! BOOKS !

Posted on by Jami Macarty

Happy May!

And a bird overhead sang Follow,
And a bird to the right sang Here;
And the arch of the leaves was hollow,
And the meaning of May was clear.
―Algernon Charles Swinburne

The month of May is named after Maia―known as the Great Mother, the embodiment of nurturing and growth. That’s perfect for springtime’s buds and blooms, nest building and egg laying. All of this new, new life making itself known while simultaneously we collectively grieve great loss related to the pandemic.

What potent blood hath modest May. —Ralph W. Emerson

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And after winter folweth grene May. ―Geoffrey Chaucer

Welcome!

Dear Reader, I’m thrilled you’re with me here in “grene May,” where I will share dispatches from my reading and writing practices in April!

What did I read in the fourth month of my fourth annual personal big read: #mypersonalBigRead2021?

Here are some highlights!

Parkinsonia florida, the blue palo verde, a Sonoran Desert native which blooms in April and May; image: Jami Macarty.

At the beginning of April, I was preoccupied with proofreading the Spring 2021 issue of The Maynard. For those of you who do not know, The Maynard is the online poetry magazine I co-founded (in 2006/7) and edit. The Spring 2021 issue features The Maynard‘s customary 24 poets, and my focus was on ensuring their 32 poems and 24 bios were error-free. Each time I proofread an issue I’m aware of the process’s calling—for fine-tuned, detail-oriented, and meticulous attention. Proofreading is an undertaking that humbles me! As I comb every line of text, I’m acutely aware of how pressure-inducing and nerve-wracking the process is. You know, when you’re an editor for a poetry magazine, much of your reputation rides on getting names and titles and poems right. As daunting as the task is, it’s equally rewarding. I am proud of the Spring 2021; it is beautiful and makes me happy! I hope you think so, too!

You’re cordially invited to read and listen to the poems of the Spring 2021 issue of The Maynard!

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Once The Maynard was into the world, I turned my attention to deep engagement with the poetry of Alice Notley. Notley was due to read for the Enclave Reading series, and I wanted to steep in her world in preparation. As I think about “preparing” myself for Alice Notley, I get curious. I don’t always “prepare” for readings. Certainly, I have attended other readings “to get to know” poets. However, I have heard Alice Notley read before. All I can offer to myself by way of explanation is that I wanted to be in and in and in Notley’s profound, expansive world for longer than the hour of her live reading. In another way, dear reader, that I felt called to “prepare” myself for Alice Notley gives you a sense of the affect of the energy and power of her writing on me.

We name us and then we are lost, tamed
I choose words, more words, to cure the tameness, not the wildness
―Alice Notley

Another highlight of the month’s reading was Rae Armantrout‘s third (I think) collection, Precedence. This book and beautiful object is special to me because of its publication date (1985) early in Armantrout’s ouvre, and also because of the publisher, Rosmarie and Keith Waldrop’s Burning Deck, based in Providence, Rhode Island. These are not easy books to get hands on, so a bibliophile is happy!

willing
to address the world’s
intelligent and
uninhabited designs.
―Rae Armantrout

In two closings of the loop, I wrapped up April’s reading by engaging with eight collections of poetry in the running for the 2021 New Mexico/Arizona Books Awards for poetry in either the New Mexico or Arizona categories. It was inspiring and gratifying for me to read some of the collections in this year’s field. Au courant! Plus, doing so gave me perspective on last year’s award, won by my collection The Minuses.

palo verde: green stick tree
precipitating yellow blossoms:
green tree, yellow blossoms:
a mind sticks on certain images, certain colors
―Jami Macarty

I read 30 volumes in April, and as of this writing I have read a total of 134 volumes for the year. The books I plan to read are stacked and May’s reading is underway. One of the books I’m poised to read is RESISTANCE: RIGHTEOUS RAGE IN THE AGE OF #METOO, an anthology speaking out against sexual assault, male violence against women, and abuse of power in its many, disturbing forms, edited by Sue Goyette, shepherded by managing editor Kelly Laycock, and published by the University of Regina Press. My poem, “Autumn in the East, the Pilot” joins 80 other voices raised in rage, resistance, and resilience.

Pink, small, and punctual,
Aromatic, low,
Covert in April,
Candid in May…
―Emily Dickinson

I’ll write again soon to share my engagements with the books I read, report back on whether or not the books I plan to read are actually those that I read, and how the reading goes. Until then.

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+ Thank you bows (continuous!) to you, dear reader, for the gift of your attention!

+ Thank you bows to the writers and publishers, who brought their grand accomplishments of chapbooks and books into the world, for keeping me company and inspiring me in April.

+ Thank you bows to poet and editor Sue Goyette, managing editor Kelly Laycock, and the rest of the team at University of Regina Press for their forbearance and attention to the publication of RESISTANCE, and for including one of my poems in the anthology’s necessary conversation.

+ Thank you bows (continuous!) to publisher Stephanie G’Schwind, and Mountain West Poetry Series editors Donald Revell and Kazim Ali, et al interns at the Center for Literary Publishing (CLP) for making The Minuses (2020) with me.

+ Thank you bows (continuous!) to Beth Svinarich et al at University Press of Colorado for their beautiful support to me and The Minuses.

+ Thank you bows (continuous!) to monsoon storm chaser and marvelous professional photographer, Liz Kemp whose monsoon photograph storms the cover of The Minuses.

+ Thank you bows (continuous!) to Vincent K. Wong for his friendship, creative collaboration, and for taking my author photos.

+ This bears repeating: Thank you bows (continuous!) to you, dear reader, for the gift of your attention! If you have any questions or comments, write me!

! Books !

Posted on by Jami Macarty

Happy third month of 2021! Dear Reader, I am grateful for your lovely company here, where I share information about my books, the books of others, and my reading practice.

Since the publication of The Minuses a year ago this month, I’ve been writing to you to share “the constellation of pluses” around my during-the-pandemic-published poetry collection. What are “the pluses”? Pluses take the form of reviews, interviews, and reading invitations I and my poems have been lucky to receive. In this post, I will also take account of books I’ve read so far this new year as I begin reading my way through my fourth annual personal Big Read: #mypersonalBigRead2021.

Bill Neumire on The Minuses: “Macarty theorizes, “The poem exists, arises with and between the poet and the reader; the poem could be thought of as the meeting bridge.” Flannery O’Connor, drawing from Pierre Chardin, told us everything that rises must converge, and in the Sonoran Desert, described with replete taxonomical detail covering its flora and fauna, Macarty gives us a persona that sends herself “into the desert to become a third person.” If, as Don Paterson tells readers in his tome-length new reflection on the very nature of a poem’s exigency, “silence is the space in which the poem makes its large echoes,” this book is humming with desert silence, and forcefully compelling in its echoic impact.”

Bill Neumire offered The Minuses an expansive, attentive, and thoughtful review in issue 17:2 “Space” of Vallum, a magazine of contemporary poetry published in Montreal, Quebec. Vallum, edited by Eleni Zisimatos and managed by Leigh Kotsilidis, gave two poems from The Minuses a home: “Nor’easter” and “Helicopter” appeared in issue 13:1 “Open Theme.” Vallum is also the publisher of Mind of Spring, my second chapbook of poetry and winner of the 2017 Vallum Chapbook Award. Vallum and the good people who edit and manage it are special and important to me.

Set in a desert borderland, Mind of Spring, a poem in three parts, uses contemplation as a compositional element to call to attention the social, cultural, environmental, and personal mechanisms of war. Written across borders—both visible and invisible—between homelessness and home, estrangement and intimacy, lyric and language, the poem reflects on an accreting grief for the world and meaning of the observed, while offering the reader an alternative to the commodified and monetized.

Mind of Spring, #22 in Vallum Chapbook Series, sold out of hard copies, but is available in digital format at either Vallum or 0s&1s, literary playground. Consider yourself invited to visit Vallum—to check out Mind of Spring and to read Bill Neumire’s review of The Minuses in issue 17:2 “Space”!

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Now, to my reading practice, which consists of challenging myself to read a volume, or part of one, each day of the year. For me, a volume is a collection of poetry, a chapbook, a magazine, a literary journal, a novel, memoir, essay collection, etc. I’ve written about why I’m doing this in other posts. The main impetus that prompted this Big Read was the realization that books were stacking into to-be-read towers around my desk. I seemed to be buying books, but instead of reading them I was coveting them. The mounting stacks were causing anxiety about when and how I would ever get to all of the books. Rather than pull out my hair, or do nothing, I decided to just start reading and see what I could read. The first year, 2018, I read 300 volumes. In 2019, I read a few more than 300, and in 2020, I read 200 volumes. I have to type it out: I read 800 volumes in three years. That number also gives you a sense of the to-be-read towers to which I’m referring.

The stacks have dwindled considerably, but there are still more books to read. In 2021, I intend to keep reading.

Here are some of the volumes I read in January 2021. For the first month of the year, I had the loose intention to read mostly writing by women, and that’s what I did. Seventeen of the twenty volumes of poetry and nonfiction essays depicted are written by women. The remaining eleven volumes I read during the month were written by a mix a binary and nonbinary writers, and were read in digital formats. Included: ~250 poetry submissions of three to five poems each—that’s about 1,200 poems!—for The Maynard, the poetry magazine I co-founded and edit.

Reading is, of course, teaching me a lot about myself, writing, the world—and about reading. There are times when I think about reading to such an extent that I no longer quite grasp what it is or how to do it. Reading is getting weirder for me. During a recent think on reading, I came to realize that reading scares me. I’m not convinced I can do it or be good at it. Every time I pick up a book I have the question: Will I be able to read and understand this? Nevertheless, that doesn’t stop me; I just keep reading.

Here’s February stack! For February I made the intention to read Black and biracial writers. I wanted to do something tangible to celebrate, honor, elevate, and be an ally to Black poets and writers. This stack contains 23 (one volume is three-books-in-one!) volumes of poetry, stories, essays, and memoir—all by Black and biracial writers from the US, Canada, Kenya, Ghana. Additionally, I challenged myself to write a reader’s response to each book; you can read those on my Facebook page.

As of today, March 1, 2021, I have read 65 volumes, with #66, Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay, on the go. The recently released The Selected Works of Audre Lorde, edited by Roxane Gay, is on my list!

I acknowledge that reading and having the time to read are privileges.

I’ll be back in touch soon with more reviews of The Minuses and to share more about my reading practice in 2021.

Thanks very much for joining me here, for reading me! I’d love to hear about what your reading practice and what you’re reading. Leave me a comment!

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+ Thank you bows (continuous!) to you, dear reader, for the gift of your attention! If you have any questions or comments, write me!

+ Thank you bows to reviewer, Bill Neumire, for his attentive, thoughtful, generous review of The Minuses.

+Thank you bows (continuous!) to Eleni Zisimatos and Leigh Kotsilidis et al at Vallum for their confidence in and support of my writing.

+ Thank you bows to the writers and publishers who brought their grand accomplishments of books into the world.

+ Thank you bows (continuous!) to publisher Stephanie G’Schwind, and Mountain West Poetry Series editors Donald Revell and Kazim Ali, et al interns at the Center for Literary Publishing (CLP) for making The Minuses with me.

+ Thank you bows (continuous!) to Beth Svinarich et al at University Press of Colorado for their beautiful support to me and The Minuses.

+ Thank you bows (continuous!) to monsoon storm chaser and marvelous professional photographer, Liz Kemp whose monsoon photograph storms the cover of The Minuses.

+ Thank you bows (continuous!) to Vincent K. Wong for his friendship, creative collaboration, and for taking my author photos.

+ This bears repeating: Thank you bows (continuous!) to you, dear reader, for the gift of your attention! If you have any questions or comments, write me!