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The Best Stuff I Read This Week

“Then at some point there was something called the internet of things, a phrase I never really understood, but anyway I am now all about the internet of the senses, which can’t be monetized or hacked, limited bandwidth maybe but the privacy controls are outstanding.”

— Jonathan Dee / Sugar Street

“We will all be forgotten. This does not frighten me. What I do fear day to day is who am I forgetting.”

— Terry Tempest Williams / Erosion

“In the big factory of perfecting human souls, the Earth was a kind of tumbler. The same as the kind people use to polish rocks. All souls come here to rub the sharp edges off each other. All of us, we’re meant to be worn smooth by conflict and pain of every kind. To be polished. There was nothing bad about this. This wasn’t suffering, it was erosion.”

— Chuck Palahniuk / Haunted

“to live / now is to speak / the
language of the tree / toppled
along the expressway / at night”

— Urayoán Noel / “cinquains written during a tropical storm”

“I do not think I really have anything to say about poetry other than remarking that it is a wandering little drift of unidentified sound, and trying to say more reminds me of following the sound of a thrush into the woods on a summer’s eve—if you persist in following the thrush it will only recede deeper and deeper into the woods; you will never actually see the thrush (the hermit thrush is especially shy), but I suppose listening is a kind of knowledge, or as close as one can come. ‘Fret not after knowledge, I have none,’ is what the thrush says. Perhaps we can use our knowledge to preserve a bit of space where his lack of knowledge can survive.”

— Mary Ruefle / Madness, Rack, and Honey

“We were in love
or in some other thing love served
as cover for. It required constant testing,
trying to humiliate while seeming
innocent, uninvested.”

— Margaret Ross / “Macho”

“Afterward, in my underwear, I would sleep in the position that put me farthest from everywhere I came from.”

— Garielle Lutz / “Rims”

What I’m Listening To:

“Number 9, number 9, number 9, number 9
Number 9
… financial imbalance
Thrusting it between his shoulder blades
The Watusi, the Twist
El Dorado
Take this, brother
May it serve you well
..maybe even then…
If you become naked…”

— The Beatles / “Revolution 9”

The Best Stuff I Read This Week

“I couldn’t stand being seen as data: everything I did or said, everywhere I went, usable, profitable, predictive data. That invisible record, it accumulates, and you drag it around with you even though you can’t see or feel it. I couldn’t stand the idea that every little choice I’d made, however thoughtless or dumb, was now part of my history.”

— Jonathan Dee / Sugar Street

“she’s been places
in her small world
big butter for their
american dreams”

—Nikki Wallschlaeger / “Cows in the Evening”

“So the poetry community was able to thrive even in isolation, and that was really beautiful to me. Poetry became a kind of anchor for people who were feeling completely alone and distraught, and full of anxiety and fear. But as we move forward to more public and social settings, I think it’s important to recognize that poetry will be one way to tell each other about what we’ve been through.”

— Ada Limón / “Q&A: U.S. Poet Laureate Ada Limón” / Poets & Writers

“When my mother was dying of breast cancer, a priest came by to tell her that the pain she was experiencing was equivalent to Christ’s on the cross. But Jesus Christ had no breasts. 36 degrees.

There’s a lot of sadomasochism inherent in the Catholic Church, witness St. Sebastian or the cannibalism of transubstantiation.”

— Bernadette Mayer / “April 18”

“Owners never want to see their hardback babies pulped. Bibliocide seems particularly painful in this fraught era of banned books. Hence, the sprouting of Little Free Libraries everywhere, and donations to public ones for resale, which enable staff to purchase new books.”

— Karen Heller / “We’re drowning in old books. But getting rid of them is heartbreaking” / The Washington Post

“Politically, I guess you could say that I’m a progressive. I firmly believe that everything in and about human society is progressing toward its end.”

— Jonathan Dee / Sugar Street

“Sometimes I just sit like this at the window and watch
the darkness come. If I’m smart, I’ll put on Bach.

I’m thinking now of how far it always seems there is to go.”

— Jim Moore / “The Need Is So Great”

What I’m Listening To:

“Away, you swagpot!
Lick the floor, you dog!
Squeak out your dying wish, you pig!”

— György Ligeti & Michael Meschke / from Le Grand Macabre