Year in Review 2023 🤵🏼♂️
Dear friends,
2023 was a whopper, a walloper, as anyone whose been paying attention will have noticed. For most of my friends, for one reason or another, this was the most difficult year on record, and so it was for me. Grace abounded, of course, and abounds, but for now it is ours to cast a glance cast over the shoulder of marching time as a memorial to gains and losses and the days in between.
Here goes.
This year, Lucca first went to sleep-away summer camp.
Sebastian started on his first soccer team ⚡️
This was a wild year when I couldn't find anything to listen to; the first year in 35 years of keeping an annual best-of list that nothing from the current year grabbed me. I still listened to music of course, but mostly old records like these.
We spent much to the year thinking about buying, or trying to buy, a house. In the end, we didn’t, which is a good thing, as it turned out. 🏡
In the news, the Asbury Outpouring. 🕊️
A new king in England! We watch the coronation online. 🤴🏼
My favorite poetry books of the year were: Prayershreds by Bruce Beasley, Holy Moly Carry Me by Erika Meitner, Lacunae by Scott Cairns, What Otherwise is Infinite by Bianca Stone, Husbandry by Matthew Dickman and Butterfly Nebulae by Laura Reece Hogan.
My daughter hosted her first sleepover. I made everyone pancakes. 🥞
In August, a quick trip to AZ 🏊🏻
Sebastian learned to read and it was like magic.
Milan Kundera, Cormac McCarthy, Louise Gluck, Sinead O'Connor, Pee-Wee Herman, Tony Bennett, Martin Amis, and Jonathan Raban (my neighbor!) died. RIP 🪦
2023 was the 20th Anniversary of Give Up by The Postal Service and Transatlanticism by Death Cab for Cutie; we went to the celebration show at the Key. 🎸 We also saw John Van Deusen and Jon Guerra in concert at a small place in CapHill.
Wars. Rumors of wars.
This year, my friend Peter Moe got a job in Spokane and moved away. 😟
Our landlord sold our house, so we suddenly had to leave our home of seven years.
Having had good times with Shovel Knight, I bought a vintage video game emulator and we played the ones I used to as a kid: Sonic, Mario, Streets of Rage, Donkey Kong. It's all here and so much fun. 🕹️
I attended AWP in Seattle and led an MFA seminar on Adam Zagajewski.
Sebastian was baptized and his godfather El Che came up for it.
I saw two movies this year that were huge: Top Gun-Maverick with my dad in AZ, which was every bit as good as hyped, and The Barbie Movie which was smart and hysterical and problematic
Our beloved church, Saint Ambrose, rebranded as Harbor Anglican, shifted vision, moved to Pioneer Square, then moved again. I took it as a kind of death. I’ve never loved an institution so much, apart perhaps only from the SPU MFA. About that…
This year, they closed the SPU MFA, a top-ranked program whose graduates have published over 100 books in the last 20 years 😮. I lose 25% of my salary. 💵
It may move more than shutter, or be reborn: stay tuned to this channel for news.
Despite this doom-saying, we had memorable, exquisite retreats, including immensely-talented and energetic new students.
A bit later in the year , I find out they’re cutting my undergraduate teaching position too 👨🏼🏫 as part of a workforce reduction at the college, so this will be my last year at SPU. 🫤
Appendix surgery! 🔪
To recap, I found out I was losing my appendix, my house, and my job in the space of a month. egad.
This was an historic year also, whose consequences will ring out for decades I expect. A plagiarism machine was unleashed upon the public that I think will change human society and economics eventually, but is now mostly used to help students practice deception: ChatGPT. At year's end, a huge plagiarism scandal (the old-fashioned kind) at Harvard.
The most memorable books I read this year were: Super Infinite, The Creative Act, The Book of All Books, and Elephant and Piggie Biggie Biggie (with the kids, obvs),
This year my body started falling apart. With new baby no sleep, then appendix burst (no lifting anything over 15 lbs for 6 weeks!) and then breaking my right hand ✋🏼, it has not been a good time for exercising 🏋🏼
We saw "A Midsummer Night's Dream" at Pacific Northwest Ballet. 🫏
I attended my first Glen Workshop, where it was good to see Jamie Smith and Lisa Ann Cockerel, and to meet writers Shane McCrae and Anna Jordan.
We had to get a bigger car. Like, an SUV; like we live in the suburbs (I miss my old one all the time) 🚙
The paperback of my Festus came out.
I spent the Fall applying for new jobs and having no idea what's going to happen next year.
We got a new president at SPU and the waters calmed a bit. 🌊
In 2023, I published these essays:
On Raven stealing the sun, Image
On Church-going and Hymn-singing, Fare Foreward
On Shakespeare and the Karate Kid, Mockingbird
And these poems
But mostly I was working on Poem Book #3, which is almost ready to go out a-courting. 💃
Oh and just now I was a guest on this Faith & Imagination podcast. Big fun! 📻
And finally, to complicate and beautify and qualify everything else, like a little cherry 🍒, Cicely Rose arrived entire and started smiling right away. She hasn't stopped since, and neither have we. 🐣
You guys are the best. My deepest thanks to readers, colleagues, family and friends who still bother about art and care about us.
Many blessings on your new year 🎉. "Maybe this one," as the prophet once said, "will be better than the last." 🎹
Do keep in touch.
