Books I read but got too depressed and had too much hand pain to write about but now things are ok enough and I take 40mg prozac daily

My hands don't type great. My body ain't functioning perfect. I'm on antidepressants now! I take the pill, it feels good. I started a podcast that I'm fairly committed to but scared that, like this, it won't be on anyone's interest or radar. That is okay. Maybe. I want to be heard and referred to. I want to be important.

I read these books. In order? I don't know. Some of it's the end of last year. Some of it's the beginning of this year. I will describe them briefly, because in new podcast I am transcribing but it is onto a mac keyboard. Truly the less resistant and calming to my joints.

Laura Dean Keeps Breaking Up With Me - Mariko Tamaki and Rosemary Valero O'Connor

I like Tamaki's other work a lot and enjoyed this but felt it overall does the queer futurism in form of neoliberalism that I get depressed by. Let's all stay weird and faggy and not be gentrifying turds. It's a good writeup of a relationship that is unhealthy and would be good for the youth who read it to recognize that you are important. And when hurt, it helps to not reproduce it.

The Art of Reading - Julio Ortega

Fuck yea. This book rocks. The essay on Edward Garratea is beautiful and eye opening. Migrations too. Ortega is someone I would like to meet and talk with but will be too scared. He's a Brown professor though, so I guess I could try to see if I have a connection through the pipeline of being in RI.

These are Not Sweet Girls - edited by Marjorie Agosin

You need to buy this collection of latina poetry. Most of these poets will not be discoverable in English and few of them have any Western recognition. But each is put with each other here in a kind and deliberate way. I trust these translators with my life. I feel the work of each poet intensely.

Absolute Solitude, Against Heaven (James O' Connor) , and A Woman in Her Garden (Judith Kerman) - Dulce Maria Loynaz

The first episode of the podcast will get into what I learned about Loynaz, but she is truly fantastic and beautiful, wordsmithing the emotive lonely oddity. Getting into any of the work or her being is a must do but so hard to and with some issue. I'm trying to translate her sister's work right now so we'll see if I get to translating Jardin one day.

Full Moon of Sonia - Sonia Sanchez

Speaks for itself. I also read Homecoming a while back but think I'd already documented that, and this is an odd collection where I'd already read most of the poems in her various other books. Still.

Don't Call Us Dead - Danez Smith

I was feeling guilty that I am most excited about reading dead poets and feeling disconnected from modern poetics. Then I remembered that Danez Smith exists and is one of the most brilliant beautiful prescribers I have ever witnessed read. "summer somewhere" will break you down to the mucky goo you feel when loss is too big to bear. The craft overarches itself and Danez Smith makes life out of these pages.

There are other things I read that are not full books (and the Sanchez is...?) so I cannot count them. That is okay. But I kept reading inbetween those moments of hardlined materials. Definitely listen to my podcast, please. I'm so scared I won't matter, fade into the black mist of shadowed outliers.