On the other hand, Barack Obama seems like the one president who never cheats on his wife. Bernie Sanders finds time on the campaign trail to play with his grandkids<\/a>. Tim Walz seems genuinely stoked to sign a free lunch bill into law, seems genuinely happy to be around kids. Doug Emhoff seems like a pretty good dad, especially since his ex-wife keeps coming out and being like \u201cHE\u2019S A GREAT CO-PARENT AND KAMALA AND I ARE FRIENDS.\u201d <\/p> Forget ideology for a second\u2014I\u2019m very far to the left of all those dudes except Bernie\u2014it\u2019s good to have these models for halfway decent manhood mainstreamed. We cannot let the children think Trump and Ben Shapiro and Andrew Tate and Kanye West are aspirational figures. Those jagoffs know nothing<\/em> about waking their kids up and telling them to pray and giving them tools to walk through life like day by day, teaching them morals integrity discipline. Nothing. <\/p> Is it manly to read poetry? My answer would be \u201cwho the hell cares,\u201d followed by quoting the tagline for one of this weeks\u2019 authors\u2019 podcast: poetry, like bread, is for everyone. <\/p> What I\u2019ve Been Reading This Week:<\/strong><\/p> Oh man. It\u2019s poetry week and I kinda got ahead of my reading schedule, so I had some extra reading time! Plus I had a seven-hour flight delay in the Birmingham airport where my son behaved perfectly, so I had lots of extra reading time!<\/p> Promises of Gold<\/strong><\/em> by Jos\u00e9 Olivarez: <\/strong>I read this book again<\/a> because I was touching up some poems this week, and wanted to be near the book that inspired me the most. It still rips the second time around. Relatedly, the sky is dope. <\/p> Unmonstrous <\/strong><\/em>by John Allen Taylor: <\/strong>the delightful, relentlessly positive Stephen Furlong<\/a>, aka the Bob Ryan Of Poetry, bought this book for me at AWP<\/a>. An incredibly kind gift, and a book I thoroughly enjoyed. There\u2019s a ton of stuff I love in here\u2014self-doubt, trying to improve, elegies for mallards and hermit crabs. Taylor\u2019s a poet I\u2019m definitely going to check out more. <\/p> Good Monster<\/strong><\/em> by Diannely Antigua: <\/strong>starting this book with \u201cSomeday I\u2019ll Stop Killing Diannely Antigua\u201d is like starting To Pimp A Butterfly<\/em> with \u201cWesley\u2019s Theory<\/a>.\u201d What a move. This book is beautifully sad, I mean Diannely really makes symphonies out of sadness, and there\u2019s an incredible bravery to the face down some of this personal trauma and make beautiful art objects out of it. There\u2019s formal complexity, too\u2014pantuoms and sestinas and sonnets\u2014without ever feeling like a Book Full Of Writing Exercises. She\u2019s just a goddamn good poet, homies. <\/p> Dear Memphis<\/strong><\/em> by Rachel Edelman: <\/strong>another AWP pickup<\/a>, courtesy of River River Books<\/a>, whom I believe is having a sale right now. I have a strange relationship to Memphis, in that I\u2019m from Tennessee, but Memphis was the same distance away as Atlanta, so we\u2019d go to Atlanta for concerts\/school field trips\/whatever. Consequently, I\u2019m not super familiar with Memphis, and I\u2019m certainly not familiar with the Jewish experience of Memphis. That\u2019s the great thing about poetry, though, as and I have talked about on The Line Break<\/em>\u2014you get these incredibly thoughtful windows into lives that let you know the world is bigger than you could imagine. These poems exist in the \u201ccolliding geographies and intimate economies of the American South,\u201d per the back of the book, and that feels right. There\u2019s diaspora here, there\u2019s speaker-returns-to-hometown stuff, there\u2019s alternating lushness and spareness. This is maybe not the highest level of criticism, but I liked how most of the poems were short, but some of them would be like eight pages. Not enough people writing eight-page poems lately. <\/p> LINKS!<\/strong><\/p> There\u2019s a new Solipse single, and you should listen to it! You should also go see them on Tuesday at Sleeping Village. Buy tickets here<\/a>. I unfortunately cannot be there, and I\u2019m super bummed about it. So if you\u2019re in Chicago, go for me. <\/p>![\"Good](\"https:\/\/substack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com\/public\/images\/5a9834cf-04b4-449c-a8c0-466edcbe401e_3024x4032.heic\")
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