What I’ve Read - October ‘22
The FIRST What I’ve Read that I’m posting! I intend for this to be a reader update but also reflective to where I’m at with writing. Seeing it as place for me to do a status check on my creative self and find out if I’m reeling off into the darkness of eternity or seeing some sort of light or watching too much TV. I’ll also link out to my GoodReads here if you’re interested. I try to keep that up to date.
THE CHECK IN
September is always a weird month, I feel like I forget that it exists every year and when the end of the month comes I feel like I’ve stepped out of some time frozen daze into the present. I am enrolled with The Attic Institute in a prose poetry class which so far has been fine, the writing prompts for the class are all very personal. I recently traveled, which I think is a writers best friend, to San Francisco and stayed at the Beacon Grand which had an amazingly lovely library nook (that you see pictured above). I logged some good hours both reading and writing in those chairs.
I received 5 different rejections on submissions this month, which means.. someone had to read my writing! The pending list on my submittable is getting short and I need to spend some time really pushing to get pieces out there. Also feeling very generative because I’m in that class, I’m excited to have a pile to start revising. Onto the books!
THE SHORT LIST
Lunch Poems - Frank O’hara
Words That Must Somehow Be Said - Kay Boyle
Being Geniuses Together (1920-1930) - Robert McAlmon / Kay Boyle
It’s Okay to be Not Okay - Christina Tran
Pocket Zines - Liberty Gibby
THE BOOKS
Lunch Poems by Frank O’Hara
Honestly, I think I can say Frank O’Hara is not for me. I didn’t do a ton of digging into who Frank was. It is possible I’m missing some bigger context. A lot of poems are pretty raw and visceral. There’s a quality of matter of factness and the subject matters seem almost off the cuff but delivered well. It was very easy to feel as if I was living a day with Frank in New York. I think that raw edge gave this sense of just hitting the reader with reality hard but in a way that triggers something in your brain into process mode.
There was two lines from an untitled poem about Lana Turner Collapsing at a party that stick with me
”there is no snow in Hollywood
there is no rain in California”
Words That Must Somehow Be Said by Kay Boyle
I am always amazed what wasn’t covered in my college education. Kay Boyle is a writer, poet, activist, journalist, publisher who I’m fascinated by. Often I am caught yearning for more theory content so I started reading essays of other writers and this book does not disappoint. About of 1/3rd of the essays are on writing while the rest covers her family life, politics, and the human condition. If you’re looking for fuel for your tank this book should be in your hands.
Being Geniuses Together (1920-1930) by Robert McAlmon and Kay Boyle
This book, is insane. Robert McAlmon is a fantastic publisher in the 1920s living between Paris and London. This Memoir is regarded as one of the most true representations of the arts and writing scene in France at the time. Spoiler, he publishes Kay Boyle. Post mortem Kay Boyle takes his memoir and inserts her own memoir for the same years in between the chapters. It is an amazing slice of a life that isn’t my own. I’m just about halfway through and this book may be in my top ten list. There is lots and LOTS of name dropping which can get overwhelming but also is interesting to do a little digging on the who’s who that I’ve never heard of.
It’s Okay That It’s Not Okay by Christina Tran
Another memoir, this comic covers Christina Tran’s journey coping by working. I found this at the Portland Zine Symposium and the summary said “dealing with why we can’t turn off” and I feel like I struggle with that. Especially as the pressures of work and life start to amass, it isn’t always easy to not be pushing productivity. Really delightful comic that had some really great use of negative space and silence within the art.
Christina Tran’s Website: https://christinatran.com/
Lil Zines by Liberty Gibby
Also found at the zine event, Liberty’s table had probably 100 of these little zines. The first attention grabber was they were being sold from a binder with nine slot pages you’d typically use for trading cards. The second was that they were so digestible and delivered some serious impact. I’m always striving to give my reader a piece to take away with them and this format literally lets you pocket the work. I’m hungry to get back on the riso printer and this made some gears start turning.
Liberty’s Instagram