I read pretty compulsively. Someone actually challenged me to quit reading for one week this summer—so that I’d have more time for writing and other creative pursuits I neglect in order to sit inside with my books—and I failed miserably. So I’m just going to touch on a few favorites rather than trying for a comprehensive list here.
Right now I’m working through Patricia Smith’s latest collection, Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah. I’d read her previous four books, all of them more than once, and I was a little afraid this one wouldn’t be as spectacular. I’ve thought of her as a guiding star for years, and so many writers fade after bright early works (or maybe I’ve just got an abandonment thing?) but she’s taken this formal turn that’s really fascinating. The new book has a crown of sonnets, a longish poem in syllabics, bops, some kind of modified villanelle, etc. You could see that developing in Blood Dazzler, but it’s in full effect here.
And I recently read Angelo Nikolopoulos’s first book, Obscenely Yours, for the second time. A thread of “auditions” runs through it, and the book’s structure is heavily informed by pornography and cruising. He’s dancing with these very tenuous forms of connection. I love how cleverly, how flirtatiously his lyrics transgress.
As for journals, I’ve admired Indiana Review and The Kenyon Review since I began paging through literary journals in college. Memorious and Guernica are some of my favorite online magazines right now. And Forklift, Ohio has a really neat aesthetic both in terms of the poems and the magazine as a physical object. Their summer issue has a green chalkboard-cover, and also includes a piece of chalk and a recipe for white bean salad. The previous issue was peppered with vintage recipes for concocting bulk perfumes.
Over the past couple of months, I’ve sat through the first four seasons of The Wire utterly hypnotized. I don’t usually watch much TV, but I started out thinking of it as research for a series of poems I’m working on in the voices of queer gangsters and their lovers. And they do a wonderful job with the queer characters, but I’ve actually become more interested in how the show treats informants. We tend to see informants cast as minor characters, cowardly or amoral, but in The Wire they’re complex and relatable. And if you look at the Whitey Bulger trial that’s been in the news recently, it seems like the informant system has really altered the nature of “justice” in this country in ways we’re still grappling with.
At the same time, I’ve been revisiting a number of movies from my childhood. I fell in love with Beauty and the Beast around the time I figured out how uncool it was for a little boy to dig a musical about a princess, so I revisited that as an adult with very different concerns. And I recently wrote an ekphrastic poem about The Land Before Time, which actually scared the shit out of me as a kid. I think as writers it’s important for us to respond actively to media and history, rather than just consuming.