The Best Stuff I Read This Week

“What would I do without tears,
I used to ask myself in another world.”

— Patricia Jabbeh Wesley / “Healing Will Come: Elegy after Nartural Disaster”

“A new disease caused solely by plastics has been discovered in seabirds … The birds identified as having the disease, named plasticosis, have scarred digestive tracts from ingesting waste, scientists at the Natural History Museum in London say … It is the first recorded instance of specifically plastic-induced fibrosis in wild animals, researchers say.”

— Helena Horton / The Guardian

“… the more I pared my prose to reach 100 words, a different kind of storytelling presented itself. The art of brevity. The art of excision. The art of compression. The art of omission. The art of spaces and gaps and breaths. The art of less.”

— Grant Faulkner / “Addition by Omission: An Interview Grant Faulkner by Curtis Smith” / JMWW

“… based on data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and Google Trends, bookstores are projected to be the most recession-proof type of U.S. business in 2023, followed by PR firms, interior design services, staffing agencies, and marketing consulting services.”

— Emily Temple / Literary Hub

“I think terrible things happen in the world every day on both a personal level and on a global level, but there’s a way that creative work can bring joy. It can provide relief—both as a reader and as a writer. It is a refuge. I think in trying to write about climate change and extinction was my way of engaging with ideas about how to deal with it.”

— Anne K. Yoder / The Creative Independent interview

“Possible to believe in a bearable sort of life
in a white room in one of the tidy anonymous streets
that flash by the elevated subway. Picture it:
a blue chair for reading, a gas ring
for coffee, the lamp in its cheap shade
casting its circle of light.”

— Katha Pollitt / “The White Room”

“Why the waste
God why?”

— Helena Kaminski / “Face”

What I’m Listening To:

“Thoughts and prayers won’t get you there
But I guess they do Make a pretty pair
Nowheresville”

— Quasi / “Nowheresville”