“Don’t use swear words in public. // Do use swear words to express yourself; / you write so damn much,” – Maya Williams, “Contradictions Of My Mother”
Nazis unwelcome: here’s my post about moving this blog off of Substack soon. I might put this stinger on every post until then to try to irritate Nazi Sympathizer Hamish McKenzie. I might forget/get bored and stop. Not today though!
Cotton Xenomorph’s last ‘Cryptids and Climate Change’ pieces have been published! What a joy it was to edit this issue. CX will reopen for submissions in July, so get your writing fingers twitching!
Another quick writing brag—it’s not Aimee Bender saying she liked my story, but it is actual publication, which rules! I’ve got three poems in The Rumen. Wanna read about my brother and I getting ambushed by otters in the Grand Tetons? It’s only sort of alluded to, but there’s other cool stuff in those poems, don’t worry.
Reading is so fun, y’all. Yet summer is so full of parenting! Today, I took my kid to the Coretta Scott King/MLK statue on the Boston Common, then the Margaritaville at Faneuil Hall, then finally to Fenway Park to watch the Red Sox whomp the Phillies. Two days before this, I took the kid to Boston. Obviously, there hasn’t been as much time for reading, but to go a day without reading is—do people do that? Like even if I’m not reading a book I’m at least reading articles.
I also like lifting weights and high-fiving. Imagine all of us high-fiving, as you read this.
What I’ve Been Reading This Week:
Gotta be honest, I started a truly incredible novel this week. I first read an excerpt in Mac Crane’s experimental writing workshop and was immediately taken. Bought the book a few months ago and it finally made it to the schedule. Then I got on an airplane, reached in my backpack, and—Novel Not There. You know what, though? It’s just more time I have to spend with it. That’s exciting. If you want to read along with this blog, and your idea of a good book is a partially-third-person, interrupted-mid-sentence-by-first person novel about an Afro-Colombian trans woman who gained her freedom after an unjust 22-year bid in Ithaca and then trying to find her way in 2015 Brooklyn? You got a week to read Didn’t Nobody Give A Shit What Happened To Carlotta by James Hannaham.
In the meantime, we got a kickass book of poetry, written by a friend. I’m talking, of course, about Refused a Second Date by Maya Williams.
This book is a journey, in the sense that you can see Maya tracing family lineage (not just in the poems titled “Lineage,” either). The poems are mostly short, and some take on a kind of “field notes on dating” quality, with never-have-I-evers and recounted first dates after dating app matches and clinically logical arguments to not have children. This gets at two of the main things I associate with Maya: 1) what they called in their The Line Break interview “crispness,” a trim-the-fat hold-the-tomatoes approach to line-writing and 2) ever-so-patiently explaining to incredulous family members eir outside-the-mainstream life. The book builds on itself, though: first date poems lead to The Last First Date poem, conflicts with family members evolve and resolve, and by the end, you feel like you’ve just watched someone finally get to a point where they can close a certain chapter in life and move to a new chapter.
LINKS!
Something to listen to while you browse? I was really jamming on the 8-Bit Big Band a few days ago. Big band music can sometimes feel a little edge-less to me—a campy, goofy version of jazz where individual expression is restricted to same-y sounding solos. Big band music can also be super exciting, harmonies spaced out in strange ways, melodies and counter-melodies swirling around each other, all with the good, good vibes that come any time you get horn players having fun together (ask Earth, Wind and Fire, or the city of New Orleans). You already know I’m a massive Animal Crossing fan. Let’s make like Quincy Jones and groove on some bossa, specifically, “K.K. Bossa.”
It’s no secret I’m a big fan of Defector. I also like working out, am uncomfortable with negative feelings, enjoy hot dogs, love hanging out on my bro’s couch watching the WNBA, and unbuttoning my shirt to my belly button. Therefore, even though like 97% of what Defector publishes is greatly enjoyable and like 80% is absolute must-read, I can say with confidence that Kelsey McKinney’s blog on Bro Summer is the important blog Defector has ever published.
Wonderful to see Diane Williams interviewed by Erik Penderson in The OC Register for the 25th anniversary of NOON, a truly great lit mag. NOON is tasteful, gorgeous, and features enough masterful writing that they can be forgiven for launching Tao Lin’s boring-ass waste of a career. Still, I had no idea just how much effort and labor-of-love stuff goes into it. Cheers to Diane Williams.
Cool profile in Block Club from Crystal Paul of Sophia Catania, an Edgewater-based jewelry maker who turns cicadas into wearable trinkets. Nature is full of wonders and magic. Making jewelry out of things found in nature is one of humanity’s oldest and noblest callings. Reading this was a welcome respite from all the “ope, ah geez, these cicada jagoffs are everywhere! Wrap up the trees!” loser talk we’ve been getting. Cicadas are cool! They’re not nearly as swarmy in Chicago as they are in Tennessee!
Something I need to read up a little more on: child liberation theology. This blog from R.L. Stollar—cutting room floor questions from an interview that are nevertheless pretty interesting—came across my Bluesky feed, and, well, I’ll probably click on something that invokes Mr. Rogers in a quest for liberation. The part about God incarnate as a child—and therefore the opportunity for humans to witness God learning—is going to be skateboard wheel spinning through my brain walkways for a while.
Surprise surprise, when you teach neurodivergent kids about their conditions and how their brains work, they flourish. Jerome Schultz writes in The Scientific American that “I’ve observed that when enlightened educators, parents or therapists help kids understand the nature and effects of their condition on thinking and learning, this has resulted in a sense of competence and increased confidence—traits these students carried with them as they encountered (and sought out) more challenging academic tasks.” I do feel I should state before you click that this is an opinion piece and not a study, but it makes a lot of sense. Self-knowledge and understanding is a lifelong journey. The world waking up to Autisim, ADHD, dyslexia, and other neurodivergencies, and adjusting the way we interact with each other—this will only produce a healthier, more unselfish society.
What’re you still doing here? I’m gonna try to take one of those duck tours today. Quack, quack, Sully. Wanna see a Gutenberg Bible?
If you work in the service industry, may you clean up in tips this weekend. If you’re an undercover State Police Detective trying to infiltrate an aging mob boss crew and become is right-hand man? First of all, that’s not the service industry. Second of all, do I get some sort of medal for going this long without mentioning The Departed?
Sorry you got an email,
Chris