30 days has April or whatever (I don\u2019t care for rhyming), so I\u2019m reading 30 books in 30 days. It is a wonderful<\/em> excuse to get around to a lot of stuff that\u2019s been sitting on my shelf, to buy new books, to quickly read authors in relative conversation with each other. That might be my favorite part, actually: tic-tac-toeing Zach Schomburg\/Mathias Svalina\/Joshua Marie Wilkinson\/Frank O\u2019Hara\/Diane Seuss together, or working backwards through the legacy of southside Chicago poetry with E\u2019mon Lauren\/Eve L. Ewing\/Quraysh Ali Lansana\/Gwendolyn Brooks. That aspect of the challenge soothes the syllabus-maker that lives in a closet in my brain. Speaking of making syllabi, Josh once offhandedly told me \u201cyou\u2019ll never read as much as you do in college,\u201d and this year might be the year I prove that piece of quippy wisdom wrong\u2014something I\u2019ve been failing at for the last 12 years, lol. <\/p> Short-burst writing or reading challenges are\u2014in my experience anyway\u2014both incredibly stressful and incredibly useful. Keeping up is not easy, but results do happen. When your default mode is \u201cdoes my kid need me\u201d or \u201cis there a basketball game on\u201d or \u201cone of these days, I\u2019ll get around to that book,\u201d results happening is desirable. Publicly, I\u2019ve done The Poeming<\/a> (write a found poem every day in October 2022) and a \u201c30 <\/a>Goosebumps<\/a><\/em> books in 30 days<\/a> for the 30th<\/a> anniversary of <\/a>Goosebumps<\/a> <\/em>(whose covers are every bit as rad as you remember<\/a>)\u201d challenge for Cracked. Privately, I\u2019ve done things like \u201ctry to draft a novel in a month (but it\u2019s not November)\u201d or \u201cwrite a poem every Wednesday at lunch.\u201d That sentence might not come with hyperlinks to visible work, but in case anyone\u2019s auditing, a lot of ink <\/em>went onto a lot of formerly blank pages<\/em>. Or, in the case of this month, a lot of books I\u2019ve been meaning to get to are being gotten to, and it\u2019s filling my brain with poetry.<\/p> As I\u2019ve mentioned before<\/a>, what Hannah said about poetry being more than just a practice<\/a> has really stuck with me. Inhaling this much weirdo writing, this much art that uses the tools of communication but often withholds the promise of communication<\/a>\u2014it pushes me to push my writing. Writing (and reading) are kind of like working out, in that the more you do it, the less difficult things become. Just like training for my first 8k these last few months has made keeping up with my kid at the playground way easier. Making (at least a little) poetry part of a daily routine feels like something I should\u2019ve done a long time ago. <\/p> I will say it\u2019s not all rainbows and frolicking with maidens in shepherd\u2019s pastures or whatever people think poetry is. Reading a book every goddamn day\u2014especially<\/em> when there\u2019s a four-year-old around and the NBA playoffs are starting\u2014is hard. It\u2019s also a small disservice to each book. All of these demand more time, attention, and thought. It\u2019s not exactly scholarly, this 30\/30 challenge. Even if the sheer pleasure of reading aloud in one sitting and letting the words wash over you is a delight. I probably won\u2019t do this in 2024. Maybe a modified version where I only do this on weekdays. Partially because for all this reading, I haven\u2019t been writing any poetry. <\/p> Not writing any poetry doesn\u2019t defeat the entire purpose of this exercise, but it does bother my hard-coded Protestant Work Ethic. Of course, the fiction I\u2019ve been writing has gotten better. This is because of the indisputable fact that reading poetry makes all <\/em>art better, which is a topic I\u2019ll address later and leave frustratingly dangling for right now. <\/p> Sorry you got an email, <\/p> Chris<\/p>![\"File:The-nattika-beach-3.jpg\"\/](\"https:\/\/substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com\/public\/images\/d025ad37-beb6-4637-9a1c-8bd750a6904e_735x350.jpeg\")
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