I do not know how to rank this year's books

I haven't been...finishing...books? I'm not sure how to phrase it. I read - a lot - but most of it is about the poets I'm researching for Couplet; a mixture of academic journals, interviews, (auto/)biography, personal prose, theory and random or whole poetry. Lots of translator prefaces and introductions. I tried to read The Invisible Man but wasn't paying much attention to my audiobook (I'd been on wait for months and then my two weeks to finish it ran out...).

Books in full I've finished are few however, because often reading the entirety of a book on a poet is exhausting and can be a shovel of academia sometimes. The only book in full I think I can count as having read since finishing Dulce Maria Loynaz's translated works is Crazy Brave by Joy Harjo which is a fantastic memoir. I'm in the middle of reading Marjorie Agosín's The Alphabet in My Hands and have only now considered I'm reading another memoir after enjoying Crazy Brave (by Joy Harjo) so much (but thinking that so far it is more akin to a literary nonfiction version of The Good Times are Killing Me - hard to phrase it clearer than that).

Poets? Maybe I could list a lot of the poets on my in progress shelf. I just read two collections of Gabriela Mistral translations (by her probable end-of-life partner Doris Dane and Langston Hughes) which were beautiful if brought up some of the complicated ideas of her hyper-romanticism (her letters to Dane), denial of lesbianism (because Catholicism I guess), and some odd/uneven talk on her use of Judaism as imagery. It's also very likely in the last, as many folks have done, to have a past that is not trackable to clean-cut ideas of what identity is, there is more here than I have the ability to cover.

For instance, Osip Mandelstam is a writer I was preparing to cover on Couplet before I read The Art of Noise and felt it implicated my guest into talking about something that I was under-prepared for and surrounded some fairly dark realities. I thought again how Adrienne Rich referred to him, with his poetry more political when you know his story (versus who I just did an episode about which I'm not posting here even though no one will read this documentation). It's also not entirely true but no one other than me really was even bothering to try and assess why he may have written what he wrote as such, and I wasn't going to be able to do a master-development of research all as the originator of complicated critique. If you, unreal reader, are Jewish, you should know that going into this essay are some very intense anti-Semitic portrayals from Mandelstam, a converted Jewish writer. Us goyim too, but a warning is not impactful to us until we address our own part in the violence. Then maybe some sort of new conversation is had. (Which is kind of what I was trying to say by mentioning both instances of odd placement in poets I really admire the craft of.)

This also feels similar to a thing I have quoted Charmaine of saying before and gotten an odd look (from my older black mentor), but is probably the default of white people beyond our knowledge: "Black people aren't all the same." I'm paraphrasing and why, how confusing blackness can be constructed so simply as a one entity, does whiteness determine the end result of its own genocidal pursuit. Beyond vague stereotyping, each of us is a human fallible being who has their shame and regret and pain and love. Something with more sanctity than hunger even. This said, and obvious to my general ideas about the world, there are many types of person and you need to still recognize their being - mainly by listening, by paying attention to the fine details that compose someone you love. Your lost actions of alienation and all things compose a (prejudice feels a boring word) system of being. And there is my basic racialization theory found within the polemics of one's own self in the dominance of white supremacy. This is also supposed to be a poetry podcast - I mean, a post about books I've read.

I also spent last month writing poems, most my inspiration coming from the poets I've been reading for Couplet - Pat Parker for instance had a dedication poem I wrote for "Boots are being polished," - one of the most poignant drags of fascism and neoliberalism's machinations that I've ever wanted to have been the originator of. I read most of Parker's work in preparation for that episode and could count The Complete Works of Pat Parker as a book I read this year. The poem referencing "Boots..." also was inspired by Sadder than Water by Samih Al-Qasim, which you can see my coverage of a few posts back. I also called back to Molly Brodak's Post Divide and made two poems in conversation with The Fish by Elizabeth Bishop (because it may just be the greatest poem of all time). I also (not because of its poetic brilliance) have been fishing. It hasn't always been good. I am, for fact, extremely depressed.

I am extremely depressed and I have no one around me and some of it is my fault. A lot of it too is I am terrified of how unheard my cries are and, probably, placing these in the abstract places - a tweet to 30 people, a podcast of 2 hours length after 50 hours labor that 5 people hear, my rabbit as I roll around helplessly sleepless in bed, my therapist who is patient and kind to me, my now ex who I am finding new ground of communication with (better yet strained). I also am scared of getting close to anyone. Or new, or I haven't had the extreme emotional connection I feel to a handful of people in so long and last time it ended up with that bitch out there I still have nightmares about. Sort of a potential rap snitches moment that I don't want to continue here.

In short I'm reading a lot but it is hard to write about but you haven't expected that. I, like I told the last Couplet guest, am adjusting to the idea of seeing people again, which includes the changes that have happened - HRT, prozac (probably to be swapped for something soon as it's not working) for instance - and needs I have - boundaries, attention, someone to take care of me - which are all fucking tossed up. I also feel like a crazy anarchist as always while our American ways ignore the rest of the world, as do I, and we hope for normalcy? How deep has it gotten us. The poison set through the knotweed.

Sometimes however I'm still more playful and good. updates may come whenever they come, if you see this, you should have listened to my podcast where all this comes to fruition.

PS: I'm looking at pictures of Ja Rule because I wanted to input a fan image of Put it On Me to match the Akon vibe up top with something different but could it be that both are really hot and won't make sense unless you've only had two FM radio channels set up for the last 4 years in your car (one of which 96.9 broke it's typical mix and put on fucking Crank Dat last night?) which of course you aren't. What would I be without you?

PPS: I forgot that Nawal El Saadawi died this year but when I came back and looked at that post it made me feel really intense that I wanted to mention it. She was neat as fuck. I really need to read more of her. That is all.