“The National Anthem vampires at the blood. / I am a uniform. Not brusque. I bray” Gwendolyn Brooks, “Riders To The Blood-Red Wrath”
Easy collective action alert: Friday, February 28, there’s going to be an economic blackout. No buying ANYTHING—which means you can still stream the b and the shipwrecked sailor record or read Vine, since both are free. Also, beginning next Wednesday, Ash Wednesday, Black faith leaders are urging a 40-day boycott of Target. Here’s an item in Columbus Dispatch. If you can quit M&Ms for 40 days because your Youth Group leader said it would bring you closer to God, you can quit Target for 40 days to wag a middle finger at the re-segregationist movement. Because that’s all anti-DEI is. A return to segregation.
Before we get into the book and links, some podcast news! We had Justin Carter, author of Brazos, on The Line Break this month (Apple | Spotty | SoundCloud). We talk getting your first book published, Dale Earnhardt, and women’s basketball. Then over on The Lazy & Entitled Podcast, we were once again joined by Haunt Season star Adam Hinkle (Apple | Spotty | SoundCloud). This episode has spoilers for Haunt Season, so go watch that first—it’s now on Tubi, Fandango At Home, something called Plex, and available to buy on Amazon/YouTube/GooglePlay for $6.99. Then come back and listen to a podcast episode about people getting killed.
In movies.
People getting killed in movies.
What I’ve Been Reading This Week:
Once again, I find myself thirsting for poetry week. I really wish I had the time to read one collection of poetry and one novel per week. That’s the ideal life. This poet I read this week? Every time I read her, she becomes a little more of my favorite. Like, I think I want to read some real scholarship on this author. I’m talking, of course, about 1963 by Gwendolyn Brooks.
1963 by Gwendolyn Brooks: this is a short, almost chapbook-length amount of poems in my collected edition. It’s not listed on her Wikipedia. Still, I’m slowly working my way through this collected, page by page, and 1963 is designated as its own book. Also, I read something shorter this week because 1) wanted to read Gwendolyn Brooks 2) The Broken Earth Trilogy was pretty weighty 3) I am reading something weighty next week and wanted to give it two weeks.
The poems in this collection vary between a couple pages in length and those tight, 10-lines-or-under ones Brooks is so great at. She is a true people’s poet, doing Carl Sandburg’s project far better than even he could. There is a 1963-appropriate level of indignation at what this country does to people, particularly Black people. I think about Gwendolyn Brooks talking about how all her poems are super political even though they don’t read overtly that way all the time (I talk about it in this L&E Podcast). To be a People’s Poet while viewing your whole project as political—that feels like the whole ballgame, right there. That’s what I want to do.
LINKS!
Something to listen to while you browse? The homie , author of one of the best blogs around, , is also a band, Infinite Runner. Infinite Runner has a new album out, the appropriately-named Time Trials. Check out this new video for “YR BOI” from Matt and then go stream/buy the album. It’s really good if you like grunge-influenced, Jimmy Eat World-brand-emo-influenced, rock and roll music. When I listen to this record, I hear a four-piece band with two interested guitarists, an enthused drummer, a solid bass player, a few good singers—kinda exactly what I want when I see a band.
We begin with a very dark tale of very bad neighbors. “My Family Had A Stalker” by Elle Reeve in Slate.
Late to the party, but two excellent poems by Catherine Rockwood in Moist Poetry Journal, “Inverie, Knoydart, June 2024” and “Boston Seaport, July 2024.”
I enjoy the Weird Little Guys podcast by Molly Conger. It’s such an insight into Guys Doing Stuff. I also confess to listening less, post-election. These guys are still weird, and small, and bad, and beatable. But you know. Anyway, this series of episodes I haven’t listened to, but I want to highlight a five-part series that ran in January about 21st century Klansman Dennis Mahon (Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5). Now here’s last week’s episode description: “‘They got what they wanted.’ Those were the words of Don Logan after a February 11, 2025 meeting of the Scottsdale, Arizona city council. Twenty-one years after Dennis Mahon tried to murder Logan with a package bomb, the city of Scottsdale finished what the klansman started: they closed the city’s diversity office.”
Jesus Christ, take us back to poetry. Add a little music, if you can help it. Here’s “Band Camp” by Millie Tullis in Moist Poetry Journal.
A funnier mirror of “My Family Had A Stalker,” here’s Tom Ley in Defector with “The Cranks Next Door.” This one looks at the Lincoln Eagle, an independent newspaper in whatever suburb Tom lives in. Sorry, did I say independent newsletter? I meant weirdo right wing zine these old guys hand-print and deliver to people’s doors, unasked. You wouldn’t want to spend 30 seconds around these assholes and jagoffs, but reading Tom’s column is the hardest I’ve laughed all week. A pull quote, since Defector is subscription-based (but worth it!): “Elon Musk went crazy by falling into a slipstream of tweets and replying, “Wow,” at every verified white supremacist he came across. I don’t know how Glenn Chapman went crazy, but I’m sure he put more effort into it than that…I don’t know what the proprietors of the Lincoln Eagle hope to accomplish by occasionally dropping their newspaper onto people’s driveways, but it is not retweets and cheap engagement they are after.”
What’re you still doing here? Don’t you know Micah and Brendan have a show?
If you work in the service industry, may you clean up in tips this weekend. May the writers and publishers at the Lincoln Eagle not be your customers this weekend. I mean, like 75% of restaurant and retail customers have a decent portion of the publishers of the Lincoln Eagle in their hearts. May you get the poets.
Sorry you got an email,
Chris