30 more posts?

So, Effy Wild has issued another 30 posts in 30 days blogging challenge. As reported here, April's challenge was the first 30-day anything challenge I've ever completed, and I was pretty pleased with that. (In fact, I'm pretty sure I haven't completed a 10-day or a 7-day challenge before, not even that Facebook favorite books thing.) I enjoyed the sense of making progress, even if it didn't quite generate enough excess energy to motivate me to clean the house, weed the yard, and run for fun. Also, I'm convinced that part of the reason I was successful is that I didn't really commit to the challenge, just to the idea of giving it a whirl & seeing what happened. Now that I've done it once, the pressure may be on if I do it again ... Also, the beginning of September is a much busier time of year for me than the beginning of April, between work stuff & family festivities.

Still, I did enjoy that sense of forward momentum. & I'm feeling a bit of positive energy moving into the fall and the new school year. New art projects are being posted online today. I finished part of an overdue project for work. The Labor Day long weekend is getting close. It's beautifully black & stormy here right now, although I know the weather has been far less benign in other places. The news is not good, but stressing about it won't make it better.

So I guess I've talked myself into taking on the challenge. Would I go so far as to say I'm committing too it? Well, let's not go putting labels on things just yet.

This post needs some book talk so it's not just random blathering. I think I'll highlight Drawing Down the Sun by Stephanie Woodfield, which I finished last weekend. It was a recommendation in Effy Wild's Moonshine suited to sunny July and focuses on solar goddesses. I've long been drawn to Thoth who, as a moon god, goes against the gender trend for moon deities. I hadn't realized quite how Greco-Roman (and, eventually, Christian--think of Orthodox art) the sun god myth and the "traditional" gendering of sun and moon are. It surprises me now how I'd never really thought about a sun goddess despite all of my mythological reading.

Some of the goddesses profiled in this book are incontrovertibly sun goddesses, like Norse Sunna and Japan's Amaterasu. With some, there's more (often compelling) interpretation involved, like Brigid with her association with the forge, smithing, and the fires of inspiration.

Woodfield writes that the sun goddess is not just a gender-swapped sun god; her myths are different, one difference being that a common sun goddess theme is the myth of descent, whether of the winter sun or the sun at night. (I certainly can't remember too many myths dealing with the inconstancy of the male sun, even if Apolla/Helios does seem to lend out his chariot an awful lot.) I'm not sure how I feel about this; in some ways, it feels like envisioning a solar goddess is claiming a power that's been withheld and denied to women, and placing that power in a cycle of waxing and waning feels like it diminishes it a bit, ties it back to traditional notions of femininity. But surely part of that reaction is just a resistance to the descent itself. 

Although Inanna is not one of the goddesses featured (Canaanite Shapash is), this book definitely makes me want to revisit how I think of her and the Gilgamesh episode with the Bull of Heaven. The myths where the sun has a sky or storm god for a brother also had me thinking of Coogan's The Old Testament. 

Woodfield acknowledges that her book does not come from the cultural perspective of these goddess' original practitioners: her chapter on Yhi does not aim to give insight into Australian aboriginal spirituality, nor do the sections on Hathor, Sekhmet, and Bast try to recreate historical Egyptian practices. Instead, the chapter on each goddess recounts some of her central myths, gives correspondences and suggestions for spells and ritual work in the context of modern withcraft, and includes a pathworking or meditation to help guide a reader or practitioner to encounter the goddess. Although I love the cover of the self-published version, it's badly in need of proofreading. I assume the Llywelyn edition got a copy edit.

Canadian RomCom & American Poetry

I finished Hana Khan Carries On by Uzma Jalaluddin, an enjoyable romance of the "enemies to lovers" variety with two interesting workplace settings--radio and restaurants (in this case, Three Sisters Biryani Poutine, an old-fashioned halal Indian restaurant threatened by a trendy new halal burger bistro and its good-looking rich kid ). Hana Khan helps out at the family restaurant while interning at a local station and trying to break through in radio/podcasting. Though it covers some serious issues (including racist violence and an alt-right protest of diverse communities), the tone and light overall and wears its Austen homage on its sleeve. This is the second recent romance (the first was Spoiler Alert) I've read recently that had the protagonists secretly communicating with each other through anonymous online means--in this case, both characters were unaware of the IRL identities, and while it was nice to not have the power dynamic ickiness of constant deception, the coincidence and the characters' oblivious did strain my credulity.

I also read further in The Best American Poetry 2020. The first poem I read in this batch, "After," by Christopher Kempf, was perhaps the most powerful. It starts out with a description of post-conflict reconciliation (a little awkward, a little staged) that seems like it could apply to more recent conflicts, then adds details and tercets making clear this poem is set during Reconstruction, after the American Civil war. And it is hopeful--it doesn't paint a post-war utopia, but it's set before the height of Jim Crow backlash--with an implicit hope for history to bend again toward justice today.

After,

     the orchards flowered. The fields
breathed out, like a lung. What
     expectation. After, 

... The president
     was alive still. Sherman
hacked the rice coast into acreage. As in

forty, with a mule. Imagine. After, 
     black sheriffs. After, Easter
as emptied shackles. After, 

     at supper, the McDonoughs
of central Pennsylvania looked up
     & watched their sheepdog--gone

two months, a minie bal
     bedded in her foreleg--resplendent
as fable on the porch stesp. The moral--America, 

     good puppy. ....

     Longstreet--Lee's
hand at Gettysburg, conductor, 

     after, of black militias
in New Orleans--led them,
     armed, against a White League

one would recognize. For which, 
    afterward, no statues
were erected. After, ...

Yusuf Komunyaaka's "The Jungle" joins previous poems in the collection (Johnson's "Fifteen," Jollimore's, "The Garden of Earthly Delights") in focusing on the impact of a particular visual artwork, here a painting by Afro-Cuban artist Wifredo Lam. "I feel that Wifredo Lam's surrealism has chosen me," Komunyaaka writes in his contributor note.

Shara Lessley's "On Faith" uses repetition very much in a "Do Not Go Gently Into That Good Night" mode; she begins, "There is no map for how the apples fall." Steven Kleinman's "Bear" seems sometimes human, sometime not; the poem meditates on mortality ("...did he die/a dignified death, do any of us?"). Nick Lantz' poem addresses mortality and the ephemerality of sound, gaining heft when read in the context of its title, "After a Transcript of the Final Voicemails of 9/11 Victims." He writes that he originally intended to use excerpts from the transcript "but very quickly [he] decided this method felt cheap and flat, so [he] tried to be more associational." In "Quasida to the Statue of Sappho in Mytilini," Khaled Mattawa, whose translation work I admire, juxtaposes the classical art (even if a little clunky) of the statue, evoking Sappho as both poet and exile, with the contemporary refugee crisis, highlighting a situation I was only slightly aware of. 

There's a lyricism to Jennifer Militello's love poem, "The Punishment of One Is the Love Song of Another": "...When my past hissed/with cobras, you let me sleep. When/ I was falling, you brought the ground closer/ and made gravity of flowers like a kiss.." (It's a complicated love.) In "Night of the Living," Susan Leslie Moore writes of the constellations and our place in the universe (after downloading, she reveals in her contributor note, a skytracking app). The tiny lines of Cate Lycurgus' "Locomotion" evoke the spinal cord as she writes on injury and connection to the body. Jennifer L. Knox's "The Gift" begins with a bird's pinfeathers but captures the complicated love, dependence, and resentment between a mother and daughter. In "When I Feel A Whoop Comin' On," Steven Leyva tells a story from his own boyhood. In his note, he writes, "Perhaps we spend our whole lives learning and unlearning the poetics of middle school dances."

Also, I have been super distracted while typing hoping for a visit from a rose-breasted grosbeak. Momma had one at her house yesterday. No sign here so far; I should content myself with my active woodpeckers, titmice, cardinals, and thrashers ...

Birthday Books

I wanted to share my birthday haul here--pretty good!!

I may be especially excited about first volume of Marie-Louise von Franz' collected works. I kind of figured that one would be sitting on my wish list for a long while until I gave in and splurged (it wasn't cheap!). And the springy green color for both jacket and actual book cover is much more lovely than it looked on screen. Defekt may be the one I finish first, since I enjoyed Finna and have been wondering where in the multiverse Cipri will go in this next installment.

In other news, I finished The Conductors. I quite enjoyed it, although I think I enjoyed the action bits more than the mystery bits (partly because some of the suspects didn't do that much to distinguish themselves). The wordbuilding, protagonists, and overall characterizations are strong. I'm definitely looking forward to reading The Undertakers, next in the series and out this fall. (And it's pretty cool that Glover's a Virginia author--maybe there'll be some local readings in the post-pandemic future.)

Happy birthday to me!

Happy May Day! Blessed Beltaine! And, of course, happy birthday to me!

I had a very enjoyable 40th, hanging with the family in Pittsboro, NC. We got off to an appropriately festive start picking strawberries. There were presents (books, watercolors & other art supplies, birthday socks, a painted paperweight from Bernadette, everything green, a very fancy necklace with what is possibly green amethyst as well as blue topaz). We chopped up strawberries to get ready to make jam and bread. We hit the shops in downtown Pittsboro. We ate Cajun chicken while watching the Kentucky derby. (Congratulations, Medina Spirit! Great start, Soup & Sandwich!) We ate chocolate cake with mint chocolate chip ice cream. We drank French 75s while watching The Falcon and the Winter Soldier and The History of Swear Words.

I win!

30 blog posts in 30 days. I succeeded at the Artfully Wild Blog Along! 

I realize that this is not only the first time I've completed any 30-day challenge--not even one day skipped!--it may well be the first time I've completed any do-something-every-day-for-a-limited-duration challenge. On the one hand, keeping it low pressure with totally 0 expectations for quality definitely helped. On the other hand, I imagined if I did persist with this challenge and actually write something every day it might get me in the zone & energize some other projects that need to be written/completed, and on that front ... not so much. Sure, I accomplished (or made moderate forward progress on) some things this month, but there are plenty of other things that are still notably undone.

I finished Educated by Tara Westover last night (or early this morning, actually; those who said it would keep you up reading to find out what's next were right!). It's a very well crafted memoir of a woman who grew up in an abusive, fringey survivalist family, and what happens . There are parts, particularly talking about her early years on the mountain, that actually have a bit of a Laura Ingalls Wilder vibe -- and yet Westover is 5 years younger than me. 

Still reading & enjoying Trickster Makes This World. I'm definitely not finishing Best American Poetry 2020 this month, but I do still plan to finish it. For fiction, I started The Conductors by Nicole Glover, a historical fantasy set in Reconstruction-era Philadelphia. The main characters are magicians, but they're also former slaves and Underground Railroad conductors. (This is another really lovely cover, too.)

I probably won't keep trying to blog every day (there are things I'd rather do, and also things I ought to do), but I may post a bit more frequently. After all, in the last 30 days, I've almost doubled the output of this blog, which has been hypothetically "active" for 13 years. So, I'll close this post by saying:

Congratulations to me!

and

Happy (Early) Beltaine!

Poem In Your Pocket

It's Poem-in-Your-Pocket Day! (I wonder why it's so late this year--one of the most fun parts of National Poetry Month should be earlier in the month, I think.) It's hard to celebrate this year, as I'm going nowhere (maybe I'll get some takeout for dinner, but I still won't leave my car) and, also, my pants don't have pockets. Still, I can at least post some poems here!

I don't know that I've found a poem in The Best American Poetry 2020 that I'd pocket. (Julian Gewirtz' "To X (Written On This Device You Made") is too long.) I realized I hadn't yet posted a cover pic of the collection, though, and thought this was a good opportunity to do so. Fencers are always cool, right? 

One of my favorite poems to use as a pocket poem is Yehuda Amichai's "The Ballad of the Washed Hair." (I think Lilith is using Chana Bloch's translation, but I'm not sure.) I don't why exactly I find this poem so compelling. I do like long hair. There's the mix of the personal and the historical, the mundane and the mythical. The girl is objectified (or at least eroticized) but she's also powerful, and not just in terms of sex appeal. (It's a rare example of a positive Delilah figure.) I love "The scent of her drying hair/is prophesying in the streets and among stars." There's a blend of melancholy and hope. It's also a good pocket poem because it's relatively short. I wonder, though, how much of the poem's resonance comes from that final image. What will readers for whom telephone books were never a daily reality think of the poem--would the ending seem flat to Eliot? What will Bernadette or Edie think if they read this poem as young women? (And how will awareness of events and realities in the Middle East color future readings? This is one of Amichai's less political poems, but I always carry an awareness of him as an Israeli poet.)

Ha, I've linked to this poem at Lilith before and never read the others in the "Hair and Desire" feature. "I'm Letting It Grow" by Nancy Blotter is pretty fun.

If I had pockets, I could pocket some of the poems I mentioned in my Tree Poems post.

If I was going to pocket a recent poetic read, it would be something from Lucy Biederman's The Walmart Book of the Dead. (The publisher calls it "experimental fiction"; they're prose poems to me.) I came across this book in one of those authors-recommend-books-by-other-authors articles (I think this one was by Kiley Reid of the intense Such a Fun Age), and I knew I had to read it. That juxtaposition of the mundane and the mythic that I appreciate in "Ballad of the Washed Hair"? It's here on steroids: the cosmic and the commonplace. Titles and subjects are inspired by The Egyptian Book of the Dead, but the details, characters, and scenarios are drawn from contemporary American Walmart and Walmart patrons. There's humour and absurdity, but it's generally not at the characters' expense; these are, indeed, life and death issues at play in the Walmart setting, and they deserve the attention. You can see an example, the "SPELL for Making One Not Have to Work in the Gods' Domain" here. It's actually not my favorite from the book, partly because there's less of the juxtaposition with language from the Papyrus of Ani and partly because I feel the portrait of this individual is a little more negative/less empathetic than most others in the book.

"ROLL of Gods," for example, uses more of that antiquated language, along with some very relatable humour:

O broad gods of the hall of truth, I have ascended unto you, I am among you, here, I live on truth, truth like you, and I know your names--

O patron of the only independent bookstore in a two-hundred-mile radius, I have not wasted my time. ...

O invader of Iraq, who came forth from the boardroom, I have not worn someone else's boots. ...

O grocery store cheque writer, who made longer the endless line, who came forth from the gods' domain, I have not rammed my cart against the cart in front of it, creating a riot. ...

"SPELL to Enter Through the Gates of Night" demonstrates a perhaps radical empathy:

 ...ILLUSTRATION: The part of the wall that holds the guns in Walmart throbs, as if lit differently than anything else on earth, constructed from different particles. People on the other side don't understand. Either that, or they turn away, fearing that, in their heart of hearts, they do. ... A weightlifter since high school, he hadn't know anything could be so heavy until he held a gun for the first time. It was a Sig Sauer--just a simple, double action handgun, it hadn't even been loaded. He felt the desire to die when he held it, and, buzzing right alongside that desire, the means to do so. And when he pulled himself back from choosing to use it like that, the choice he had made felt as physical a thing as pulling a hood from his head. ...

If I was making a pocket pick, it might be "SPELL for Hopefulness in the Gods' Domain," about a Walmart security officer. "Initially, he was hesitant to accept this job, but not because he thought it might involve becoming a father-figure-type to a bunch of kids whose families live in cars. If he had known that all this extra emotional stuff would be involved, he never would have taken the job." It's tragicomic.

Under the Radar

Man, I got sucked in by Biden's speech and almost forgot to post today. (Not bad, but I think I coulda stuck with Googling the transcript tomorrow. I'd give it a B+ and I'll upgrade that to an A if any of those major pieces of legislation pass in the next two months.) No longer in the mood for writing up anything lengthy.

I've read and reviewed a number of YA novels here. Most of them seem to have gotten a fair amount of fanfare (blog tours, social media mentions, banner ads on book websites, strategic Listicle placement, etc.), but I've encountered a few that seemed to slip largely under the radar. Two of those are Isle of Blood and Stone and Song of the Abyss by Makiia Lucier. Sure, there are some things about these books that are formulaic, but like a good rock song, sometimes all you want is a formula well executed. And, in fact, these books do also put some variation into the formula.

The fantasy world of Isle of Blood and Stone seemed reminiscent of Portugal in the Age of Explorers, with a nobility invested in trade, seafaring, and map-making. The writer is from Guam, and I suspect aspects of that heritage make their way into the worldbuilding of the island kingdom of St. John del Mar (although I really don't know enough about the history of Guam--I didn't even know it was colonized by Spain until I Googled after reading this series.)The book follows two young nobles--Elias, whose mapmaker father was killed years ago when the two heirs to throne were abducted and murdered, and Mercedes, an orphaned noblewoman of mixed ancestry who currently serves as diplomat and spy. When a map with a hidden riddle is discovered, it raises questions: could Elias' father and the lost princes be alive after all? who was really behind the abduction, and is there a traitor in the palace?

Sure, there are tropes, including it sometimes stretching the belief that two young nobles, basically alone, are entrusted with the investigations and adventures. (Also, in terms of worldbuilding, there are a few objectionable throw-away details, like a casual reference to cannibalism.) But Lucier does a good job of maintaining tension and keeping up the mystery; though it's fairly obvious there is a traitor, the older adult characters are drawn sympathetically yet leaving room for suspicion (and I had at least one surprise). Elias and Mercedes are likable, and there's a real sense of history to the setting. 

So why doesn't this book get more buzz? Does it fall into a common pattern of writers of color receiving less publisher support than white writers? Did it get a big publisher book but (surely at least somewhat outside the target audience) just missed it? The treachery and the encounter with a leper may be a bit darker than the content of some YA books--but honestly not that much; such an argument would be a real stretch. I don't know why I hadn't heard of it before it showed up in my "you might also like" scrolling, but I found Isle of Blood and Stone to be a refreshingly enjoyable read.

I don't think Song of the Abyss is quite as strong as its predecessor, but given the importance of seafaring to St. John del Mar, it's nice to have a book that gives us a voyage. There's a time jump, so Song follows a minor character from Isle, now grown up and an aspiring mapmaker herself. There's piracy, diplomacy, and a journey to a mysterious distant land (which evokes China, including a fantasy take on the terra cotta army). It's also a lot of fun!