It is Fourth of July weekend, and until a few days earlier, we had forgotten that for coastal towns this is prime time for tourism. Despite the busy sidewalks and trouble finding parking, things in Port Townsend, Washington, feel as slow as muggy summer heat, though it should be kept in mind that the hub of the small harbor town only consists of a few blocks of small shops, most of which seem to sell antiques, and a handful of local cafes and restaurants. Also, the high is 64 degrees, and the humidity is nearly non-existent. It is a much-needed break from the busy days and atypically warm temperatures we left eight hours away in eastern Washington. We make plans to run away and relocate here.
News & Review Type: News
The Swamp
C-Ville: Taking covers: Your social distancing reading list
With the cancellation of the Virginia Festival of the Book, and recommendations to practice social distancing, there’s never been a better time to pick up some extra reading material. While we’re disappointed that we won’t get to hear from these authors in person, their work and words are still well worth your time. Whether you’re interested in fiction, non-fiction, true crime, or poetry, we have a recommendation to suit your tastes. Here’s a list of books from festival authors to keep you company at home.
The Oregonian: Poems for the Pandemic
Kim Stafford’s days have a rhythm, a routine.
Oregon’s poet laureate wakes before dawn. He takes a long walk around his neighborhood. When he returns to his home in Southwest Portland, he carries a cup of black coffee in his favorite chipped mug to his tiny writing shed in the front yard. It’s “about the size of Thoreau’s hut,” he says, “made of scrounged materials.” One of the walls is made of boards from the original Elephants Delicatessen, another with boards from a fence. The multi-paned door is from a barn sale in Camp Sherman.
KUER 90.1: To Be Alive — Is Power: Poetry For The Pandemic
With all that’s going on right now, it may be more important than ever to remember to take a beat and appreciate something beautiful — even if that’s just a few lines of poetry. April is national poetry month, and to mark the occasion KUER’s Caroline Ballard spoke with Utah poet Katharine Coles.
Ms. Magazine: A Word Person Thinks About Bodies
It was recently brought to my attention that my characters are obsessed with bodies—their own and everyone else’s.
CBC: Milton’s Paradise Lost: a survival guide for a fractured world
Vietnamese-American writer Andrew Lam considers Paradise Lost “the first refugee story.”
“When I learned about it, as someone who had lost his homeland, it resonated, naturally, because Vietnam was everything to my family and I, and then it was gone,” he said.
Lam left Vietnam as a refugee at age 11, two days before the fall of Saigon. He is now the author of three books, including a short story collection called Birds of Paradise Lost.
Black Earth Institue: Social Distancing
In dreams I walk through crowds,
brushing arms, knocking elbows.
Skin to skin: hands are bare.
Crocuses congregate
in beds, along sidewalks.
Unlatching city gates,
Poets.org: Aerial, Wild Pine
A flare of russet,
green fronds, surprise
of flush against
the bare grey cypress
in winter woods.
Cardinal wild pine,
quill-leaf airplant
or dog-drink-water.
Spikes of bright bloom–
exotic plumage.
Arts At MIT: A Writer’s Voyage: Mia Heavener, MIT Course 1, 2000
“Be stubborn and ultimately believe in your writing,” advises first-time novelist Mia Heavener ’00, “especially if you are having crappy writing days.”
On April 13, Heavener visited Wyn Kelley’s literature course “Reading Fiction: Voyages” to share her story of writing Under Nushagak Bluff (Red Hen Press, 2019). Conducted via Zoom, the class engaged a group of eager MIT students. “Holy moly,” says Heavener, “I was so impressed by the depth of their insights.” Her visit was supported by the Council for the Arts at MIT through its recently established Artist Guest Speaker Program.
Lithub: Writing Place in a Time of Crisis
Tess Taylor’s new poetry collection Rift Zone is published this month. She shares five books about writing place in a time of crisis.
Datebook: How Bay Area authors stay creative amid the coronavirus pandemic
Poet Tess Taylor questioned what it means to be creative, when every day feels like a radical reinvention of life.
“These days, helping myself and my family steer a way around sadness, anger, grief, loneliness, boredom or despair feels like its own art form. This emotional work of getting around and through takes time, even before the time of sitting to write, or dreaming of a poem,” said Taylor, author of the forthcoming “Rift Zone.”
NY Times: We’re Doing What We Can to Keep Truckers on the Road
LINCOLN, Neb. — My mother was born into a flu-stricken household at the height of the pandemic of 1918. Within minutes she was swaddled in a homemade quilt and placed into the arms of the local priest who had come to deliver last rites to my grandmother and, they feared, to the baby as well.
PSA: Francisco Aragón “1985”
1985
Long and black, the streaks
of gray, aflutter in the light
wind as she prepares to tell
her story at the Federal Building:
reaching into a tattered sack
she pulls out a doll
missing an eye, balding—
singed face smudged with soot
from the smoke her home took in
[. . .]
Chapter 16: The Skin of Meaning excerpt
The Skin of Meaning
He was late to the party and without directions,
though his invitation was secure, and his instincts
keenly honed to an acceptable edge, and as we are
waiting to see if the fates will hear our ode to joy,
we are given the sound of a man losing everything;
this is the hissing of his agitation, the sound of his
broken heart as it is given and fills with shards,
[. . .]
Daily Poetry: Ascension
Ascension
Didi Jackson
The blue jays lay claim
to the raspberry bush
arriving in groups of four or five:
one holds a rubied berry in its beak
and feeds it up in the white pine to another
as if placing the bones of the canonized
into a gilded reliquary, and I think of the saint
for the mentally ill, beheaded by her father
who was blinded by desire
for his daughter; what became of him
but the colorless thread of grief,
a blind man who opened his eyes too late.
All grievances come to a head
like a champagne bottle shaken and shaken,
the cork volunteering its own release—my husband alone
in a hotel room, after the pills came the decision to empty himself,
the deep red circling his body becoming his own nimbus:
an ascension of sorts. I worried for his soul
and if he’d dwell in Hell: Boschian beasts
perched and ready for torture, exploding cities,
tooth-and-tonged caves waiting for the damned.
I hear the jays mocking a poor chickadee’s attempt
at reaching the fruit; it’s no wonder in legend
they are the devil’s servant not to be encountered on a Friday
as they might be found fetching sticks
down to Hell, but I know better, I can tell,
they do no one’s bidding but their own.