockey, and that's saying something. I'm convinced Backman is a modern prose master (as much as I can tell, with props to the translation from Swedish), with a deft control of omniscient point of view and ability to play with person. He explores the details and the stakes, high and low, of everyday living. His work is about communities, sensitive to the poor and the well off, the bully and his victim.

#4 Madeleine L'Engle's TIme Trilogy (A Wrinkle in Time, A Wind in the Door, A Swiftly Tilting Planet)

#5 The Calculating Stars by Mary Robinette Kowal

#6 Fieldwork by Mischa Berlinski and The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down by Anne Fadiman

#7 Infomocracy by Malka Older 

#8 A Fashionable Indulgence by K.J. Charles

#9 Political Emotions: Why Love Matters for Justice by Martha C. Nussbaum

#10 Our Lady of the Ice by Cassandra Rose Clarke

#11 The Bedlam Stacks by Natasha Pulley

#12 All Systems Red by Martha Wells

#13 Planetfall by Emma Newman

#14 Seraphina by Rachel Hartman

#15 Sourdough by Robin Sloane

#16 Tremontaine, created by Ellen Kushner; written by Ellen Kushner, Alaya Dawn Johnson, Malinda Lo, Joel Derfner, Patty Bryant, Racheline Maltest, and Paul Witcover

#17 Secret Passages in a Hillside Town by Pasi Ilmari Jaaskelainen (translated by Lola Rogers)

#18 The Just City by Jo Walton

#19 Nimona by Noelle Stevenson and The Prince and the Dressmaker by Jen Wang

#20 Blackfish City by Sam J. Miller

April is National Poetry Month

With this post, I’m launching an effort to read more poetry, especially contemporary poetry, especially poetry I already own (although I do have an eye on a couple of as-yet-unpurchased recent releases). As part of the effort, and to celebrate National Poetry Month, I’ll be reading The Best American Poetry 2017, edited by Natasha Trethewey (the overall series is edited by David Lehman). I’m splitting my reading up into about four sections of about 20 poems each, to give me more of a chance to pay attention to and discuss individual poems. In general, I sometimes read The Best American Poetry volumes, I sometimes don’t, and I seldom read them very close to their release date. I’m inspired to pick up last year’s in large part because it is edited by Natasha Trethewey. I’m skipping both Trethewey’s and Lehman’s introductions, however; I’m curious as to whether I’ll perceive any themes as I read, and I want to come to the poems with a fresh eye. As I often do, I’ll read the introductions last. 

*****

             So, after reading the first cluster of poems, do I detect any overarching editorial aesthetic? Not necessarily. There’s an openness to the language – for the most part, these poems are not hermetic. Many of them have an everyday, forthright “tell it like is” quality on the level of the language and diction (which is not to say there isn’t also evidence of craft).

             The opening poem — “Weapons Discharge Report” by Dan Albergotti (poems are arranged alphabetically by author) — is notable for its stark and timely message, as I write in the days following the March for Our Lives demonstrations, but just as much for the rhythm and momentum of its language, mostly found but bringing attention to the authorial insertions that often fall at the end of a densely accelerating line or verse. The insertions reflect back, resonating against and interrogating the bureaucratic language that comprises much of the poem.

Weapons Discharge Report

Incident involved the shooting of an animal.

—option under “Nature of Incident”

in Police Policy Studies Council’s

form “Weapons Discharge Report”

. . . it looks like a demon . . .

—Officer Darren Wilson, describing

unarmed eighteen-year-old Michael

Brown in grand jury testimony

Complete this report as fully as possible to the best

of your recollection. Do not consult video evidence.

What time, what day, what week, what month, what century?

What district, what section, what subsection, what nation?

The opening, in combination with the two chilling epigraphs, establishes the “found language” genre of the poem. The second stanza emphasizes the tedious banality of choices and rote data collection, but by opening the stage to “this century,” it pushes against the reader’s desensitization — how prone are we to dismiss barbarism and injustice as features of the past, not part of life in this century? In the next stanza, “the nation” stands out in part because it’s out of place — a list of divisions becoming gradually smaller, discrupted — to highlight uniquely American guilt? to reflect how the pattern carried out in even the smallest communities or neighborhood takes part in and makes up an oppressive system?

Select nature of incident: exchange

of gunfire between officer and offender,

perceived threats with a brandished edged object

or blunt object or unfired firearm, armed attack

was perceived by officer (but weapon never found),

another perceived threat not involving a weapon

(examples: safety of the public, involved parties

or officers threatened, officer felt threatened,

felt underappreciated, felt tired, bleary eyed,

angry, on edge, ready to pop, looked at sideways).

…

Was officer moving or stationary? Was officer standing,

prone, running, sitting, in vehicle, kneeling, supping,

squatting/crouching, ascending/descending stairs,

only ascending, towering above like a colossus?

The sometimes subtle, sometimes overt switches in to the poet’s critical language (“looked at sideways,” “towering above like a colossus”) highlight complexity but never withhold judgement — if poetry comes in part from making the familiar strange, this poem calls out our familiarity for complacency.

             In a much different manner, poet Jericho Brown speaks on the same subject:

I will not shoot myself

In the head, and I will not shoot myself

In the back, and I will not hang myself

With a trashbag, and if I do,

I promise you, I will not do it

In a police car while handcuffed . . . 

With personal language and an intensity highlighted by link breaks, Brown shows no patience for the euphemisms and excuses surrounding police killings. His poem “Bullet Points” ends with a powerful assertion of the beauty of the black male body.

             David Barber’s “On a Shaker Admonition” shares with Albegotti’s poem an aspect of litany and an inspiring epigraph (“ripped from the footnotes,” Barber jokes in his contributor comment). While parts of the poem can be read as an exploration of what it might be like to be free of mass incarceration and other societal legacies of slavery, the questions it raises are also personal, calling on the reader’s imagination: what would it be like to be radically trustworthy? to offer complete trust? would this be a sought-after utopia, or is something lost with the ability to enforce secrecy or ownership?

No cutpurses to fleece us, no jackboot to roust us, no half-assed excuse

       to detain us, remand us, debase us, reform us,

no iron fist or invisible hand to quash or unleash us, no righteous

       crusade to destroy us to save us: just us, just us.

All of us no longer shiftless, feckless, careless, faithless: no losses to cut,

       no charges to press, nothing to witness, nothing to confess,

no one to cast into the wilderness, no caste to dispossess, no shamefulness,

       no shamelessness, no cease and desist, no underhandedness

under duress, nothing to peer into or peep at with a flickering eyelash,

       each cloudless passing hour lusting after less and less.

Not all of the poems in this batch – not even the majority – are political. Carolyn Forché’s “The Boatman” tells a refugee story. Carl Dennis’ “Two Lives” blends the personal and political, as the poet imagines a different self — one who, instead of being raised in a nuclear family that benefitted from WWII era government contract work, is raised by a single mother after his father is killed in Normandy. Dennis imagines this working-class alternate in contrast to the solitary and perhaps selfish academic, but the poem also ponders connections, grounding these two visions in the same world.

Mary Jo Bang’s “Admission” paints a portrait of a mother than foregrounds generder roles.

My mother was glamorous in a way I knew I never

would be. Velvet belt buckle. Mascara lash. . . .

Every woman was her rival. . . .

In her commentary, Bang reveals the poem is inspired by and layered with stories of the Bauhaus art school, its founder Walter Gropius, and photographer Lucia Moholy. The personal, the social, and the artistic/aesthetic overlap within the container of the prose poem.

... to be continued

July 2016: David Liss' Historical Novels

July's been a month with fewer pleasure reads (thanks to a more than busy month at work), but the novels of David Liss provided some enjoyable downtime. I'd had these on the shelf for some years (the spines looked so elegant in the living room) before finally digging in this summer. Due to their period flavor, the prose reads a bit slower than much contemporary fiction, but the books amply reward time spent reading. There's quite a bit of plot (with mystery/detective story elements), historical details of daily life and bigger economic/political systems, intellectual challenge, and interesting, likable but imperfect characters. 

Benjamin Weaver, the protagonist of A Conspiracy of Paper, A Spectacle of Corruption, and The Devil's Company is loosely based on an actual historical figure, Daniel Mendoza. Weaver is an ex-boxer; a former highwayman; a London Jew proud of his Portuguese vs. Eastern European heritage, not especially devout and estranged from his family when A Conspiracy of Paper opens; and a professional thieftaker, a kind of proto-detective-cum-bounty-hunter. It's this role that propels the plots of the books, as Weaver follows his own peculiar code of honor in the clients he takes and the jobs he pursues, not part of the justice system controlled by the aristocracy or 18th century London's world of organized crime. In each book, his case touches on matters of national historic significance and present-day resonance: in A Conspiracy of Paper, the ethics of the stock market and its establishment; in A Spectacle of Corruption, elections (the title speaks for itself); and in The Devil's Company, global trade with protectionism, monopolies, workers' representation, and technological innovation all in the mix.

Weaver may be Liss' most fascinating creation, but Ethan Saunders of The Whiskey Rebels was the more amusing narrator. (In The Whiskey Rebels, chapters in Saunders' POV alternate with chapter from Joan Maycott, whose prose is less compelling but who plays a key role in the action on the western Pennsylvania frontier.) Saunders is a disgraced Revolutionary War spy, a self-absorbed drunk and a rake, a romantic and a patriot. When he learns his former fiancee's family may be in danger, he's drawn into a conflict that reaches from the early capital of Philadelphia to the wilds of Pittsburgh and the financial markets of New York, one deeply entwined with Alexander Hamilton's new Bank of the United States and the question of what it means to value "liberty" and "pursuit of happiness."

Other July reads included Nalo Hopkinson's SFF short story collection Falling in Love with Hominids -- some good stories, but overall kind of "meh." I wasn't as drawn in, excited, or challenged as I generally am by her novels. I also re-read Lev Grossman's The Magicians, enjoying it just as much as the first time around (perhaps the highs seemed not quite as high but, better prepared, I found Quentin less annoying overall). In August, I'll finally find out how the trilogy ends. 

August 2015: Nonfiction Round-up

First, Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel, which I did actually finish in July, deserves a mention. I think George R. R. Martin's description of the book as "wonderfully elegaic" is spot-on. It's a postapocalyptic tale in which a plague devastates the globe; bands of survivors must make their way in a world largely deprived of technology and other infrastructure. There are a couple of threads that connect, or almost connect, including the pre-plague story of Canadian Shakespearian Arthur Leander actor and the post-plague story of Kirsten, a member of the Travelling Symphony who as a child had a walk-on role in Leander's production of Lear. Most of the novel muses on the value of art (including through a storyline pertaining to a mysterious comic book that almost seemed to me a homage to Moore's Watchmen). While there were some aspects of plot that didn't fully satisfy (the central villain seems pretty easily defeated after being built up quite a bit), Mandel is a prose stylist in the Hemingway tradition.

August turned out to be the start of a big nonfiction push, mostly focused around religion and anthropology. I started off with Religious Fundamentalism by Peter Herriot, a book that sets out to thoroughly define “fundamentalism” and show how it applies at personal, interpersonal, social group, and societal levels. What attracted me to Herriot’s exploration originally was that he thoroughly acknowledges and explores the similarities among fundamentalisms of many different traditions, including Jewish and Christian as well as Muslim traditions. I wasn’t sure about his 5-point definition of fundamentalism – some of the principles were so generic as to apply to just about any religion or group (he freely admits that it is not the descriptors themselves that are unique to fundamentalism, but their combination, with particular emphasis on the reactiveness of fundamentalism). I’m not sold on the essential reactiveness of fundamentalism; this seems a term even trickier to define that “fundamentalist” and likely to be applied selectively. I also found his emphasis on fundamentalism as a twentieth-century phenomenon to be problematic – it seems to me false and entirely arbitrary to deny the label of fundamentalist to the original followers of al-Wahabbi or to early Anabaptists. While it’s valuable, to have a fairly dispassionate and systematic study of the topic, I found much of the text dry and repetitive (Herriot shows his business background in many ways; the bullet points near the end of each chapter are indeed accurate summaries). Highlights of the book are the illustrative case studies, ranging from a close study of a George W. Bush speech to profiles of an Israeli conservative group and an al-Qaeda cell.

I then moved to a classic that has been on my to-read list for years (at least 15) – Mircea Eliade’s Shamanism. I think my expectations were simply set too high, for while I found the book interesting, I didn’t find it packed with profundity. (Eliade corresponded with Jung and is frequently cited by Campbell, but Shamanism doesn’t reach the ranks of Man and His Symbols, The Hero’s Journey, or The Mythic Imagination for me. Part of that no doubt is that I was already familiar with the gist of Eliade’s argument.) I found some of his distinctions forced and resented his often condescending approach any time women are involved in shamanic practice (Eliade uses discounts such instances as mere mediumship or witchcraft). The introduction to my edition had a brief, interesting forward by Wendy Doniger that talked about the shortcomings and real contributions of Eliade and other scholars of comparative religion and “armchair anthropologists.”

I moved on to more contemporary studies of witchcraft and shamanship, some newly acquired and others the long-hoarded fruits of past visits to the Heartwood bookstore. In Darkness and Secrecty: The Anthropology of Asault Sorcery and Witchcraft in Amazonia, edited by Neil L. Whitehead and Robin Wright and published by Duke University Press, is an interesting collection of academic (some highly academic) articles on shamanship in South America, with a focus on “dark shamanship” that in large part seeks to counterbalance overly-positive (and New Agey) depictions of shamans. The editors reject a distinction between “witchcraft” and “shamanship,” and most articles focus on how shamanic practice is customized to particular community needs or practices. There is a detailed depiction of shamanship in Warao cosmology; several articles looking at historical intersections or contemporary conflicts to find connections between shamanship and politics; and an exploration of child sorcery and its consequences (accused sorcerers were frequently executed).

The Modernity of Witchcraft by Peter Geschiere and Witchcraft, Power and Politics by Isak Niehaus with Eliazaar Mohlala and Kally Shokane document African witchcraft in Cameroon and South Africa. Geschiere, writing in 1997, cautions against discounting witchcraft beliefs as vestiges of a primitive past that will be swept away in a modern, global society (or as the exaggerations of patronizing and racist colonizers, despite admitted misreadings and over-emphasis of witchcraft beliefs by many Western scholars); he shows how strongly-held witchcraft beliefs continue to be a part of African society, and indeed how witchcraft beliefs and have changed and practitioners have interacted with other power brokers over time, so that witchcraft has at times been a modernizing (or at least uniting) force rather than a conservative one. The real problems or challenges of witchcraft beliefs are in no way overlooked, and Geschiere devotes considerable attention to accusations and punishments of witchcraft both within the judicial system and extrajudicially. Niehaus and his local collaborators have a similar focus, showing how witchcraft cases changed along with social tensions related to South African relocation of indigenous peoples, politics, and economics, including case studies of witch hunts in the 1990s. With his local collaborators, Niehaus presents numerous stories, analyzing the different types of witches and witchcraft beliefs reported and incorporating many colloquial and Sotho terms. Both studies of African witchcraft point out the power of occult practitioners (who have the power to cure as well as curse, but in doing so typically must identify the source of the curse as someone either within or outside the community) to both support local chiefs or serve as checks on their power, although in contemporary times, their power to challenge the elite may have lessened. Witches can be players in resource redistribution, often accusing those who have failed to give back to the community; they can bind communities together by accusing scapegoat figures such as strangers and the powerless; at the same time, they are always at least in part outsiders and at risk themselves.

Shamans of the Foye Tree by Ana Mariella Bacigalupo returns to South America, focusing on gender identity and expression among the machi, Chilean Mapuche shamans. Although the Mapuche indigenous peoples have been forcibly relocated and excluded from many economic opportunities (much like American Indians in the U.S.), the tone of this book is optimistic overall, and Bacigalupo focuses on the positive ways individual Mapuche machi express themselves. Currently, a majority of Mapuche shamans are women, but the opposite was likely true historically: machi were most often men who nevertheless sometimes presented themselves in feminized ways (including by wearing women’s clothes and headdresses). While there’s no simple parallel between gender roles in today’s America and Mapuche traditions, it’s likely that many were (and are) homosexual. Bacigalupo describes “co-gendered” male machi. The change over time is likely due to the influence of Western colonizing culture, including Spanish machismo, which set aside little space for non-binary or fluid gender roles. Bacigalupo interviews both male and female machi, asking their opinions on their practice, their colleagues, politics, gender roles, sex, and marriage. She follows their practices closely, describing healing (the machi mainstay) and community rituals. She investigates how modern-day machi interact with or ignore the systematized, medical model of the national healthcare system. The foye tree of the title refers to a tree carved with notches, climbed by shamans during rituals as part of an ecstatic, celestial journey, referenced by Eliade.