sixteen: 4′33″
Apologies, first, for the delay on this newsletter. (I start all my emails this way now: first off, apologies for the delay.) The world's been an unsettled place this past six weeks, both politically on the outside and personally inside our little outpost of it, and it's felt like the most appropriate thing was waiting: wait and see how things turn out; wait and see when I have something tangible to say again before opening my proverbial mouth. I am saving my words, these days, for where they're most probable to make an actual difference. It's fine judgment calls, figuring out those times and spaces.
Most of that has been saying yes to a few things and then shutting up after. Seeds of Hope has put together a weekly chili-cooking roster for unhoused people in the downtown -- apparently chili keeps well, does the nutrition right, and is a top request when people are asked what they'd like for warm meals. We're now on that list. People have been joking about the beans they bought when lockdown started, still in the drawer; we're happy to have found a use for ours.
Things read
I got different than what I expected (which in hindsight, I'm not sure what that was?) from Jessica Mitford's Poison Penmanship: The Gentle Art of Muckraking. Aside from the teaching comments on what made, at the time, good investigative journalism technique, it was seriously fascinating to get this intermittent portrait of the United States in the 1960s. You can tell a lot about a time and place by which doors it doesn't actually want opened, which fights are being picked -- what actually seems to require investigative journalism.
There is a great deal of plus ca change, notably in her 1961 piece on white attitudes toward racial integration in the South. And the takedown of the Famous Writers distance learning scam was--okay, simultaneously hilarious in exactly a Writer Beware way and disturbingly familiar. I'm solidifying that half-formed opinion from last month that writers probably should read the business history of the industry when we can; it's deeply perspective-making to realize how many of the dodgier aspects are decades and whole centuries old.
Likewise, Andrea Pitzer's The Secret History of Vladimir Nabokov comes at some of that period from a different angle: a piece of literary theory on Nabokov's works that overflows itself and turns into charting some at-the-time-forgotten history -- and some very public professional events.
It's really good on picking out how history informs portrayal informs the lens through which people perceive yet more history, and tracing a bit of the evolution of Russian literature besides, and mythmaking on both the personal and social level.
Finally, for people into Norwegian lit, I picked up Roy Jacobsen's The Unseen after an IFOA panel in which bluntly he was not his best self, but I'm sort of glad I didn't let that stop me. It's shortlisted for some major awards, and there was a great deal said in the criticism about freedom and fate and whatnot, but largely for me it was the experience of being on an island; the day-to-day of iterative, unfolding, seasonal existence. It was a very restful place to be.
Things to read
A lot of publishing happened this past month:
"Trojan Road", a poem about prophecy and priorities, leads off the January issue of Plenitude Magazine. The editing I got on this piece was smart, thoughtful, and absolutely improved it, and made little snakes happy.
Reckoning 5 is available in ebook now, in all its absolute glory. Pieces are going up one a week on the website, but it's well worth picking up in its entirety to get the push and flow of how they connect. It clicked together like the most beautiful puzzle.
Climbing Lightly Through Forests: A Poetry Anthology Honoring Ursula K. Le Guin is available now in ebook and for print preorder. My own "A Headful of Hair" joins work in there from a shocking competence of poets, including Stephanie Burt, Sonya Taaffe, Jo Walton, Sofia Samatar, Nisi Shawl, Reckoning teammate Hal Y. Zhang and Reckoning 5 contributors Jennifer Mace and Catherine Rockwood; Brandon O'Brien, Rachel Swirsky, Ada Hoffmann, Thoraiya Dyer, A.J. Odasso, Gwynne Garfinkle, Shweta Narayan, Lynne Sargent--and a whole stack of people whose work I haven't met yet, and get to.
Finally, short story "Three Days and Nights in Lord Darkdrake's Hall", which originally appeared in Strange Horizons in 2007, has been translated into Romanian for SFF magazine Galaxia 42. It's my first Romanian translation, and the art they sourced to go with it is gorgeous.
Most of that has been saying yes to a few things and then shutting up after. Seeds of Hope has put together a weekly chili-cooking roster for unhoused people in the downtown -- apparently chili keeps well, does the nutrition right, and is a top request when people are asked what they'd like for warm meals. We're now on that list. People have been joking about the beans they bought when lockdown started, still in the drawer; we're happy to have found a use for ours.
Things read
I got different than what I expected (which in hindsight, I'm not sure what that was?) from Jessica Mitford's Poison Penmanship: The Gentle Art of Muckraking. Aside from the teaching comments on what made, at the time, good investigative journalism technique, it was seriously fascinating to get this intermittent portrait of the United States in the 1960s. You can tell a lot about a time and place by which doors it doesn't actually want opened, which fights are being picked -- what actually seems to require investigative journalism.
There is a great deal of plus ca change, notably in her 1961 piece on white attitudes toward racial integration in the South. And the takedown of the Famous Writers distance learning scam was--okay, simultaneously hilarious in exactly a Writer Beware way and disturbingly familiar. I'm solidifying that half-formed opinion from last month that writers probably should read the business history of the industry when we can; it's deeply perspective-making to realize how many of the dodgier aspects are decades and whole centuries old.
Likewise, Andrea Pitzer's The Secret History of Vladimir Nabokov comes at some of that period from a different angle: a piece of literary theory on Nabokov's works that overflows itself and turns into charting some at-the-time-forgotten history -- and some very public professional events.
It's really good on picking out how history informs portrayal informs the lens through which people perceive yet more history, and tracing a bit of the evolution of Russian literature besides, and mythmaking on both the personal and social level.
Finally, for people into Norwegian lit, I picked up Roy Jacobsen's The Unseen after an IFOA panel in which bluntly he was not his best self, but I'm sort of glad I didn't let that stop me. It's shortlisted for some major awards, and there was a great deal said in the criticism about freedom and fate and whatnot, but largely for me it was the experience of being on an island; the day-to-day of iterative, unfolding, seasonal existence. It was a very restful place to be.
Things to read
A lot of publishing happened this past month:
"Trojan Road", a poem about prophecy and priorities, leads off the January issue of Plenitude Magazine. The editing I got on this piece was smart, thoughtful, and absolutely improved it, and made little snakes happy.
Reckoning 5 is available in ebook now, in all its absolute glory. Pieces are going up one a week on the website, but it's well worth picking up in its entirety to get the push and flow of how they connect. It clicked together like the most beautiful puzzle.
Climbing Lightly Through Forests: A Poetry Anthology Honoring Ursula K. Le Guin is available now in ebook and for print preorder. My own "A Headful of Hair" joins work in there from a shocking competence of poets, including Stephanie Burt, Sonya Taaffe, Jo Walton, Sofia Samatar, Nisi Shawl, Reckoning teammate Hal Y. Zhang and Reckoning 5 contributors Jennifer Mace and Catherine Rockwood; Brandon O'Brien, Rachel Swirsky, Ada Hoffmann, Thoraiya Dyer, A.J. Odasso, Gwynne Garfinkle, Shweta Narayan, Lynne Sargent--and a whole stack of people whose work I haven't met yet, and get to.
Finally, short story "Three Days and Nights in Lord Darkdrake's Hall", which originally appeared in Strange Horizons in 2007, has been translated into Romanian for SFF magazine Galaxia 42. It's my first Romanian translation, and the art they sourced to go with it is gorgeous.
*
So, short and late, but we'll see if there's more to say next month, when the ground's thawing.
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