Month: April 2022

The Bottom of the Top #17

John Winkelman

This week brings a fun mix of 40s, four of which I have heard before, and the last, “Gangstas Make the World Go Round”, was on here last week. I like the odd synchronicities which occur over decades, which could be catnip for statisticians of a particular mindset. For instance, Simon and Garfunkel’s “Wake Up, Little Suzie” was at #40 five years (or more specifically 4 years and 51 months) before Simon’s “You Can Call Me Al” which was on the list at the 1987 spot last week.

Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam made a splash my senior year of high school, and though I have not heard “Head to Toe” in, well, decades, it immediately brought back that slight despair of being a senior in high school and still riding the bus, but fortunately the bus drivers knew what to play to keep the inmates calm.

I do not recall having ever heard of M.C. Brains, but “Oochie Coochie” was familiar, so I probably saw it on MTV at some point.

And Westside Connection was on here last week.

I suppose an interesting narrative could be pieced together from which songs were in which place on which week, looked at not as a progression through the years, but as 52 core samples which, in a given location in consensus space is a stack of snapshots of what was going on “right now, only in 1987.” And once you have data, you can twist and squeeze it to form a narrative, and tell stories vertically rather than horizontally.

1977: Wings, “Maybe I’m Amazed”

1982: Simon and Garfunkel, “Wake Up, Little Suzie”

1987: Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam, “Head to Toe”

1992: M.C. Brains, “Oochie Coochie”

1997: Westside Connection, “Gangstas Make the World Go Round”

I’m Reading a Lot of Poetry Lately

John Winkelman

Reading Material from the week of April 17, 2022

This past week was kind of rough, starting with snow on Monday and a touch of something flu-like which hit me Monday evening and lasted until Thursday night. I only missed a day of work, but was housebound for the whole week, which has not happened to me since the downtown office reopened at the beginning of March. This enforced isolation allowed me more time to read and write, but I had no focus or energy so I mostly stared blankly at various screens and slept.

But yesterday the outdoor temperature rose above 80° f, so Z and I journeyed to Holland and spent several hours sitting in a friend’s back yard, talking and enjoying the unseasonably warm and wonderful weather. And that was as healing as any amount of ginger root, lemon juice, and whiskey.

A small yet elegant pile of books arrived at the house in this past week.

First up is the new issue of Peninsula Poets, the bi-annual publication of the Poetry Society of Michigan, of which I have been a member now for several years.

Next are two new books from The Center for the Art of Translation, On Lighthouses and Linea Nigra, both written by Jazmina Barrera and translated by Christina MacSweeney. On Lighthouses is the paperback version of the hardcover which arrived here in late 2020.

In reading news, I am still working my way through my back issues of Poetry Magazine. I have caught up to 2020, which means I have only a little over a year of back issues to read until I catch up to present. Oddly this feels like I am paying off a debt of some kind. I also took a day to read Colleen Alles’ After the 8-Ball, which I picked up last week at her poetry reading at Books and Mortar. It was brilliant! I love being reminded of the vast talent emanating from my group of friends and associates.

In writing news I am still keeping up my pace of a poem a day, though that went from literally a poem a day to a poem a day average when I missed my poems for Thursday and Saturday due to being sick and utterly brain-dead. But I made up the count with a couple of two-poem days, so I will still have thirty new poems to play with at the end of the month.

The Bottom of the Top #16

John Winkelman

This week we have an interesting mix of songs. The only one I remember is “You Can Call Me Al,” which everyone on the entire planet over the age of 40 has heard.

I don’t think I ever heard of Joe Tex, and considering that he died in 1982, that is not a surprise. “Ain’t Gonna Bump No More” is a catchy song, but lyrically it has, to be delicate, not aged well.

David Lasley I have certainly heard in his capacity as a background singer for more well-known artists like Jim Croce, but I don’t think I have ever heard Lasley qua Lasley, which is unfortunate, as he has a gorgeous singing voice.

Paul Simon I have of course heard of, and “You Can Call Me Al” was a huge hit.

I have of course heard of Boyz II Men, and “Uhh Ahh” sounded familiar, so I quite likely heard it either at the tail end of college or at some point soon thereafter, likely on MTV. Boys II Men still hold up musically, 25 years on. Whole lotta talent in that group.

Of the members of Westside Connection, I have only heard of Ice Cube, and it is unlikely that “Gangstas Make the World Go Round” got much of any airtime here in West Michigan. This is another really good song, and once again, some serious talent in the group.

1977: Joe Tex, “Ain’t Gonna Bump No More”

1982: David Lasley, “If I Had My Wish Tonight”

1987: Paul Simon, “You Can Call Me Al”

1992: Boyz II Men, “Uhh Ahh”

1997: Westside Connection, “Gangstas Make the World Go Round”

Who Let All This Poetry In Here?

John Winkelman

Reading Material for the Week of April 10, 2022

This past Thursday I had the wonderful experience of attending a poetry reading for the first time in well over two years. The event was hosted by local indie bookstore Books and Mortar. West Michigan poets Colleen Alles and Kristin Brace read from their most recent collections.

The reading was wonderful! I had previously purchased Brace’s book Toward the Wild Abundance, and picked up Alles’ After the 8-Ball (pictured above, with Poe) at the event, and both poets graciously signed their books and, as the audience was small, we spent some time after the event talking about reading and writing and life during the COVID years.

I have known Kristin for several years, from her tenure at the Grand Rapids Creative Youth Center as well as the weekly open studio graciously hosted in years past by Jack and Julie Ridl.

I met Colleen back at the end of 2019, when we published one of her poems in the last issue of The 3288 Review. Shortly thereafter, Grand Rapids Public Library put in an order for the entire run of the journal, all 12 issues. As luck would have it, at the time she was an employee of the GRPL, so when word got out that Caffeinated Press was shutting its doors, they decided to add our publication to their archives. It was the largest single sale ever for Caffeinated Press, and also one of the last. So it goes.

In reading news, I am still working my way through my unread issues of Poetry Magazine. I have finished 10 of them, and might make it through another 10 by the end of the month, though I will likely take a break after the issue I am currently reading (July/August 2019) to read After the 8-Ball.

In writing news, I am keeping up my pace of a new poem every day for National Poetry Month. This years the words are coming easier than they did last year or the years before, both because there is a little less of *gestures at everything* and because I have had two more years of practice both reading and writing poetry.

The Bottom of the Top #15

John Winkelman

I started these posts because I thought that the 40th spot in the top 40 would show much more variety and frequent change than would the top spot. So imagine my surprise when last week’s #40 for 1977 was also this weeks #40 for 1977. Congratulations, Mr. Silvetti, for your consistency in the face up the constant upward pressure from the music marketing machine.

This was another week where I had not heard any of these songs before (other than Mr. Silvetti, whose “Spring Rain” is one of those which, even if you have never heard it, you have heard it). Two of the names are familiar – Roberta Flack and Simply Red, but to the best of my knowledge i have not heard those songs before. The other two, Lidell Townsell and Allure, I have neither heard of nor heard those songs, though “Head Over Heels” caused a faint frisson of nostalgia. So maybe there is something there.

1977: Bebu Silvetti, “Spring Rain”

1982: Roberta Flack, “Making Love”

1987: Simply Red, “The Right Thing”

1992: Lidell Townsell, “Nu Nu”

1997: Allure Featuring NAS, “Head Over Heels”

So Much Poetry

John Winkelman

New arrivals for the week of April 3, 2022

Maybe it’s because the pandemic has faded into the fabric of The Now, but there seems to be a surge in poetry events here in Grand Rapids. Several venues are hosting readings and open mic nights, and new events seem to be popping up every day. it could be confirmation bias, but I feel like the next few months are going to be quite exciting, poetry-wise.

Several new books made their way to the house in the past week.

First up is The Interim, written by Wolfgang Hilbig and translated from the German by Isabel Fargoe Cole. This is a repeat of sorts, as I received the limited edition hardcover of this book from Two Lines Press back in November.

Next up, also from Two Lines Press, is Masatsugu Ono’s At the Edge of the Woods, translated from the Japanese by Juliet Winters Carpenter. Ono previously graces these pages when I received (and read) his excellent Lion Cross Point.

Next, from And Other Stories, is When Women Kill: Four Crimes Retold, written by Alia Trabucco Zerán and  translated from the Spanish by Sophie Hughes.

And last up is the most recent issue of Salvage which, despite being on the right side of the photo, is the left-most of my reading material lately, if you get my meaning.

In reading news, I am quickly working my way through my stack of unread issues of Poetry Magazine.

In writing news, I am keeping up the pace of a poem a day, and some of them have promise, though to achieve the promise of that promise will take more than a little editing. So it goes.

IWSG, April 2022

John Winkelman

It’s not that March was objectively longer than either of the previous two Marches, but it was around this time two years ago that the lockdowns began, and now that restrictions have eased considerably from even a year ago, the stress levels are much reduced, and that leaves more energy for creative endeavors.

This month’s Insecure Writers Support Group question is:

Have any of your books been made into audio books? If so, what is the main challenge in producing an audiobook?

I have not yet published any books, so the simple answer is…No.

But I have friends who have published books in both print and audio book version. Dyrk Ashton, in particular, who is a friend I met at ConFusion several years ago. He is the author of the most excellent Paternus Trilogy, of which all three are available in audiobook format. Dyrk is part of the Wizards, Warriors and Words fantasy-writing advice podcast, which recently released an episode about creating audio books for self-published authors.

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The Bottom of the Top #14

John Winkelman

Before anything else, I want to give props to Top 40 Weekly, where I have been getting the info necessary to make these posts.

I have standardized the naming convention for these posts around the relevant week of the year, as determined by the order in the listing at Top 40 Weekly.

This week’s Bottom of the Top came with a couple of familiar names – Ray Parker, Jr. of “Ghostbusters” fame and Huey Lewis, who needs neither introduction nor explanation.

Of these songs, I have hear the first three. “Spring Rain,” certainly, because, apparently, how could I have not heard it? “The Other Woman” vaguely rings a bell. I would have been in seventh grade, I think, and slowly discovering music which was not country. And of course “I Know What I Like” was all over the place in 1987, which bridged my last year of high school and my first year of college, when I would have (finally!) had regular access to MTV (insert joke about the relevance of the “M” therein).

The latter two, by RTZ and Crystal Waters…maybe? Time and the entropy of memory have blurred a lot of details of the nineties.

1977. Bebu Silvetti, “Spring Rain”

1982. Ray Parker, Jr., “The Other Woman”

1987. Huey Lewis and the News, “I Know What I Like”

1992. RTZ, “Until Your Love Comes Back Around”

1997. Crystal Waters, “Say If You Feel Alright”

April is National Poetry Month

John Winkelman

New arrivals for the week of April 27, 2022

This past Tuesday I went to my first Open Mic night in over two years. The event, Poetry & Pie, took place at The Sparrows on Wealthy Street in Grand Rapids. It was the return of an event which had been ongoing at the cafe for some time before the pandemic closed everything down. Of course, with Tuesdays being Tai Chi night for the past thirty years, I had never attended, but now that practice has moved to Wednesday I took advantage of the opportunity and listened to some poetry.

Two new volumes arrived at the house in the past week.

First up is the latest issue of Poetry Magazine, a publication of which I have a shelf full of unread issues. But this being National Poetry Month, I am working my way through them at a rate of roughly one issue a day. So I might catch up to present by the middle of May.

Next is The Future of Black: Afrofuturism, Black Comics, and Superhero Poetry, which arrived unexpectedly as a gift from my good friend Miyah. An unexpected and appropriate addition at the start of National Poetry Month.

In reading news, in addition to the back issues of Poetry, I recently finished I Am the Brother of XX by Fleur Jaeggy, and also This Is Us Losing Count, a superb collection of Russian poetry in translation from Two Lines Press, as part of their Calico series. It’s books like these that prompt me to shell out the money for annual subscriptions to their catalogs.

In writing news, it’s all poetry, all the time, for the entire month. So far I am on track for one poem a day for 30 days and, as last year, I do so love having my mind in this space.

March 2022 Reading List

John Winkelman

Books I reds in the Month of March 2022

Not a bad month for reading, was March. The first book, The Tyrant Baru Cormorant, took the first half of the month to read, and the remaining six flew by, relatively speaking. This was a good mix of fiction and poetry, with a surprise nonfiction in They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us, Hanif Abdurrraqib’s collection of music reviews and criticism which I picked up at City Lights Bookstore back in the summer of 2019.

Books

  1. Dickinson, Seth, The Tyrant Baru Cormorant (2022.03.15)
  2. Poetry Magazine #207.1, October 2015 (2022.03.15)
  3. Abdurraqib, Hanif, They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us (2022.03.20)
  4. Tomlinson, Patrick S., Gate Crashers (2022.03.24)
  5. Jaeggy, Fleur (Alhadeff, Gini, translator), I am the Brother of XX (2022.03.28)
  6. Coolidge, Sarah (editor), This Is Us Losing Count (2022.03.29)
  7. Poetry Magazine #208.4, July/August 2016 (2022.03.31)