PODCAST

This week, I posted Episode 695 of my Virtual Memories Show! She’s been on the show to talk about her essays, novel, and memoir, and now Wallis Wilde-Menozzi gets to talk about her latest translation! With Emerging from the Winter Sea: Selected Poetry and Prose (FSG Poetry), Wallis has translated a career-spanning collection by Antonella Anedda, so we talk about her love of Anedda’s writing and how it led to their friendship, how Italian poetry addresses past poetry and changes in language, how the island of Sardinia stands in for the “I” in Anedda’s poems, and how Anedda chooses the world over herself (a la Kafka) and how her writing changes over the course of decades. We get into how Wallis tends to lose herself in the voice of the people she translates (which is why she’s resisted requests to be a writer’s official translator), the masked, genderless figure of the Componidori and how it corresponds to Anedda’s art-identity, how Anedda shows us reconciling ourselves to suffering and cruelty by associating it with someone else, and how Italian poetry’s ambiguity contrasts with American poetry’s “just the facts, ma’am” vibe. We also discuss These Times and how Wallis’ activism in the ’60s contrasts with today’s clicktivism, the new memoir she’s working on, how personal change can be like the discovery of dark matter, and more. Give it a listen! And go read Emerging from the Winter Sea!

Recent podcast episodes: Nate Powell • Karl Christian Krumpholz • Alison Fensterstock & Michael Tisserand • Emil Wilson • Jonathan Ames • Dash Shaw • Phillip Lopate

Or how about every single episode, alphabetically?

Every book (non-comics) that I’ve finished since 1989.

BIRDY!

Working on her camouflage skills this morning, but the collar gives her away:

HITTING THE LINKS

Here are a couple of links for you:

• RIP RJ Mitte . . . RIP Martina Arroyo . . . RIP Jim Knipfel . . . RIP Helen Branswell . . . RIP Peter Nagy . . . RIP Sidney Offitt . . .

• Here’s an interview with Dean Haspiel and Doug Latino by Jonathan Sandler about the Real Life Comix - Only in New York! anthology, which is out now. There’s a funny line in there about my 2-page comic.

• Arthur Hoyle wrote about reading (and being) The Outsider.

• Jacques Berlinerblau weighed in on the Shane Gillis SNL monologue.

• Levi Stahl’s latest newsletter is a commonplace book on dreaming.

COMMONPLACE

Among other stuff, I added this to my online commonplace book:

We feel the long odds, the commitment, the scale, and the powerful uncertainty of knowing what kind of meaning lasts.

—Wallis Wilde-Menozzi, from the intro to Emerging from the Winter Sea

SILENCE

Probably no podcast or newsletter next week. I’m speaking in Boston on Tuesday, then hosting my annual pharma conference Wednesday-Friday, so even though I have some pod-sessions planned, there’ll be no time to edit, intro, post, etc.

It’s all moving too fast. I was corresponding with a friend earlier this week, and mentioned a moment from the last time we got together. They noted that it was last Halloween, and I was floored, because it feels like 2-3 years ago.

I don’t have much to say. Well, I don’t have much to share, really, not in any witty or sermon-y way.

Can you ever forgive me?

Don’t answer that.

SOUND BODY, FRACTURED MIND

I’ve been doing my morning 15-min. exercise routine every day since I got back, which was An Achievement this morning, and I got my yoga workout in on Tuesday. Still no meditation, and had to deal with crippling anxiety/panic yesterday, but got through it okay. We’ll see how today goes.

POSTCARD

I mail out a postcard every day, so let me know if you want to be in the rotation for that. I caught up with all the postcards I didn’t get to write during my Italy trip.

EXPENSES

If you want to help out with Virtual Memories Show expenses — this email runs $29/month, podcast-hosting is $25/month, and the remote recording account is $20/month — or otherwise Contribute To The Cause, you can make a one-time contribution of any size via Stripe, or a recurring one via Patreon. Or maybe save your money for when I launch the Kickstarter for my Instax book.

NEXT TIME

Thanks for reading this far. See you next time, I hope.

Look up here, I’m in heaven / I’ve got scars that can’t be seen / I’ve got drama can’t be stolen / Everybody knows me now,