Memorable Stuff I Read This Week

Which book do you recommend most?

I think it’s a good idea to know what the Bible actually says because—while yes, it may be inspiring to you—it’s also the book Americans often misuse to help usher in fascism. Better knowing the book could help resistance efforts. It’s also full of mythology and poetry and archetype, all of which writers use to strengthen our work.

— Jericho Brown / “Writing Advice, Book Recommendations, and More from the Newest Literary MacArthur Fellows” / lithub.com

I want a poem that is a warning,
a poem that makes me check to see
if I left the shotgun by the door,
a poem that’s a runny nose, a sneeze, a poem
that’s the moment the sky turns green.

— Kenyatta Rogers / “Ars Poetica”

In the search for a communal metanarrative-innumerable think pieces, roundtables, and interviews on the condition of the written word in America—we risk suffocating the possibilities of the poetic form and idiosyncratic writing generally.

So a time of normative discourse must give way to a time of radical action.

A period of studied subcultural formation must transition into a period of frenetic individualism that drives us toward unpredictable expressions and collaborations.

— Seth Abramson & Jesse Damiani / “Series Editors’ Introduction” / BAX 2018: Best American Experimental Writing

… I know I am bound to the ritual
world—in my dreams I teach myself
how to swallow a sword and I stack
the stones until they make a cairn.

— Lara Mimosa Montes / “The Cairn”

You wake from a nightmare with a certain relief. But that doesnt erase it. It’s always there. Even after it’s forgotten. The haunting sense that there is something you have not understood will remain long after.

— Cormac McCarthy / Stella Maris

All right. Try this,
Then. Every body
I know and care for,
And every body
Else is going
To die in a loneliness
I can’t imagine and a pain
I don’t know. We had
To go on living.

— James Wright / “Northern Pike”

I want to confirm that the system, on its own, is *not* good enough. You are not wrong, it is not your fault, and the fact that you struggle is not because you are not good enough, or that you haven’t hustled hard enough. Corporations are running the show, and democracy is turning into oligarchy.

But I still want to say, Keep writing anyway. Keep making art. Keep creating music. Not as a direct act of political resistance, necessarily. But as a way of prioritizing yourself, your inner life. As a way of accessing realities beyond this society controlled by unimaginative powers. I still think it matters.

— Ling Ma / “Writing Advice, Book Recommendations, and More from the Newest Literary MacArthur Fellows” / lithub.com

What I’m Listening To:

Police get taller
A shanty town
Soldier get longer
A shanty town
Rudeboy a weep and a wail
A shanty town

— Desmond Dekker & The Aces / “007 (Shanty Town)”