“My heart turns numerous, / butter at a certain temperature / and my porch gets bigger / when afternoons laze away there.” – Christopher DeWeese, “Tax Holiday”
Who knew it? A trip to my in-laws’ house involved spending more time eating fried fish than tending to my Substack. Y’all up for some poetry talk and then NBA highlights? It’s National Poetry Month! NBA season’s almost over! I assume at least some of you listen to The Line Break!
What I’ve Been Reading This Week
For National Poetry Month, I’m doing a 30-for-30 reading challenge. One book of poems per day until I can’t. So far it’s been fun! I’ll write more about it Wednesday, but it’s been really positive so far. Gets me reading even more, and has been an excuse to revisit some old favorites. I’m trying to loosely theme my readings, and this first week was all poets who bring a kind of unsettling element to their work.
One sentence on each book: The Next Monsters by Julie Doxsee wonderfully blurs the line between poetry and flash fiction, with really surprising turns (here’s a Line Break where I read one of the poems). Undersleep by Julie Doxsee has poems that run on to the next page even if you feel like they should be over, almost creating the effect of tossing and turning in your sleep. entrance to a colonial pageant in which we all begin to intricate by Johannes Göransson is a delightful plunge into gross-out surrealism while also being so ostentatious you’re not actually grossed out? I saw him read right around the time this was coming out and he described it as “something JonBenét Ramsey would be in,” which I still think is a hilarious way to frame a book. Fjords vol. I and vol. II by Zachary Schomburg are wonderful surrealist prose poems with images and characters that build on each other, and both books are indexed, which is a fun way to explore a collection (here’s a Line Break where I read one of the poems). The Black Forest by Christopher DeWeese surprised me the most, a book I read when it came out and thought was fine but absolutely blew me away on this re-read.
Poetry: good. Reading challenges: good. More thoughts soon!
LINKS!
Every year, certain players emerge as Dudes I Think Are Fun. The latter end of the Obama administration had me obsessed with Boris Diaw and Patty Mills. I still get sentimental about the Steve Smith/Mookie Blaylock Hawks backcourt. The rules for this are:
Try not to be too obvious, i.e., Nikola Jokic and Kevin Durant and LeBron and Giannis are almost always fun, but they already get all the attention.
No Bulls. Otherwise this list would be all Bulls. Maybe DeMar DeRozan five times, who knows. Even in the depths of Bulls misery, I can always find five Bulls I think are fun. Gotta look beyond the home team.
In that interest, a highlight starting 5 of Dudes I Thought Were Fun this year.
C – Domantas Sabonis: LIGHT THE MOTHERFUCKING BEAM! I almost put this 31-minute De’Aaron Fox/Sabonis highlight video on here, but come on. The season’s still going. We can all watch that 31-minute video and weep nostalgically like five years from now. In the meantime, BIG MAN PASSING!
F – Evan Mobley: Drawing comparisons to Kevin Garnett is always good. Block party? Block party.
F – Jeremy Sochan: Look, it’s been a miserable Spurs season. That was on purpose. But there is a rookie who dyes his hair, wears number 10, wears short shorts, and hustles. Having the balls to self-consciously attempt a Dennis Rodman impression in San Antonio, where The Worm was not appreciated? I respect the hell outta that.
G – Shai Gilgeous-Alexander: Lanky, 6’6” guards with an array of dribble moves is the coolest archetype in basketball. Shai was in the MVP conversation through December. He should easily run away with Most Improved Player.
G – Immanuel Quickley: Look, I’m predisposed to be a Knicks hater. My basketball coming of age was as a 90s Bulls fan, they’ve got a dickhead owner, their colors suck. But when a Knicks team is undeniably cool? Man, they are cool. The last time I felt this way was the Sprewell/LJ-led 1999 team. This year’s team, with Jalen Brunson making Mark Cuban cry in public and Julius Randle on a redemption mission, has been a blast. And the coolest player is Immanuel Quickley.
Sorry you got an email,
Chris