burn it back again
As always starting a new year, I'm thinking of "Let the old year burn!" and setting some intentions while trying to maintain compassion for the future selves I'll become and the many perfectly okay reasons those selves may find other intentions more worthy of their time. As always one of those intentions is: write more, just write, write publicly and without preciousness or the impossible drive towards perfection. And so: a shorter edition than last month's of this periodic update on my poetic perambulations, or whatever. (Ever alliterate so hard that you're reminded of the Calvin and Hobbes where Calvin asks "what if someone calls us a pair o' pathetic peripatetics?" I sure do.)
This newsletter continues not being a work product, all of my opinions here are still my own, and also I'm glad I resisted my tendency towards doubting my own taste or credibility and wrote a couple paragraphs for the 2023 staff picks list. And I'm glad Noa uplifted her amazing work in bringing JJJJJerome Ellis to give a public performance from Aster of Ceremonies: Ellis's work clears something nameless in my mind and spirit that needs this space (in fact his previous book is called The Clearing and is one of the more gorgeous books I've encountered, as an object and a text - I didn't know music could also be pages for my brain that can't read its notation, but here it is and was and will be). I'm now wandering down the thread of URLs and interviews here, and maybe you'll do the same; it's a worthwhile journey. Plus y'all know I love Mary Ruefle and yet I'd somehow missed that she put out a new book until Shoshana recommended it?! My colleagues are brilliant.
The work I am doing outside of capitalism now is on two or more zines that I have every intention of releasing this year, and one of them will be the first time I've invited multiple collaborators. If you have anything you'd like to contribute about the incredible neighborhood grocer of my heart Harvestime, this form will remain open at least through February 3, and likely longer, who knows, what's time.
One more scrap of my poem-enthusiasm for your inbox today: I finally took Arielle Greenberg's Given off my shelf where it's sat since I found it at Uncharted probably nearly a decade ago, and it made me want to memorize it, read it aloud, and write my own poems for past present future girlteens. In a terrific ending line from a poem she dedicates to George Saunders, a girl implores someone (or something? the reader, the night itself?) to "Come choose the terrible choice" and from my safe middle age vantage of mostly okay choices it lures me. Hot damn, poems! Keep going.
yours in the terrible (as in awe inspiring) choices, Erin