“Pour hot water on dried nettles / Filter more water for the kettle // Why try / to revive the lyric” – Hoa Nguyen, “Up Nursing”
Friday: we made it. If you’re in the service industry, I hope you absolutely clean up on tips this weekend. It’s supposed to finally be warm in Chicago—the ice cream bike guys in the parks charge $4, but go ahead and pay $7. They’re riding a bike to bring you ice cream in the park.
What I’ve Been Reading This Week:
Part of what this Friday means for me is I made it out of my April 30/30 reading challenge. I deliberately saved these three books for the last few days because I knew I wanted to spend extra time with them for different reasons. One I find somewhat inscrutable, one I find incredibly influential in my writing, and one I just hadn’t read before and wanted to luxuriate in.
nothing fictional but the accuracy or arrangement (she by Sawako Nakayasu: This was one of the first books of contemporary poetry I ever read, way back as a sweater vest-wearing sophomore in college. Every line could begin with “She,” but doesn’t, which is a fun little gimmick to unite the book. The idea of a “fictional arrangement” is super intriguing, and makes for narrative fragmented in very cool ways. That said, the individual lines themselves don’t super speak to me. It could be because I was on Day 28 of a 30/30 or an idiot 19-year-old the times I’ve read it. And don’t get me wrong, the problem is not Sawako Nakayasu. This book is very good, it just doesn’t grab me by the gizzards.
Hecate Lochia by Hoa Nguyen: Christ I adore this book. I first read it in college and the workshop had a good laugh about all the baby poop. Now I’m a parent and I think this is a perfect book of poetry. The helplessness in the face of the disaster of the Bush administration, the urgent but irritating feeling like you need to be writing when you are wiping baby spit-up off your shirt, the attempts to eat “clean” food (but starting tomorrow), have I mentioned the baby poop? This book is my life.
Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced An Emergency by Chen Chen: We’ve read Chen Chen on The Line Break before, but this was my first time sitting down with a full book. I’m left breathless by the ambition of these poems, the way form is played with, the length, the line-to-line leaps. Yet the biggest strength of these poems isn’t lush, florid, $10-word lines. It’s over and over making the exact right word follow the exact right word to create stunning poems. I’m a paragraph in and haven’t even gotten to the subject matter, the interrogations of family and love and language. What a book, man, what a book that makes you grateful to be alive to read it.
LINKS!
RIP to Wicker Park photographer Roberto Lopez. Blessed are those who appreciate the beauty around them and document it. Mundane (workers hanging up a sign) yet magical (a secret Rolling Stones show at Double Door) is a great focus for any art, especially photography. It also seems that Roberto, like me, immediately got captured by Chicago’s vibe. The way he describes Wicker Park when he first moved to the city? “Growing up…I used to read books and magazines about Chicago. And when I came to Chicago, I came to this corner…And I found this big old building, and then I said, ‘This is Chicago,’” Felt very similar to me walking around Rogers Park for the first time as an 18-year-old. RIP to a real Chicagoan.
Texas is doing that cool and humane thing they do where they bus migrants crossing the border up to Chicago. Greg Abbot’s hoarding all the federal assistance money, which I’m sure he’s saving so he can properly and equitably allocate next time Houston gets hit with a hurricane. Chicago, meanwhile, has an Amazon wishlist. Let’s not let these human beings become victims of political theater. Here’s how to help. Here’s a direct link to the wishlist.
Kim Foxx is not seeking re-election, and that’s an absolute shame. Do not listen to conservative smear campaigns and white people fearmongering about her. She is a trailblazer for sentencing reform. People like Kim Foxx get us closer to prison abolition.
Chicago is now poised to have the gayest city council in the country! As cool as that is on its own, H Kapp-Klote points out we can take it a step further: all the aldergays have extremely cool leftist politics. Better than that racist Ann Sather asshole. H also notes we have no trans alders—worth mentioning the ways we have to go as we pat ourselves on the back.
The Block House Gallery in Pullman is having a big showcase of a bunch of local artists tomorrow (!) aka Saturday, May 6th. Here’s a Block Club article about Block House Gallery, here’s a Facebook event page, and here’s their Instagram. Check it out if you’re around the south side!
Chicago named Avery R. Young as the city’s first Poet Laureate! Big ups to Avery, who I have to admit I was unfamiliar with before this announcement. And honestly? Kinda thought we already had a Poet Laureate, which shows how good I am at keeping up with things.
That’s it for this week—enjoy the weather, Chicago.
Sorry you got an email,
Chris