Tag: poetry

June 2022 Reading List

John Winkelman

What I read in June 2022

I finally made it through all of the back issues of Poetry Magazine I have been collecting for the past decade. Forty-some issues, read and appreciated and ready to be archived. Now I am working my way through back issues of The Paris Review, and enjoying the experience. I will likely let my subscription lapse at the end of the year, or go to digital-only, which gives me access to the entire online archives, which is an AMAZING resource. But no more physical copies.

Books and Journals

  1. Poetry Magazine #219.2 (November 2021) [2022.06.01]
  2. Poetry Magazine #219.3 (December 2021) [2022.06.03]
  3. Poetry Magazine #219.4 (January 2022) [2022.06.05]
  4. Hurley, Kameron, Future Artifacts: Stories [2022.06.05]
  5. Voices 2022 [2022.06.06]
  6. Poetry Magazine #219.5 (February 2022) [2022.06.06]
  7. Poetry Magazine #219.6 (March 2022) [2022.06.07]
  8. Poetry Magazine #220.1 (April 2022) [2022.06.09]
  9. Poetry Magazine #220.2 (May 2022) [2022.06.09]
  10. Poetry Magazine #220.3 (June 2022) [2022.06.09]
  11. Hariharan, Githa, Almost Home [2022.06.17]
  12. The Paris Review #215 [2022.06.18]
  13. The Paris Review #216 [2022.06.23]
  14. Monáe, Janelle, The Memory Librarian [2022.06.26]
  15. The Paris Review #217 [2022.06.26]
  16. The Paris Review #218 [2022.06.29]
  17. Poetry Magazine #220.4 (July/August 2022) [2022.06.30]

Short Prose

  1. Hurley, Kameron, “The Judgment of Gods and Monsters”, Future Artifacts: Stories [2022.06.02]
  2. Hurley, Kameron, “Broker of Souls”, Future Artifacts: Stories [2022.06.03]
  3. Hurley, Kameron, “The One We Feed”, Future Artifacts: Stories [2022.06.03]
  4. Hurley, Kameron, “Corpse Soldier”, Future Artifacts: Stories [2022.06.03]
  5. Hurley, Kameron, “Levianthan”, Future Artifacts: Stories [2022.06.03]
  6. Hurley, Kameron, “Unblooded”, Future Artifacts: Stories [2022.06.03]
  7. Hurley, Kameron, “The Skulls of Our Fathers”, Future Artifacts: Stories [2022.06.03]
  8. Hurley, Kameron, “Body Politic”, Future Artifacts: Stories [2022.06.04]
  9. Hurley, Kameron, “We Burn”, Future Artifacts: Stories [2022.06.04]
  10. Hurley, Kameron, “Antibodies”, Future Artifacts: Stories [2022.06.04]
  11. Hurley, Kameron, “The Traitor Lords”, Future Artifacts: Stories [2022.06.04]
  12. Hurley, Kameron, “Wonder Maul Doll”, Future Artifacts: Stories [2022.06.05]
  13. Hurley, Kameron, “Our Prisoners, the Stars”, Future Artifacts: Stories [2022.06.05]
  14. Hurley, Kameron, “The Body Remembers”, Future Artifacts: Stories [2022.06.05]
  15. Hurley, Kameron, “Moontide”, Future Artifacts: Stories [2022.06.05]
  16. Hurley, Kameron, “Citizens of Elsewhen”, Future Artifacts: Stories [2022.06.05]
  17. Hariharan, Githa, “Seven Cities and AnyCity”, Almost Home [2022.06.07]
  18. Freudenberger, Nell, “Found Objects“, The Paris Review #215 [2022.06.09]
  19. Hariharan, Githa, “Two Cities of Victory”, Almost Home [2022.06.12]
  20. Martin, Andrew, “With the Christopher Kids“, The Paris Review #215 [2022.06.13]
  21. Hariharan, Githa, “Toda Cafe Blues”, Almost Home [2022.06.14]
  22. Szalay, David, “Lascia Amor e siegui Marte”, The Paris Review #215 [2022.06.15]
  23. Bachelder, Chris, “The Throwback Special, part 3”, The Paris Review #215 [2022.06.16]
  24. Hariharan, Githa, “Mapping Freedom”, Almost Home [2022.06.17]
  25. Hariharan, Githa, “Speaking in Haiku”, Almost Home [2022.06.17]
  26. Hariharan, Githa, “Trailblazing in Andalusa”, Almost Home [2022.06.17]
  27. Hariharan, Githa, “Looking for a Nation, Looking at the Nation”, Almost Home [2022.06.17]
  28. Hariharan, Githa, “Bittersweet Danish”, Almost Home [2022.06.17]
  29. Hariharan, Githa, “Seeing Palestine”, Almost Home [2022.06.17]
  30. Hariharan, Githa, “Almost Home”, Almost Home [2022.06.17]
  31. Bischel, Peter, “Two Stories”, The Paris Review #215 [2022.06.17]
  32. Sorrentino, Christopher, “Apparition of Danhoff”, The Paris Review #215 [2022.06.18]
  33. Hale, Benjamin, “Don’t Worry Baby”, The Paris Review #216 [2022.06.18]
  34. Zevi, Anne-Laure (Angel, Mitzi, translator), “Nom”, The Paris Review #216 [2022.06.18]
  35. Teicher, Craig Morgan, “Four Stories”, The Paris Review #216 [2022.06.19]
  36. Beach, Jensen, “Migration”, The Paris Review #216 [2022.06.20]
  37. Gombrowicz, Witold (Bhambry, Tul’si, translator), “The Tragic Tale of the Baron and His Wife”, The Paris Review #216 [2022.06.21]
  38. Johnson, Dana, “She Deserves Everything She Gets”, The Paris Review #216 [2022.06.21]
  39. Monáe, Janelle and Johnson, Alaya Dawn, “The Memory Librarian”, The Memory Librarian [2022.06.23]
  40. Bachelder, Chris, “The Throwback Special, part 4”, The Paris Review #216 [2022.06.23]
  41. Monáe, Janelle and Lore, Danny, “Nevermind”, The Memory Librarian [2022.06.24]
  42. Cusk, Rachel, “Freedom”, The Paris Review #217 [2022.06.24]
  43. Arthurs, Alexia, “Bad Behavior”, The Paris Review #217 [2022.06.24]
  44. Nugent, Benjamin, “The Treasurer”, The Paris Review #217 [2022.06.25]
  45. Kroll-Zaidi, Rafil, “Lifeguards”, The Paris Review #217 [2022.06.25]
  46. Monáe, Janelle and Ewing, Eve L., “Timebox”, The Memory Librarian [2022.06.26]
  47. Monáe, Janelle and Delgado, Yohanca, “Save Changes”, The Memory Librarian [2022.06.26]
  48. Monáe, Janelle and Thomas, Sheree Renée, “Timebox Altar[ed]”, The Memory Librarian [2022.06.26]
  49. Campbell, Bonnie Jo, “Down”, The Paris Review #217 [2022.06.26]
  50. Gladman, Renee, “Five Things”, The Paris Review #217 [2022.06.26]
  51. Murnane, Gerald, “From Border Districts”, The Paris Review #217 [2022.06.26]
  52. Léger, Nathalie, “Barbara, Wanda”, The Paris Review #218 [2022.06.27]
  53. Martin, Andrew, “No Cops”, The Paris Review #218 [2022.06.29]
  54. Barrodale, Amie, “Protectors”, The Paris Review #218 [2022.06.29]
  55. Beattie, Ann, “Panthers”, The Paris Review #218 [2022.06.29]
  56. Sharma, Akhil, “The Well”, The Paris Review #218 [2022.06.29]

It’s REALLY Hot Out

John Winkelman

Monarch Caterpillar on Milkweed

Like, seriously hot. The middle of the week hit the upper 90s by the thermometer, and over 100 by heat index. With that kind of heat any activity which requires any kind of energy is exceptionally difficult.

No new books arrived in the past week, so I have included a photo of one of the five (as of this past Monday) Monarch caterpillars currently munching their way through our small patch of milkweed. With the severe decline in the population of Monarchs overall, every one of these small beasts is precious.

In reading news, I have finished the first of the two dozen or so back issues of The Paris Review taking up space on my shelves. The past couple of weeks have been much busier than usual so I am not keeping up with my usual reading pace. Plus, much like the computers with which I have worked for well over half of my life, my brain doesn’t work so well when it is overheated.

I did manage to finish Githa Hariharan’s beautiful essay collection Almost Home. Highly recommended for anyone interested in the study and contemplation of cities and the experiences of immigrant, refugees, and those on the receiving end of colonialism.

With Almost Home complete, I have picked up Janelle Monáe‘s collection The Memory Librarian: And Other Stories From Dirty Computer. I have been looking forward to this one since I first heard of it at ConFusion 2022, back in January. The reviews are favorable so I have high hopes.

In writing news, other than journaling I haven’t done a lot. Too many other things going on in my life which are sapping my energy and competing for time. I don’t really expect the rest of the month to be any slower but I hope to make progress transcribing my poetry from two months ago.

So that’s it for this week. Work is crazy right now, as it always is in June as the next-to-last quarter of the fiscal year winds up and everyone heads to their own wherever for vacations. I have the first two weeks of July off, which I hope to use for more than recovery time. We will see how things shake out.

Longer Days Make For Some Long Days

John Winkelman

Books which arrived in the week of June 5, 2022

As July approaches and everyone at work plans for vacation and holidays the entire industry moves into a brief crunch time made up of long days and tight deadlines, held together by the flimsiest of fraying nerves. This doesn’t leave a lot of time or mental energy for reading and writing, though the compulsion persists.

Only one new book-ish thing arrived at the house this week – the June 2022 issue of Poetry.

In reading news, I am finally caught up to present in my pile of unread Poetry issues. Thanks to an unexpected free evening, I read the remaining two issues, including the June issue which arrived earlier this week. So now, as noted previously, I am working my way through my back-log of unread issues of The Paris Review. I might get to the end by the end of the year.

On a side note, this is the first time since I started these weekly posts that I finished reading all of the books which arrived in a week before the end of that week.

In writing news, I am still transcribing my poems from April. With a little luck I will come across something worthy of reading at The Sparrows at the end of the month. If not, well, I am just as happy to sit and listen to other readers.

53, or 1 x 53

John Winkelman

Me at 53

Oh, here it is, on the dawn of the first day of my 53rd year. I am still here to welcome you and receive the plaudits and hosannas which are my just due and proper.

Ha! I almost got through that with a straight face.

This is my third pandemic birthday, and so far life is as good as can be expected. The weather is beautiful and poetry events around town are starting to pick up. This past week, for the first time in years, I read at an open mic event, and it was wonderful! And yesterday I attended the reading by the winners of the 2022 Dyer-Ives poetry competition, for the first time since well before COVID.

Now that I am in my mid-fifties I can say that I am doing a lot better than many people my age. I am in a loving relationship with a beautiful partner. My health is good, though keeping the weight off is not as easy as it used to be. My career is stable, my mind is as active as it ever was, even if I am currently severely burned out and counting the seconds to my two weeks off in the first part of July.

There have been a few changes; I am now wearing bifocals (long, long overdue) and my hair has not been this long since, I think, 1998. Compare the selfie above to my birthday photo from 2021.

This weekend was the first Grand Rapids Festival of the Arts since 2019, and the city is full of celebrants. I plan to spend more time out in the world than in past years, though with proper precautions since we are still in the middle of a pandemic which has been exacerbated by some extremely reactionary interpretations of “freedom.” Still, most of what I like doing involves being outdoors, so I will have an easier time staying socially distanced.

I don’t really have any concrete plans for the upcoming year, other than to continue to read, write, practice, and love my partner, and enjoy the company of our two little orange maniacs. That’s enough for my middle-aged self.

June, All At Once

John Winkelman

Voices 2022

I almost made it through the week without adding anything to the library, but at the last moment I attended the reading for the 2022 Dyer-Ives Poetry Contest. The winners and runners-up are collected in Voices, the annual magazine of the Dyer-Ives competition.

The event was wonderful! Over a dozen of the contestants read their pieces. They ranged in age from 7 or so to probably the late fifties, though the readers definitely skewed young, with all except maybe two being under thirty. The high school students had some of the most powerful poems, and the adult winner wrote a very pointedly anti-capitalist poem, which warmed the cockles of my aging heart.

I didn’t recognize anyone at the event, other than the coordinator Kelsey May, who I met in my capacity as editor at The 3288 Review, when we published a couple of her poems back in 2019. The readers made me feel, well, old. Then again, I consider this a good thing, because if after three years away I only saw the same people as in the Before Times, and they were all Millennials or Gen-X-ers, then something would be very wrong with the poetry community in Grand Rapids.

Yesterday evening Zyra and I wandered downtown to the Festival of the Arts and attended the Love and Peace Jam at the Calder stage. It was fantastic! Several local and regional poets, including Dyer-Ives Finalist Naiara Tamminga and Lansing poet Laureate Masaki Takahashi read and performed, and for the first time I had the privilege of hearing our own poet laureate Kyd Kane read her work at a live event. The event was coordinated by The Diatribe, with Foster (a.k.a. Autopilot) and Kyd Kane hosting.

In reading news, I am caught up to 2022 in my backlog of issues of Poetry Magazine. It still feels good to read such a variety of poetry in such a volume.

I am almost finished with Kameron Hurley‘s excellent collection Future Artifacts, which arrived recently from Apex Book Company. I really like Hurley’s work. Her writing is lush and gritty and I sometimes detect echoes of writers like Jack Vance and Robert Howard.

So now that I am reading poetry and short fiction, my next reading project is to work through all of my back issues of The Paris Review, which is a quarterly instead of a monthly, so I should be able to put a sizable dent in the backlog by the end of the year. The Paris Review publishes short fiction and nonfiction, poetry and interviews, so this should be an interesting, varied,  and enjoyable project.

In writing news, I am still typing up my poems from April. I would make much faster progress if my handwriting was not so terrible. One more thing to work on, I guess.

IWSG, June 2022, and Some Poetry News

John Winkelman

Yesterday afternoon, for the first time in about three years, and the second time in over 20, I got up in front of an open mic and read some poetry. The reading took place at The Sparrows cafe in Grand Rapids, as part of their monthly “Poetry and Pie” event which takes place on the last Tuesday of every month. The poems I read, “Afternoon Traffic” and “Percussion,” had been previously published so I knew at least one other person had considered them worthy of public exposure.

Two other poets read, and there were at most a dozen people in the cafe, not all of whom were there for the reading. Still, I would call it a success, and the couple of people I talked to enjoyed the event.

I felt somewhat self-conscious, as (due to certain properties inherent in the passage of time) I have always viewed open mic readings as a young person’s pursuit. I have ample evidence to the contrary, of course, as the majority of such events I have attended in the past have included people older than I am now. Or maybe it’s because many of those events have also been slam poetry events, and the participants and audience therein definitely skews younger.

But I plan to read again as time allows, assuming I can come up with material worthy of being read in front of a live audience. If for no other reason than that it was fun.

So: The Insecure Writers Support Group question for June 2022 is:

When the going gets tough writing the story, how do you keep yourself writing to the end? If have not started the writing yet, why do you think that is and what do you think could help you find your groove and start?

I can stumble while writing a story for any number of reasons. Distractions from the mundane world. Suddenly not knowing “what happens next.” Suffering from depression, burnout, exhaustion, or some combination of all three. An acute ennui.

Any one of these (and there are so many more than I have listed) can act as a drag on the creative process. For me (and this is absolutely not a general prescription for all people in all circumstances), I take a step back and put some distance between myself and the work. I don’t necessarily try to solve the issue immediately, because if, for instance, the problem is burnout, that attempt at a solution will just make things worse.

Dwight D. Eisenhower said “Whenever I run into a problem I can’t solve, I always make it bigger. I can never solve it by trying to make it smaller, but if I make it big enough, I can begin to see the outlines of a solution.” This is another way of saying that in trying to solve a problem, first put it in a larger perspective.

Is the problem with the story, or with me? If with me, is it because of something I have control over in any meaningful sense? If with the story, is it something that I can push through or do I need to retrace my steps and rewrite some or all of it?

If, for instance, the problem with the writing is personal motivation, and the lack of motivation comes from depression, then the depression is the issue which needs to be dealt with. Trying to force productivity at the cost of mental and emotional health never, ever ends well (I’m looking at you, managerial corporate culture and late-stage capitalism).

If the problem is with the story, then the story was either insufficiently planned, or (as is usually the case with me) I started writing one story, and halfway through switched to another, and now I have two stories which need to be separated and each dealt with individually.

(The same often happens to me when I write poetry, because most of my poems start out as stream-of-consciousness blocks of text in my journals)

So to sum up, pushing through the blocks when writing usually involves giving myself some space to discover why, exactly, I am having a tough time of it. Modern culture does not encourage, and indeed often punishes, time which is not obviously and specifically productive, but that down’time is essential and allows for healing, re-centering, and growth. And, frankly, for better writing.

On a side note: Being stressed and burned out is okay. We are still in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, and though the world seems to be stabilizing (or maybe ramping up the overall sense of denial), we are not yet “post-” anything, and the long tail of fallout from the past two years is just starting to make itself felt. The world is even more stressful than usual. Be kind to yourself and the people around you.

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May 2022 Reading List

John Winkelman

What I read in the month of May 2022

This was another very poetry-heavy month, though I did manage to sneak in a couple of books about politics and the like. This quantity of poetry reading is putting my head in an interesting place, and I have written a couple of poems about the effect of reading so much poetry in a compressed time-frame. Perhaps this is what it is like to be an English major.

Two items of note here: Between Clay and Dust, which is the first fiction I have read since sometime in March, and Kameron Hurley’s short fiction, which is the first such I have read this year. 2022 had been like that.

Books and Journals

  1. Poetry Magazine #215.6 (March 2020) [2022.05.04]
  2. Poetry Magazine #216.1 (April 2020) [2022.05.05]
  3. Poetry Magazine #216.2 (May 2020) [2022.05.08]
  4. Poetry Magazine #216.3 (June 2020) [2022.05.10]
  5. Poetry Magazine #216.4 (July-August 2020) [2022.05.11]
  6. Poetry Magazine #217.1 (October 2020) [2022.05.15]
  7. Poetry Magazine #217.2 (November 2020) [2022.05.16]
  8. Poetry Magazine #217.3 (December 2020) [2022.05.17]
  9. Anderson, Benedict, Imagined Communities [2022.05.18]
  10. Poetry Magazine #217.4 (January 2021) [2022.05.19]
  11. Poetry Magazine #217.5 (February 2021) [2022.05.20]
  12. Poetry Magazine #217.6 (March 2021) [2022.05.22]
  13. Poetry Magazine #218.1 (April 2021) [2022.05.23]
  14. Duncombe, Stephen, Dream or Nightmare [2022.05.24]
  15. Poetry Magazine #218.2 (May 2021) [2022.05.25]
  16. Poetry Magazine #218.3 (June 2021) [2022.05.26]
  17. Poetry Magazine #218.4 (July/August 2021) [2022.05.27]
  18. Farooqi, Musharraf Ali, Between Clay and Dust [2022.05.28]
  19. Poetry Magazine #218.5 (September 2021) [2022.05.29]
  20. Poetry Magazine #219.1 (October 2021) [2022.05.31]

Short Prose

  1. Hurley, Kameron, “Sky Boys”, Future Artifacts: Stories [2022.05.29]
  2. Hurley, Kameron, “Overdark”, Future Artifacts: Stories [2022.05.31]

Wow, This Month is Going By Quickly

John Winkelman

Sunrise over Huff Park, May 15, 2022

I looked up a couple of days ago, and June was closer than April. As the saying goes, the days are long but the years are short. The months are pretty short too, now that the weather has turned and people are going outside again. The change from weeks of Nothing Happening to weeks of Everything Happening occurred so quickly that I feel a sort of emotional or psychic backlash; the abruptness of the switch to something vaguely resembling the “normal” of the Before Times has put me in a vague state of panic and agoraphobia. Too much peopling too quickly.

No new books arrived this week, so the photo for the post is one I took on the morning of May 15 at Huff Park in Grand Rapids.

In reading news, as I have for the past six weeks or so, I am still working through my backlog of Poetry Magazine. I am caught up through the beginning of 2021, which means I am only a little over a year behind schedule.

I finished Benedict Anderson‘s Imagined Communities. Highly recommended. Reading about the instantiation and reinforcement of nationalisms of the past, I can more clearly see the various and myriad ways in which the conservative ideologues of America maintain and increase the nationalistic, imperialistic fervor of the idea of the United States.

With the Anderson complete, I have just picked up Stephen Duncombe‘s Dream or Nightmare, in which he discusses the rational, fact-based approach (e.g. progressive, liberal, productive) to politics in relation to the narrative based approach (in this case, nationalistic, revanchist, nihilistic) practiced by conservatives, and why the narrative-based approach is so much more effective when it comes to politics, where reality and facts have never really been effective tools. Though I had not intended it this way, the Duncombe does seem to be a good follow-up to the Anderson.

In writing news, I haven’t done much, though I am assembling a few poems for an open mic night coming up in a few days. This will be my first time reading in public in at least four years, and possibly closer to five. Yes, I’m a little nervous.

It’s Hot Out

John Winkelman

Books which arrived in the week of May 8, 2022

This past week the air temperature in Grand Rapids hit 90° Fahrenheit more than once. And it’s only just the middle of May. Given the patterns of recent years I expect we will hit triple digits more than once before autumn rolls in. One of the side effects of this sudden summer weather has been uncomfortably warm nights and therefore little in the way of quality sleep.

One new book arrived in the past week – the hardcover edition of the Girl Genius Sourcebook and Roleplaying Game, published by Steve Jackson Games of GURPS fame, and based on the Girl Genius comic created by Kaja and Phil Foglio. This came from a Kickstarter campaign I helped fund back in October 2021. So, given the past couple of years, the fact that the book came in on schedule is impressive. The thing itself is great; deftly written and chock-full of interesting and beautiful illustrations.

In reading news, as was reported last week, I am still working my way through back issues of Poetry Magazine, as well as Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities. And I am still enjoying both.

I haven’t done much writing in the past week, mostly due to my brain being completely fried. Maybe next week. Or the week after that.

A Little Warmth in the Air

John Winkelman

Arrivals for the week of May 1, 2022

There have been a couple of warm days recently, but in this upcoming week daytime temperatures are expected to be in the mid-80s every day, which is quite wonderful for the beginning of May, particularly when considering the exceptionally long and dreary April we just endured here in West Michigan.

The past week has been full of poetry-related events.

In the evening of this past Monday, May 2, I ventured to Douglas, Michigan to attend “Let’s Take Another Look at Poetry,” a workshop held by Jack Ridl, who I have not seen in person since early 2019, I think. He and his wife Julie have been friends of mine for many years, and I had the great good fortune of being invited to attend their regular Sunday morning open studio back in the Before Times. Jack and Julie’s advice was invaluable for me as we worked out the kinks of Caffeinated Press and The 3288 Review. And I loved hearing Jack read his own work, an opportunity I have not had since the launch of his most recent book Saint Peter and the Goldfinch, back in early 2019. So, three very long years.

Yesterday, May 7, I attended the “Schuler Mecca” interview for the Oral History of Poetry in Grand Rapids project organized by local poet Christine Stephens-Krieger. She interview included several former Schuler Books employees who were involved in the poetry scene (such as it was) in Grand Rapids in the 1980s and 1990s. We discussed the role of our local independent bookstore in promoting poetry to the West Michigan community, as well as the many national poets who held readings and signings at the store, and how being in that space in that time with that group of people had influenced our own poetry practice.

This was the second time I was interviewed for the project, the first being a month ago about my experience as a publisher of local poets and poetry as part of Caffeinated Press.

Three new books have arrived here at the Library of Winkelman Abbey.

First up is the May issue of Poetry Magazine. I am quickly catching up to present in my read-through of back issues, and will likely catch up to my subscription in the middle of summer. At that point I will need to consider if I want to keep my subscription. Right now I’m leaning toward “yes.”

Next is Dragon, the new graphic novel by Saladin Ahmed and Dave Acosta, from their successful Kickstarter. I have only skimmed it so far, but the writing and artwork is gorgeous, as would be expected from such talented people.

And on the right is the final, completed version of Illyrian Fugue, written over the past 16 years by my dear friend Scott Krieger. I had the honor of reading an earlier draft back in 2019, so I am eagerly looking forward to reading the final release.

In reading news, in addition to the issues of Poetry Magazine, I am reading Benedict Anderson‘s exemplary book Imagined Communities, an examination of the phenomenon of nationalism.