And Other Stories – Ecce Signum

September 2022 Reading List

2022-10-012022-10-03 John Winkelman

What I read in September 2022

Despite the craziness of my schedule, this was a pretty good month for reading. I passed 100 volumes read for the year, and 150 pieces of short prose. I have even managed to retain most of what I have read, which is a bonus.

Books and Journals

Mario Levrero, Empty Words [2022.09.04]
The Paris Review #230 [2022.09.06]
The Paris Review #231 [2022.09.11]
T L Greylock and Bryce O’Connor, Shadows of Ivory [2022.09.13]
Sara M. Harvey, The Convent of the Pure [2022.09.16]
The Paris Review #232 [2022.09.16]
Sara M. Harvey, Labyrinth of the Dead [2022.09.16]
Marguerite Duras (Kazim Ali, translator), Abahn Sabana David [2022.09.18]
The Paris Review #233 [2022.09.21]
The Paris Review #234 [2022.09.25]
The Paris Review #235 [2022.09.29]
Poetry #221.1, October 2022 [2022.09.29]

Short Prose

Anuk Arudpragasam, “Last Rites”, The Paris Review #230 [2022.09.01]
Diane Williams, “Garden Magic”, The Paris Review #230 [2022.09.02]
Leigh Newman, “Howl Palace”, The Paris Review #230 [2022.09.02]
William Styron, “From an Unfinished Novel”, The Paris Review #230 [2022.09.03]
Olivia Clare, “Women and Men Made of Them”, The Paris Review #230 [2022.09.05]
Matthew Baker, “Why Visit America”, The Paris Review #230 [2022.09.06]
Emma Cline, “The Nanny”, The Paris Review #231 [2022.09.06]
Willa C. Richards, “Failure to Thrive”, The Paris Review #231 [2022.09.07]
Fernanda Melchor (Sophie Hughes, translator), “They Called Her the Witch”, The Paris Review #231 [2022.09.09]
Kathryn Scanlan, “Yet You Turn to the Man”, The Paris Review #231 [2022.09.11]
Taylor Koekkoek, “Dirtnap”, The Paris Review #231 [2022.09.11]
Molly McCully Brown, “If You Are Permanently Lost”, The Paris Review #231 [2022.09.11]
Clare Sestanovich, “By Design”, The Paris Review #232 [2022.09.12]
Beth Nguyen, “Apparent”, The Paris Review #232 [2022.09.13]
Jesse Ball, “Diary of a Country Mouse”, The Paris Review #232 [2022.09.13]
Senaa Ahmad, “Let’s Play Dead”, The Paris Review #232 [2022.09.14]
Rebecca Makkai, “A Story for Your Daughters, a Story for Your Sons”, The Paris Review #232 [2022.09.15]
Ashleigh Bryant Phillips, “An Unspoken”, The Paris Review #232 [2022.09.15]
Andrew Martin, “Childhood, Boyhood, Youth”, The Paris Review #232 [2022.09.16]
Sarah Manguso, “Perfection”, The Paris Review #233 [2022.09.16]
Emily Hunt Kivel, “The Juggler’s Wife”, The Paris Review #233 [2022.09.19]
Ottessa Moshfegh, “I Was A Public Schooler”, The Paris Review #233 [2022.09.21]
Jamel Brinkley, “Witness”, The Paris Review #233 [2022.09.21]
Amy Silverberg, “The Duplex”, The Paris Review #233 [2022.09.21]
Rabih Alameddine, “The July War”, The Paris Review #234 [2022.09.21]
Shirley Hazzard, “An Unpublished Story”, The Paris Review #234 [2022.09.22]
Shanteka Sigers, “A Way with Bea”, The Paris Review #234 [2022.09.22]
Eloghosa Osunde, “Good Boy”, The Paris Review #234 [2022.09.24]
Thomas McGuane, “Slant Six”, The Paris Review #234 [2022.09.25]
Ayşegül Savaş, “Layover”, The Paris Review #234 [2022.09.25]
Lydia Davis, “Six Stories”, The Paris Review #234 [2022.09.25]
Patrick Barrett, “Saint Cuthbert’s Incorruptible Body”, The Paris Review #234 [2022.09.25]
György Dragomán (Ottilie Mulzet, translator), “The Puppet Theater”, The Paris Review #235 [2022.09.26]
Dantiel W. Moniz, “The Loss of Heaven”, The Paris Review #235 [2022.09.26]
Melissa Febos, “The Mirror Test”, The Paris Review #235 [2022.09.26]
Jack Livings, “River Crossing”, The Paris Review #235 [2022.09.29]
Anthony Veasna So, “Maly, Maly, Maly”, The Paris Review #236 [2022.09.30]
Mary Kuryla, “Hive”, The Paris Review #236 [2022.09.30]
John Jeremiah Sullivan, “Uhtceare”, The Paris Revew #236 [2022.09.30]

A Long-ish Weekend

2022-05-292022-05-28 John Winkelman

New books for the week of May 22, 2022

Oh, what a month it has been. The days are longer, the weather is warmer, and we are not far from the halfway point of 2022. Suddenly this long year has become surprisingly short.

Three new books arrived in the past week.

First up is Kameron Hurley‘s new collection of short stories Future Artifacts, recently published by Apex Book Company. I met Kameron at the ConFusion science fiction convention some years ago, and she has graciously signed several of her books. I haven’t read any of her work in a couple of years, so I started reading it on Saturday.

Next on the stack is Issue 22 of the Boston Review Forum, titled Rethinking Law. I had let my membership to the Boston Review lapse, but they had a re-up offer which was too good to pass up. And since it’s only three issues a year, the additional weight in my house should be manageable.

And on the right is Bad Eminence by James Greer, delivered Saturday afternoon from And Other Stories.

In reading news, I am caught up to autumn of 2021 in my read-through of the pile of unread back issues of Poetry. Time and energy permitting, I may catch up to present sometime in June.

I finished Stephen Duncombe‘s Dream or Nightmare. Though unintended, it was the perfect follow-up to Benedict Anderson‘s Imagined Communities, as though the Anderson is about nationalism and the Duncombe about progressive political strategies, they both make the point that, when it comes to politics (which is to say, practically everything about society), people qua people don’t really notice or care about the minutiae of daily life outside of their immediate reach. What they notice are the stories, the narratives in which connect the individual to the people, places, ideas, and events outside of their immediate purview. This is how conservatives are able to convince their followers that fascism and freedom are synonymous, as long as the Right People are in the in-group. This is also why progressives and lefties are so much less successful at spinning inclusive narratives, as (a) progressives are much more grounded in facts and the real world than are conservatives, and (b) the 15% or so of the USA who are actually left-of-center tend to fail each others’ purity tests when it comes to the work of gathering a community.

To clear my head of modern stresses, I picked up Between Clay and Dust, a novel by Pakistani author Musharraf Ali Farooqi, which arrived at the house back in February of 2016 as part of my (now lapsed) subscription to Restless Books. I finished the book in three days, and it was beautiful. I rated it five stars, and recommend it unreservedly.

As stated above, I am now reading Kameron Hurley’s Future Artifacts.

In writing news, I haven’t done much lately. Too many other things taking up space in my head. I do plan to finish transcribing my National Poetry Month poems over the next couple of weeks.

So Much Poetry

2022-04-102022-04-09 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.

Some Different Points of View

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New books for the week of March 13, 2022

Oh, what a week this was. For reasons not germane to this post, this past week was unproductive and exhausting in the extreme. Suffice to say that, even in the declining days of the pandemic, as the world slowly reawakens after a subjectively excessively long winter, the mundane world continues to exist.

Three new books arrived this past week, and it is indeed a stellar stack.

First up is Coyote and Crow, the core rule book for a new tabletop role-playing game which was funded through an immensely successful Kickstarter campaign. Like so many other Kickstarters over the past couple of years, there were delays and setbacks, but the final product is stunning!

Next up is This Is Us Losing Count, a collection of poems in translation from eight contemporary Russian poets. This anthology is part of the Calico series from the Center for the Art of Translation/Two Lines Press, one of the two publishers with whom I still have a subscription.

And finally we have Mister N, written by Lebanese author Najwá Barakāt and translated by Luke Leafgren. This book arrived from And Other Stories, the other publisher to whom I am still subscribed.

In reading news, I just finished They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us, Hanif Abdurraqib‘s collection of articles and essays about music and its intersection with race and culture. I picked this one up when Zyra and I visited City Lights Books in June 2018. I pulled it down from the shelf when I saw that Abrurraqib will be the guest lecturer for the March 2022 GVSU Arts Celebration hosted by Grand Valley State University.

And in writing news, there was no writing this past week. Too many distractions, disruptions, and sorrows.

Halfway Through 2021

2021-07-042021-07-07 John Winkelman

Books which arrived in the week of June 27, 2021

For the first Independence Day weekend in the last decade, our block was not blown up by the obnoxious neighbor lighting off a thousand dollars of professional-grade fireworks in the middle of the street. I realize I may be jinxing the neighborhood by writing this in the early afternoon of July 4. After all, the day ain’t over yet.

To make up for the uninterrupted and quiet night, I had a bout of serious insomnia which had me sitting at the dining room table until 04:00, blearily browsing the internet in an attempt to get my head to quiet down. I was tired but not sleepy, which is a miserable state in which to find one’s self when there are no pressing issues the next morning and sleep should be abundantly available.

Two new bundles of words arrived in the past week. On the left is the latest issue of Poetry Magazine. On the right is the new delivery from And Other Stories, Keeping the House by Tice Cin, which according to the back cover blurb offers “…a fresh and funny take on the machinery of the North London Heroin Trade…” which I can only assume will create for me a sense of deja vu which will lead back to Trainspotting.

(Yes, I know, Keeping the House is set in London, England and Trainspotting is set in Edinburgh, Scotland.)

In reading news, I finished Jim Harrison‘s Dalva, and it was every bit as beautiful as the previous half-dozen times I have read it over the past 25 years. Harrison’s follow-up novel The Road Home is now sitting next to my bed, awaiting my attention. I picked up my copy of Dalva back around 1996 and it is falling apart. I think I will need to replace it before I read it again, and I don’t think it will be so easy to find another copy with a Russell Chatham cover which is in any sort of good condition.

I have just started Francesco Verso’s long novella or short novel Nexhuman, and so far it is really good! This was published by Apex Book Company and arrived a few months ago as part of my subscription to Apex’s catalog.

I also just started Automating Inequality: How High-Tech Tools Profile, Police, and Punish the Poor by Virginia Eubanks, and only made it about five pages in before I was overcome with an incandescent rage at the state of the world. I have often said that sadism is the national pastime of the USA, and Eubanks is showing how sadism and racism, manifested as carceral capitalism and managed democracy, are actively embedded into the national psyche at a level not much removed from that of the weather or gravity. Currently I am about fifty pages in, and my mood has not improved.

Argh.

In writing news, now that we are in July, and I have some time off, I plan to get serious about my writing practice. Then again I have planned that every week since the beginning of the year and have only been partially successful.

A few walks in the woods and a few evenings on the Lake Michigan beaches may be what I need to clear space in my head.

The Last Full Week of Winter

2021-03-14 John Winkelman

And what a week this past week was. Due to family emergencies, trips to the vet, favors for friends, and the necessities of a new project, I have had almost no time at all to read, write, relax, sleep, or clear my head. My only quiet time was the drive to Jackson from Grand Rapids, in which a visit was cancelled at the last minute, and so I drove a total of over four hours in order to deliver a sandwich.

At this point, after the last twelve months – and tomorrow it will be exactly twelve months since the quarantine really took hold for me – I can’t even get angry about this kind of thing any more. But it is frustrating to see the days grow longer and the weather grow warmer and not be able to enjoy it as I have in years past.

Two bound collections of words arrived at the Library of Winkelman Abbey this week. On the left is Elemental, a collection of stories in translation from Two Lines Press. This is the third anthology published under their wonderful Calico series, which is one of the reasons I am continuing my subscription to their catalog.

On the right is the March 2021 issue of Poetry Magazine. One day I will sit down and read all of the back issues which I have collected over the years, which are regrettably collecting dust on my shelf.

In reading news, things have been going slow though I did finish Deepak Unnikrishnan‘s weird and wonderful Temporary People (Restless Books), and am now about two-thirds through Arno Geiger‘s beautiful The Old King In His Exile (And Other Stories, translated by Stefan Tobler). Geiger’s book is his memoir of taking care of his father, who was suffering from Alzheimer’s, which is a thing which has struck down a few in my immediate and extended family, so it is a…well, I wouldn’t call it a comfort read, exactly, but it is supportive.

In writing news, there is no writing new, other than some journaling. Maybe next week.

So it goes.