Best Books of 2022

Are you in the liminal space — the time between Christmas and New Year that lingers at a languid inbetween pace? I feel neither here nor there. It’s not a bad feeling, really, but there is a quality of un-presence that feels a distant cousin to uncertainty.

Where are you? Can you hear me calling into the void?

The end of year is traditionally a time of reflection. We wrap up, weigh, evaluate — just before diving headstrong and determined to do things differently. Uggh, no resolutions for me. I’ll stick to my time-worn commitment: read, sleep, eat.

On that note, let’s wrap up the year with books. Here’s a list of favorite books enjoyed in the past year.

NON-FICTION

Rough Magic: Riding the World's Loneliest Horse Race
by Lara Prior-Palmer

I'm not a horse-person and I loved this book. An unexpected story that ventures well beyond the typical sports-story drama. The writing is drifting, descriptive, poetic, and oddly wonderful. The story unfurls in thought-full pondering with a fallible narrator who tenders unexpected realness. 

I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death
by Maggie O'Farrell

A story of health challenges beautifully and deftly told. This kind of creative and intense literary skill is what turns readers into writers; we long to write with such beauty and weight.

Wild Game: My Mother, Her Lover, and Me
by Adrienne Brodeur

An emotionally complex and extremely addictive memoir that reads like a captivating novel.

FICTION

Notes on Your Sudden Disapearance
by Alison Espach

Stunning! This novel is a sad and heavy story but so, so, good. Masterfully rendered and alive with characters written with depth, perception and tenderness.  (Also recommend her earlier novel: The Adults)

The Five Wounds
by Kirstin Valdez Quade

A tender and redemptive novel spanning one year in a family of five generations. This novel is an unexpected gem, rich with characters who are beautifully flawed. I quickly grew attached to this complicated family and I'm eager for the next novel from this author.

I Married You For Happiness
by Lily Tuck

This is a love story that is tragic, ordinary, and extraordinary — all at the same time. Beautifully told in elegant stops and starts that mimic memory and grief.

POETRY (AND DICTIONARIES)

Bough Down
by Karen Green

Lovely, unusual, beautiful and sad. This evocative 'story' is told in spare but full language that makes you both slow and rush, all at once — combined with small images of text-based art.

Dear Memory: Letters on Writing, Silence, and Grief

The Trees Witness Everything by Victoria Chang

This was the year I found Victoria Chang (she's written nearly a dozen books, what took me so long?!). In Trees, Chang constrains language and by distilling thought she masterfully enlarges emotion. In Memory, she weaves letter, poetry, and memory to create a moving story of family, past and present.

The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows
by John Koenig

I read the dictionary.
I thought it was a poem
about everything.
— Steven Wright

This unusual reference book is a "compendium of new words for emotions" — and from the first passage I'm hooked. Page after page, word after word, this is an evocative and utterly original exploration. It's not a poetry book, or a traditional reference book. It's a door, an entry, a delight for thinkers, writers, readers, feelers. 

All the Words
by Magda Kapa

Poet and photographer Magda Kapa created an innovative "private dictionary of aphorisms, epigrams and "naked verses."  Each entry is no more than 140 characters, creating an economy of essential thought and feeling.

Mistake: mostly done again and again until it has a name.

Light: the idea of a tomorrow.

Dream: memory fast forward.

Age: our body's cage


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What are you reading? Any favorites from 2022?

The world turns on words, please read & write. 

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Thankful Thursday: Library

Isn’t a library a sort of heaven?

The library is my church: a place of peaceful reflection, sanctuary and retreat, a quiet pull of possible worlds.

The best libraries have natural light and nooks where you can comfortably tuck into your thoughts. There is a hush of concentration and discovery, with a quietude that carries tender clarity.

When I am urged to “think of your happy place” I do not imagine a tropical beach. It’s always a library I see.

On this Thankful Thursday I am grateful for the public library. Let us hail these places of refuge and discovery! And now, as censorship is at an all time high, public libraries are working harder than ever to provide equity, diversity, and inclusion in their communities.

The pandemic hit hard and low-income families and people of color struggled more than most. Across the nation, libraries stepped up to meet the need. My local library, for example, has a dedicated bilingual outreach librarian who has spent the last two years going door-to-door, park-to-park, giving free books to children. She’s encouraging youngsters to read and thrive.

During the early days of the pandemic — when we all stayed home — I began borrowing digital books, thanks to the free service offered by my library.

This free service, along with online book holds, allows me to access library books at a distance and at absolutely no cost. It still amazes me that we have this enduring system across the nation: free books!

I’m especially thankful for my library because I have been away for over two years. In my world, the pandemic is not over. Covid cases are ticking up once again, and for the elderly and those with chronic health conditions, these numbers demonstrate that vigilance is still required. This week I visited the library and when I saw librarians wearing masks, I sighed with relief.

This may sound silly to you. Most have moved on, tossed the mask, and forgotten about the old and sick among us. Still, nearly 9 out of 10 deaths are now in people 65 or older, the highest rate since the pandemic began, according to the Washington Post and other sources.

It’s true we now have better tools to address the virus, such as vaccines and medicine. And while most covid cases are now more mild, long-covid still racks many and for the medically fragile catching covid introduces a swarm of complications.

When I was just five and learning to read, I spent six months in the hospital for the treatment of severe asthma. Unable to run or spend much time outdoors, I found my life in letters and books.

When I was 25 and a tumor took my lung, I recovered in the company of books.

It’s been years since I’ve suffered a severe asthma attack. While I still have days of wheezing and tightness, with a steady regime of twice daily medications I’m able to bike and ski and live a ‘normal’ life. But I’m always aware of a sniffle or stumble that can upset the balance.

I share this (or perhaps overshare) not for sympathy but for understanding. There are scores of people in similar situations; they are healthy and vigorous individuals who are held in place with medicine, science and trust. These last few years have left many of us feeling battered and left behind.

We can’t live isolated forever, I know. Like you, I want to attend parties and eat in crowded restaurants. I want to fly without fear. But I remain cautious. And maybe this is why I find profound comfort in libraries and books. In a story, I am transported. I am here and not here. I am not alone.

PRAISE SONG

Praise the light of late November,

the thin sunlight that goes deep in the bones.

Praise the crows chattering in the oak trees;

though they are clothed in night, they do not

despair. Praise what little there's left:

the small boats of milkweed pods, husks, hulls,

shells, the architecture of trees. Praise the meadow

of dried weeds: yarrow, goldenrod, chicory,

the remains of summer. Praise the blue sky

that hasn't cracked yet. Praise the sun slipping down

behind the beechnuts, praise the quilt of leaves

that covers the grass: Scarlet Oak, Sweet Gum,

Sugar Maple. Though darkness gathers, praise our crazy

fallen world; it's all we have, and it's never enough.

— Barbara Crooker

Please join me for Thankful Thursday, a weekly pause to express appreciation for things small and large, from the puny to the profound. Joy expands and contracts in direct relation to our sense of gratitude. What are you thankful for today?

Cozy Companions: 5 Good Books!

Brrr!

Here’s a mystery: Why does winter come so quick and last so long?

I crave sun and love summer. The best thing about winter — aside from cashmere sweaters and skiing — is the chance to spend hours tucked in a blanket, reading good books. Really, this is my ideal winter weekend.

Just as the weather has turned suddenly cold, my reading tastes have made a turnaround, too. Instead of my usual diet of sad novels, I’ve been tearing through mystery/thrillers. And surprise, it’s been easy, breezy and fun! Sure, I’ve read a few duds, but overall this genre has me completely hooked.

Here are a few of my latest favorites:

Who Is Maud Dixon? by Alexandra Andrews
When an assistant steals a famous author’s life, a complicated web unravels. This smart mystery, written by a first-time novelist, will hold special appeal to writers (and voracious readers).

The Mutual Friend by Carter Bays
Sharp, sad, kooky, telling, touching and original — this of-the-moment novel is a masterful mystery of engaging, and surprising, humanity.

The Lies I Tell by Julie Clark
An accomplished con artist reinvents herself with strategic precision. I couldn’t put down this compelling mystery.

The Golden Couple by Greer Hendricks and Sarah Pekkanen
In this easy-to-read thriller, a ‘perfect’ couple is far from ideal. The authors are former journalists who have co-authored numerous best-selling mystery novels.

What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty
This is an easy-to-read, not-quite-light but not-too-breezy mystery with great attention to detail and tone. Moriarty, a best-selling author, is an expert at weaving taut, addictive tales.

YOUR TURN: What’s on your good books list? What should I read next? I love your suggestions. Winter is long, keep ‘em coming!

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The world turns on words, please read & write. 

Let Yourself Maybe

Start small. Write a line, draw a circle, paint a moment, carve a minute. It doesn’t matter how or when or why. Don’t think or blink. Move the hand, move the mind. Make something.

Why?

Because expression expands head and heart.
Because something is stirring that longs to stretch.
Because your something is different than my something.
Because it feels good.

Start small.

Don’t try for “Art” — find instead the tiny seed of a thing that may (or may not) lead to another thing, better thing, bigger thing. Maybe not. Let yourself maybe.

Set aside self-awareness. Let the hand glide and collide. Let go.

The act is the art.

This week I quickly made these “Hurry Up Horoscopes.”

Because I was exercising the writing muscle.
Because my journal writing was stagnant and stale.
Because I was tired of my own words.

I like these acts that have no point or purpose or intentional ‘art-ness’ — just fun. Remember when making was fun, with no pressure to perform?
Remember when making would take you to places deep and hidden, rich and full, all inside just waiting for your attention?

I want to feel that surprise again, to know the suspension of expectation.

And you — do you open hands & heart and leap across the divide of

here and there / stuck and struck?

What are you making?

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The world turns on words, please read & write. 

You can't imagine a stillness that's not

The pine branches, bent sideways by wind, suggest I shut my eyes.

Shut your eyes and you shall see better.

Are you sad? You look so sad, I tell the trees.

We only look sad because you can't imagine a stillness that's not.

 
— from Rough Magic, by Lara Prior-Palmer

1.
What did we once say — that silence swallows and grows?

I'm still chasing both. The light, the light, streams through window, inching across bare floor, slipping through cracks and under doors. Turning gray to gold.

And then, the hunt for silence in which the light can grow. The plant you gave me one year ago is just now blooming, first flowers from a long suffering.

Don't you, too, hold your breath when the light arrives, fearful sound will shutter the calm, dim the glow? It's why we step outside in exclamation — what a beautiful day, we say, naming what we can't control.

2.
We travel to a big landscape with a dry, austere beauty. The days are pinecone quiet and we listen for birds and search for sheep along steep basalt cliffs. The nights are starry and immense. We see so much and nothing at all. Darkness turns everything meaningful and meaningless. 

In a small cabin, we dance to a song we've pressed through time. Of course, I cry — not a sob but a few silent tears. Of course I feel too much, more than the moment, a thousand days collected in this one. Maybe it’s relief, or shadow, or light, or a stillness that is not sad.

3.
The world whispers. We swallow light. Our stillness grows.

Surfacing

So much depends upon

morning light,

            its quiet presence

its pressing withdrawal.

So much depends upon

suppose and repose

how we stretch or

                        slow    

the angle of action,

the shine of almost.

— Drew Myron

* with a nod to Williams Carlos Williams
for the borrowed line, “so much depends.”

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The world turns on words, please read & write. 

What Does It Take?

PROCESS

Everything is change.
We find our voices in making.
Discovery can feel like a tightrope,
the essence of faith.

— Drew Myron

A room, a pen, a slice of light? Coffee, cocktail, tepid tea? A mood, a mindset, a muse? What does it take to move you to make?

Do you stretch limbs long and lean, or curl in a huddle of hangover and hope? A prayer, a poem, a bit of prose? Potato chips, cigarette, a rush of gumption, a grove of trees? What do you need to hum and thrum, to hive and thrive, to step into and out of your self?

Tell me, what’s your process?

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The world turns on words, please read & write. 

Old Tricks

The Art of Dying Well

First you try everything —

memory, gratitude, light.

The trees witness everything

and your braided heart

beats with advice:

let the world

surprise you.

I’m up to my old tricks — collecting words and lines from the nearest thing: cereal box, junk mail, horoscope and bookshelf. This poem is composed of titles from a stack staring at me while I drink my morning coffee.

For writers, readers and word believers, challenge is found at every turn: Write a poem with just six words! Write a letter that includes items from your grocery list! Rearrange these words and make new sense!

Toss me a word, a line, an idea — I’ll make a poem, a ponder, a piece. It’s all taunts and tricks, and these teasers stretch my writing mind and muscle. But mostly they usher me in to possibility.

Poetry is everywhere, says James Tate, it just needs editing.

My book title poem is created from these books: Dear Memory, First You Try Everything, Advice for Future Corpses, The Art of Dying Well, The Trees Witness Everything, A Braided Heart, Gratitude — and a line from horoscope author Holiday Mathis who recently urged Pisces to let the world surprise you.

The element of surprise, combined with attention, stirs the mind and sparks play. Word catching is the start. The rest is add, subtract, hold and release.

Poems hide. In the bottoms of our shoes,

they are sleeping. They are the shadows

drifting across our ceilings the moment

before we wake up. What we have to do

is live in a way that lets us find them.

— Naomi Shihab Nye, from Valentine for Ernest Mann

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The world turns on words, please read & write. 

Thankful Thursday: Filled

Please join me for Thankful Thursday, a weekly pause to express appreciation for things small and large, from the puny to the profound. Because attention attracts gratitude and gratitude expands joy, let us gather thanksgivings.

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Where I live, the land is now flush with fresh food, an abundance of orchards and vineyards. Every field is thick: blueberries, blackberries, apricots, peaches, apples, pears, grapes.

Further on, the fields turn dry in a sepia patchwork of wheat as solitary tractors crawl across hill and slope. A different kind of plenty. A different sort of beauty.

Closer to home, neighbors share their garden bounty, come to me with arms full of tomatoes, cucumbers, and kindness. I am filled.

On morning walks, the sun burns bright. I pass thickets of bachelor buttons and sunflowers with heavy heads. The wind calms and I move into stillness, break through the racket in my head.

At night when windows are wide open, soft air arrives, wraps me in sleep.

Oh this world, this aching beauty.

SEPTEMBER

This far north, the harvest happens late.

Rooks go clattering over the sycamores

whose shadows yawn after them, down to the river.

Uncut wheat staggers under its own weight.

Summer is leaving too, exchanging its gold

for brass and copper. It is not so strange

to feel nostalgia for the present; already

this September evening is as old

as a photograph of itself. The light, the shadows

on the field, are sepia, as if this were

some other evening in September, some other

harvest that went ungathered years ago.

— Dorothy Lawrenson

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The world turns on words, please read & write. 

10(ish) Great Books I Read This Summer

Just like writing, my reading pleasure travels through peaks and valleys. This summer I’m on a ride of really good books.

POETRY

The Trees Witness Everything by Victoria Chang

A brilliant collection of short, powerful poems that are both ethereal brushes and in-the-gut punches.

Passage

Every leaf that falls
never stops falling. I once
thought that leaves were leaves.
Now I think they are feeling,
in search of a place —
someone’s hair, a park bench, a
finger. Isn’t that
like us, going from place to
place, looking to be alive?

Also recommend her other new book: Dear Memory: Letters on Writing, Silence, and Grief

Bough Down by Karen Green

You really can judge a book by its cover. I chose this book for its great design: a vellum wrap cover with interior pages that feature short blocks of poetic prose and ample white space — places to breathe and rest. The evocative 'story' is told in spare but rich language and combined with small images of text-based art, that makes you slow and rush all at once.

Vintage Sadness by Hanif Willis Abdurraqib

Inspired, influenced, and infused with a wide range of contemporary music — from Kanye to Kirk Franklin and lots more — this poetry collection sings!

My fave: And What Good Will Your Vanity Be When the Rapture Comes.

Download the book (and playlist) for FREE.

FICTION

I Married You For Happiness by Lily Tuck

This is a love story that is tragic, ordinary, and extraordinary — all at the same time. Beautifully told in elegant stops and starts that mimic memory and grief.

Afterlife by Julia Alvarez

A slim, quiet novel with deep reverberations. The story reveals one life jolt after another and asks: What do we owe those in crisis? And how do we live in a broken world without losing faith in one another or ourselves?

NON-FICTION

The Invisible Kingdom: Reimagining Chronic Illness by Meghan O’Rourke

“Only a few friends realized at the time how much physical suffering I was undergoing. We are bad at recognizing the suffering of others unless we are given clear-cut clues and evidence. And so invisible illnesses often go unacknowledged.”

Brilliant, insightful, scholarly and thorough. Blending the personal and universal, this books provides a sweeping examination of chronic illness —from mysterious symptoms to failed diagnoses, elusive treatments, and the devastating toll disease can take. With clarity, compassion and painstaking research, the author calls for a seismic shift in our approach to disease — and I am cheering her on!

The Art of Dying Well: A Practical Guide to a Good End of Life by Katy Butler

A no-nonsense guide for living, aging, and dying with meaning and joy. Katy Butler offers clear advice with warmth and wisdom, with an emphasis on a life of quality-over-quantity. Also recommend her earlier book: Knocking on Heaven’s Door: The Path to a Better Way of Death.

In Love: A Memoir of Love and Loss by Amy Bloom

Amy Bloom writes with humanity and humor.While heartbreaking, this story of an end-of-life decision is told with such wit and candor that it left me in triumphant tears.

These Precious Days: Essays by Ann Patchett

A surprising and moving meditation on family, friendship, reading and writing.

“The trouble with good fortune is that we tend to equate it with personal goodness, so that if things are going well for us and less well for others, it’s assumed they must have done something to have brought that misfortune on themselves while we must have worked harder to avoid it. We speak of ourselves as being blessed, but what can that mean except that others are not blessed, and that God has picked out a few of us to love more? It is our responsibility to care for one another, to create fairness in the face of unfairness and find equality where none may have existed in the past.”

SOME THOUGHTS
There are things you don’t notice until you share your reading choices:

• I’m reading a lot of books about illness and death. (Don’t worry, I’m fine).

• I’m reading a lot of books about marriage. (Don’t worry, I’m happily hitched).

• I’m reading books with tree titles that have little to do with trees:
The Trees Witness Everything and Bough Down

• I’m not trying to read anything. That is, my book choices are random and mostly spontaneous. I keep a running list of books I want to read but an interesting cover or great title can change my course, as does the proliferation of Little Free Libraries.

• Reading is my mental health medicine of choice. What’s yours?

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The world turns on words, please read & write. 

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Writing, Not Writing

Are you doing the work of being a writer?

1.
I let the question simmer, an hour, a day, a week, more. In my head I explain, defend, whine and walk away. Your question is innocent. You know what's important to me and you're offering a gentle encouragement. Not what are you writing, or why aren't you writing but the kindness of a gentle lob that asks:

Is your heart beating, your hand moving?
Do you still move in the world touching everything you want to feel?

2.
I've been numbed into an old exhaustion of caring and not caring. Everything matters so nothing matters. The world is weighty and my words are not able to sustain these winds.

 3.
"I remember nodding as if I was fine. I was fine. I had language. And it would be the one thing that would keep returning, like light," writes Victoria Chang in Dear Memory: Letters on Writing, Silence, and Grief. “Language felt like wanting to drown but being able to experience drowning by standing on a pier."

4.
Years ago, a poet-friend stopped writing, for an entire year, by choice. You can read about her experience here. “This decision came as a relief,” she said. “Immediately a kind of cocoon began to form around my deepest self.”

At the time of her announcement, I was energized with my own world of writing, reading, teaching, and couldn't imagine why anyone would push words away. I’d lived through writing blocks and serious slumps but to willingly cease seemed so forced and unnecessary.

Time, however, may have softened my view.  

5.
Swimming, I hear my own ragged breath as a sort of secret language. My arms slice through silence and I kick to shore. It's never easy, the strokes, the breathing. I have to think. But all these years, the still water holds me. Is writing the same — instinct and breath?

6.
Find the light, you say.
But the day is dimming and how can I hold what I cannot see?

7.
Don't try so hard.
Give yourself a break.
(but stop whining)

8.
This is your fallow season, you say. Write anyway.

Nearly every day of his life poet William Stafford rose early and wrote a poem.

“It is like fishing,” he explained. “If I am to keep writing, I cannot bother to insist on high standards . . . I am following a process that leads so wildly and originally into new territory that no judgment can at the moment be made about values, significance, and so on . . . I am headlong to discover.”

9.
Today in the forest, tree roots provide a path.

Thick, tangled, ancient, a staircase and walk, a cragged way forward.

Is paying attention a poem, or just a good first step?

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The world turns on words, please read & write. 

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Sob Stories

Sometimes when the world is heavy and your heart is worn, you need a good, wrenching, cleansing, body-shaking cry.

ca·thar·tic

/kəˈTHärdik/

adjective — providing psychological relief through the open expression of strong emotions; causing catharsis, as in: “crying is a cathartic release.”

— from Whistling in the Dark: A Doubters Dictionary by Frederick Buechner

When it’s time for catharsis, I pull out the proper tools: movies, television, and books.

My top movie for a good cleansing cry is always Magnolia. It’s a potent mix of stellar acting, interlacing storylines, and the alchemy of the Aimee Mann soundtrack [particularly the repeated song Save Me, with the lines: “If you could save me / From the ranks of the freaks / Who suspect they could never love anyone.”]

My latest favorite television binge is Six Feet Under. This odd drama series had a devoted following when it debuted 20 years ago and frequently stirs my out-of-nowhere tears.

My favorite tear-inducing novels come unexpectedly. I don’t go looking for catharsis. It just happens, which makes it all the more powerful and cleansing. Years ago, back when I attended church and had more faith in institutions, I had a similar feeling: a sudden rise of emotion that swells in the chest, gathers in the throat, spills over and leaves me both foolish and released. Tears are such a bubbling mystery.

But sometimes you need help finding those feels-good-to-feel-sad kind of books. Please, let me be your guide:

The Good Women of Safe Harbour
by Bobbi French

A life-affirming novel about a woman facing death and mending a friendship.

“Fight. Such a flat, ugly word. Why was everyone forever harping about fighting? I’d taken to reading the obituaries lately, paying close attention to the ones that read ‘lost her courageous battle with cancer’ or some such nonsense. It seemed to me the mortality had somehow been made over as a character defect.”

This beautiful and sometimes funny book is my favorite novel of 2022.

One Heart
by Jane McCafferty

A quiet character study of the simple and conflicting bonds of sisterhood. This is a novel of both despair and hope.

A Little Life
by Hanya Yanagihara

A staggering, brutal, poignant novel about a man physically and emotionally broken. (Caution: As with most things, readers are deeply divided on the brilliance — or not — of this book).

“Somewhere, surrendering to what seemed to be your fate had changed from being dignified to being a sign of your own cowardice.”

The Magical Language of Others
by E.J. Koh

A powerful and aching love story in letters, from mother to daughter, that is written with a level of poetic detachment that provides space to hold the pain.

“Neither happiness nor sadness are ever done with us. They are always passing by.”

The Great Believers
by Rebecca Makkai

A sweeping story that weaves numerous storylines, from AIDS to art to friendships lost and found. Written with beautiful economy and precision.

“But when someone’s gone and you’re the primary keeper of his memory—letting go would be a kind of murder, wouldn’t it? I had so much love for him, even if it was a complicated love, and where is all that love supposed to go?”

Crossing to Safety
by Wallace Stegner

A quiet novel of deep compassion and insight into the bonds of friendship and marriage.

“Sally has a smile I would accept as my last view on earth...”

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Your Turn: What’s your vice for a good cathartic cry?

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The world turns on words, please read & write. 

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You Reading This

Dear S —

This letter has sat in my head, in my heart, for too long.

I think of you often and jot silent notes that I never seem to send.

So this is to say: I’m thinking of you. You hold a place in my heart where time sits still and daily life matters little. I’ve missed that sense of suspension, where worries are placed gently away.

These last few years have been difficult in such varied and complicated ways. The stress and strain of the pandemic, compounded with racial injustice, economic turmoil, international upheaval . . . and that’s not even our personal challenges of sickness and aging, sadness and defeat. More than ever we see the dominoes of our lives tip, collide, fall away.

How do we keep on? How do you?

I’d like to say poetry has helped me float but in this last year my well has gone dry. I’m now facing the fact that poetry is in my past, a person I use to be.

Maybe it is love that gets us through these difficult days. It’s hardly an original thought — but there’s a reason cliches are called just that: there’s truth in the refrain.

Maybe it is the small gratitudes that sustain. This morning the sun bursts through a month of damp days and I am suddenly restored. Hope springs in small ways and I am larger for it. As the sun moves across the room I’m warmed by the memory of a Stafford line — how sunlight creeps along a shining floor.

I am warmed by the memory of you and I drinking coffee and tea in that cozy coffeeshop, playing Bananagrams while the rain and wind thrashed our small town and we, safe inside, laughed and sighed. How simple time seems as it ticks along, how complex the memory of days past.

I am not waiting for time to show some better thoughts. I am here, now, in my head, my heart, and on this page, thankful for you and our friendship.

With love,

Drew

You Reading This, Be Ready

Starting here, what do you want to remember?

How sunlight creeps along a shining floor?

What scent of old wood hovers, what softened

sound from outside fills the air?

Will you ever bring a better gift for the world

than the breathing respect that you carry

wherever you go right now? Are you waiting

for time to show you some better thoughts?

When you turn around, starting here, lift this

new glimpse that you found; carry into evening

all that you want from this day. This interval you spent

reading or hearing this, keep it for life  —

What can anyone give you greater than now,

starting here, right in this room, when you turn around?

— William Stafford

On Sunday: Rest

In you the heart

seeks no barrier.

Clouds come and rest.

— Drew Myron

A friend wrote recently:

My poems get shorter because there’s too much to say.

I’m there too. In the throes of steady high alert — health, war, injustice, economy — I’m both paying attention and turning away. I’m holding in and back, holding on, conserving every emotional expense. There’s just so much and I’m both enlarged with frustration and reduced by fatigue.

But the world beyond my head lifts in hope: sun strains to shine, lilacs urge to burst, and everywhere trees bloom in glorious color and scent.

All is now, now, now, this, this, this. All is well.

And all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.
— Julian of Norwich

Shall We Drink?

Thought 179, an erasure poem by Drew Myron

Dear You,

The days wear on, and I think of you often. 

Are you healthy, happy, well? 

We are doing the best we can, feeding heart and mind with memories and wine, trying to find light in dark days. You know how it is. You do what you can do. 

We find solace in small things: walks, talks, bike rides, sun and snow. I read and write. We forget more. Quiet lives. 

I don't have much to say these days. It's not sadness I feel, though this letter has taken a tone — but maybe it's a grey day in late winter and a sense of resignation has taken hold. You must know this feeling too, a suspended state that tilts toward acceptance but with a resistance that pulls away.  

We hope to travel again, to see you soon & hold you close. Though the heart strains to contain the world, we have not forgotten how to love.

Love, 
Drew

Thought 179:

Shall we drink? 

My dear friend, 
I have misjudged time!
My friend, I have opened 
my heart, weeping.
Shall we drink? 

— Drew Myron 

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The world turns on words, please read & write. 

Well Read: Keeping the Mind Fed

Oh winter of our hibernation. Like fields, we go fallow, into deep rest and restoration. I’ve gone deep into books and it’s been a good reading season.

Here are a few of my latest favorites, along with lines and passages that struck a chord.

FICTION

Someone by Alice McDermott

A slim, subtle novel of substantial beauty. The novel, says the author, grew out of the belief that on some level, we more or less all struggle with the same things.

“We turned onto the last landing. Going out with this guy, I thought, would involve a lot of silly laughter, some wit — the buzz of his whispered wisecracks in my ear. But there would be as well his willingness to reveal, or more his inability to conceal, that he had been silently rehearsing my name as he climbed the stairs behind me. There would be his willingness to bestow upon me the power to reassure him. He would trust me with his happiness.”

The Five Wounds by Kirstin Valdez Quade

A tender and redemptive novel spanning one year in a family of five generations.

“What no one appreciates is that it takes courage — and considerable dramatic flair — to show up and insist you belong, to invoke genetic claims and demand food and love and housing.”

The Last Thing He Told Me by Laura Dave

An easy mystery with a quick page-turning pace.

“This is the thing about good and evil. They aren't so far apart, and they often start from the same valiant place of wanting something to be different.”

NONFICTION

Tattoos on the Heart: The Power of Boundless Compassion by Gregory Boyle

A practical memoir of radical love from a priest who spent 20 years working with Los Angeles gangs.

“Here is what we seek: a compassion that can stand in awe at what the poor have to carry rather than stand in judgement at how they carry it.”

Your Turn: Are you in hibernation, too? What books are feeding your mind & soul?

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The world turns on words, please read & write. 

Thankful Thursday: Bad Advice

Reminder 13: Bad Advice, by Drew Myron

In my early days of poetry, I attended a writing workshop in which the instructor gave a list of don’ts:

Do not write about the moon.

Do not use these words:
muse, moonlight, soul, eternity, thee, thus, lavender

While I agree the world needs less musing, I love lavender. But because I was green and eager-to-please, I did not question authority. It took me years to sneak lavender into a poem. I still shrink from mentions of the moon.

Advice sticks. Good or bad, it tends to hang around in the head.

Growing up my mother warned us to avoid white bread and McDonalds. Good advice that still hounds me today. But she also frequently told me to “Go play in traffic.”

You take the good with the bad, and hope for the best.

It’s Thankful Thursday, a weekly pause to express appreciation for people, places, things and more. Why give thanks? Because joy contracts and expands in proportion to our gratitude, and these difficult days call for more peace and joy. On this Thankful Thursday, I’m grateful for advice — good and bad — that got me here, still alive & writing.

What are you thankful for today?

More Reminders:

No. 10

No. 11

No. 12

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Under the Influence

What are you reading, watching, singing?

How are you sleeping? What are you eating?

Who whispers in your ear? What roars?

What’s influencing you?

We know that everything is grist for the mill of the mind. Everything is material. We read, read, read, write, write, write, muddle, miss the mark, toss, turn, and start again.

Who knows how the mind filters and files — what to keep, what to toss, and why?

“Your triggering subjects are those that ignite your need for words,” writes Richard Hugo in the seminal book The Triggering Town. “When you are honest to your feel­ings, that triggering town chooses you. Your words used your way will generate your meanings. Your obsessions lead you to your vocabulary. Your way of writing locates, even creates, your inner life.”

Ten years ago, I was struck by this poem by Olena Kalytiak Davis.

Two years ago, I snapped this photo while driving across eastern Oregon.

Earlier this month, a storm delivered days and days of heavy snow.

Two weeks ago, our writing group was prompted to write about the new year.

Holiday, weather, postcard, pandemic, darkness and light, pressure and pleasure — one influence after another. Experience forms feeling, words stir, a poem takes shape.

I don’t know how the mind sifts and sorts. I’m not trying to write anything; I’m trying to write something, everything. The mystery of writing keeps me trying.

What’s influencing you?

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The world turns on words, please read & write. 

Switch & List

Hello Writers, Readers, Thinkers & Feelers,

How are you — I mean, really?

These are the spiral days. The pandemic surges on, nerves fray, winter feels chronically gray, and the mood is a long swirling plummet.

Maybe this is not your story. Maybe you’re meeting up, dining out, and thriving. Your creativity is off the charts, your skin is glowing, your hair bouncing, and your body is leaner and cleaner than ever.

Good for you. I’m not there and I envy your ease.

We’re in fractured worlds, and I’m among those living with health conditions. We tread lightly and with trepidation, while the rest of the world feels healthy and strong, sure they’ll recover from a health bump in an otherwise smooth road.

Because nearly every topic now divides, I no longer share my worries, details or opinions. I’m trying not to sneer at the unmasked and unconcerned. But it’s hard to hold back the fear and frustration. And really, aren’t we all exhausted?

Among writer-friends, I’m seeing a new sort of writer’s block — a creative numb. Externally, the world swirls in a succession of bad events and information while internally the creative world plods along weary and worn.

I feel like I’m living this poem:

The Well

It's not that the well's run dry.
The walk feels too far. It's uphill
in the snow both ways, and
who has the strength to carry
those dangling buckets balanced
on their shoulders now? I'll stay
on this secondhand chair, wrapped
in my mother's holey shawl.
Make another cup of tea, stay quiet.
Grief sits with me by the fire.
Out the window, tiny birds track 
hieroglyphics across the icy ground.

 — Rachel Barenblat

This week our writing group-by-email was prompted to write a list poem. The work trickled in slowly and, well, listless. This poem seemed to capture our collective mood:

Nothing Today

No juncos.

No kudos.

No innuendoes.

No Spaghettios.

No crows.

No jokes.

No hope.

No hoboes. 

No heroes. 

No romance.

No spotted thrushes.

No applesauce. 

No asparagus.

No appurtenances.  

No tennis shoes.

No aphorisms.

No witticisms. 

No chickadees.

No maladies.

No vitamins. 

No robins.

No ravens.

No eagles.

No sea gulls. 

No guile.

No homilies.

No similes.

No turns.

No terns.

No adverbs.

No apologies.

No advertisements.

No boots.

No coots.

No comment.

No point.

— Penelope Scambly Schott

Tell me: How do you keep the pen moving along the page? (Yes, I still prefer pen and paper). How’s your writing, your head, your heart?

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The world turns on words, please read & write. 

What’s In Your Book Stack?

Is there anything better than a stack of books and a comfy couch (except for maybe a stack of books and a warm beach)?

I’m in deep winter mode — snow, ice, cold — and starting the new year burrowed in fiction, poetry, memoir, self-help, and more. Some of the books were gifted to me and many were gifts to myself. Have a book lingering on your want-to-read list? Go ahead, treat yourself.

Here are a few of my latest favorites:

All the Words by Magda Kapa
Poet and photographer Magda Kapa has created a beautifully designed and stunning “poetic dictionary” comprised of aphorisms, epigrams and short “naked verse.”

Mistake: mostly done again and again until it has a name.

Night: sight to the inside.

Sanity: one bank of the river

Whereas: Poems by Layli Long Soldier
This poetry collection has earned a long list of awards, including the National Book Critics Circle Award — and for good reason. Through a variety of poetic forms and styles, Layli Long Solider confronts government responses, treaties, and apologies to Native American peoples and tribes. With astounding restraint and emotional power, this poet offers song and scream with bolts of essential light.

While we’re just over a week into the new year, this book (published in 2017) is now my favorite poetry collection of 2022.

Small Beauties: Poems by Ann Staley
With six books in just ten years, Oregon poet and teacher Ann Staley is a prolific writer, and a master of small moments. She’s an inspiration, a light, and a friend to all.

What saves us is our love for each other
and the moments we recall
at the end of any ordinary day.
What went well? Maybe this poem.

Your turn: What are you reading in this new year?

The World in a Word

New year, new page, new start.

Sure, right, whatever.

Even in a good year — and 2021 was a soul crusher — I’m not a fan of resolutions. The performance of commitment seems, well, a bit much. All that dogged determination wears me out. I don’t ring in the new year as much as let it creep across the floor and hope the draft is warm and the light is soft.

Sometimes I choose a word to guide the way. Remember when everyone was doing that choose-a-word exercise (everyone = poets, writers, bloggers)? One year useful called to me; I mean, really, I was adrift and feeling useless. The more I looked for ways to be of use, the more useful I became (that was a good year). But lately, aside from read, rest and wine, there is no resounding word. Nothing calls me.

Remember when we were urging each other to fail better? That too felt like overreach.

Last night I watched what I thought would be an annoyingly sappy movie — It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (Netflix) — and much to my surprise I cried all the way through. I suspect the tears were stirred not just by the movie but by a wave of emotion that pulled me under because for so long now the world feels both sharp and fragile. My tears were cathartic catch and release. (Today I found the magazine story by Tom Junod that formed the seed of the movie, and I was awed by the writing, and now the movie has moved me even more).

In these endings, and these beginnings, in these days of uncertainty, of sickness and struggle, of unexpected laughter followed by rushing tears, I often feel about to topple. It can be a stinging tone or a car too close. It’s the frozen pipe, the broken furnace, the sour milk, the icy step. All is glass and slick and I’m losing my feet, my head, my heart. This feeling won’t last, I’m sure, but good lord we’ve all been on this road for so damn long.

This year, not a word. Not a list of self-improvements. This poem calls me. The Work of Christmas by Howard Thurman is the work of every day. I’d like to live this poem. Maybe that’s my word — live — and my resolution, too.

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The world turns on words, please read & write.