Volume 4, No. 13: Bookish Loves of March

March Reading Reflections

Greetings, book and treat people! It’s April—the true beginning of spring—and there are daffodils coming up in my yard. I am very excited that in a few months I’ll be eating strawberries. I am very sad that winter is over. I love how soft the woods are in spring. I am dreading summer.

I watched this video a few times the other day. I didn’t know how to hold it (still don’t), so I just kept watching it. It’s not graphic. It’s a time-lapse video of an artist making a piece of art. I found it uniquely devastating. It haunts me. Those dots. They haunt me.

I don’t watch graphic videos of genocidal violence. I do not look at photos of dead children in Gaza. I do not do these things and I am outraged, disgusted, sorrowful beyond words. I do have more to say about this. I know that I’m simplifying the complexity of personal and public grief, witness and complicity, responsibility and distance. But in this moment saying more does not feel all that important to me. I do not look at the pictures and I am endlessly [insert word here—I do not have it].

My friend Elisabeth, who is thoughtful and continually challenges and inspires me with her words, is helping a queer asylum seeker get the legal aid they need. You can learn more and donate here.

---

I love the ritual of writing these monthly reading reflections, but I don’t feel like going through all the books I read in order this time. Instead, in no particular order, here’s a collection of bookish things I loved about March.

Rereading Romance on Audio

I’ve been listening to romance as a bedtime treat for a few years now. It helps calm down my brain, which likes to wake up just as I’m trying to fall asleep and babble to me about all the things that are wrong with my life and the world. Or, you know, make grocery lists. Listening to romance quiets all of that (a bit).

This month, I haven’t listened to a single new romance. Instead I’ve indulged in endless rereads. It’s like listening to a favorite album on repeat. Sometimes leaning into comfort reading is a really good idea. I’ve basically been cycling my way through the catalogs of Cat Sebastian and KJ Charles. Highlights include It Takes Two to Tumble and both of the Doomsday books.

Buddy Reads & Book Friends

My friend Surabhi read Small Beauty during the Trans Rights Readathon, and I love it so much that I started rereading it with her (though I haven’t finished it yet). We also read Naomi Shihab Nye’s 19 Varieties of Gazelle together. I typed my fingers into a frenzy talking about None of the Above and The Transgender Issue with my friend Camilla. I still haven’t finished Love the World or Get Killed Trying, which I started reading with my friend Charlott, but it’s been a joy to chat about it with her anyway. I really love talking about books with smart and thoughtful people. This month has been especially good for brilliant, world-expanding conversations.

The Trans Rights Readathon

The Trans Rights Readathon was an incredible week of book joy. I was in a pretty bad reading slump, and focusing on trans books helped me vault me out of it. I read 20 books and loved almost all of them! I didn’t run a fundraiser, but I did host a book giveaway, encouraging people to donate to trans rights organizations and mutual aid funds. We ended up raising $830 for a wide array of projects, organizations, and trans folks in multiple states.

I read a ton of graphic novels and memoirs! My favorites: Gender is Really Strange by Teddy G. Goetz and Sophie Standing (review), The Out Side: Trans & Nonbinary Comics, Spellbound by Bishakh Som (review), Liberated by Kaz Rowe (review), Brooms by Jasmine Walls and Teo DuVall, and Us by Sara Soler.

I also read a ton of poetry! I didn’t get to Stemmy Things by imogen xtian smith or I Don’t Want to Be Understood by Joshua Jennifer Espinoza, but I read everything else I set out to read. The only one I didn’t like was Transitory by Subhaga Crystal Bacon. Transit by Cameron Awkward-Rich was my favorite. Here are some (extremely brief) thoughts on the rest:

• Rocket Fantastic by Gabrielle Calvocoressi: Very weird and playful! I loved the series of poems about a mysterious entity called the Bandleader, and the way Calvocoressi messes with nature, pronouns, and gender.

• Togetherness by Wo Chan: Amazing food poetry! This book feels like it’s in conversation with Chen Chen and Tommy Pico.

• Some Animal by Ely Shipley: A four-part trans coming of age memoir about bodies, blood, desire, perception, deception, beards.

• Advice from the Lights by Stephen Burt: Meandering and nostalgic poems about memory and childhood.

• Villainy by Andrea Abi-Karam: An all-caps rage song against capitalism and fascism. Obviously I’m all for that, but I did not feel or understand this book.

I also listened to some fantastic audiobooks while walking around with my pup. I loved Shayla Lawson’s essay collection How to Live Free in a Dangerous World, about gender and travel and Blackness and aging and disability and making art and a whole lot more. I also enjoyed Daddy Boy by Emerson Whitney, a memoir about storm chasing and change and learning how to be an adult after having a childhood that wasn’t really a childhood. Finally, Bless the Blood by Walela Nehanda is a searing, loving, messy, powerful memoir-in-verse about being young, Black, queer, nonbinary and having cancer.

Vivek Shraya!

I haven’t met a Vivek Shraya book I didn’t love! I read two during the readathon: God Loves Hair and The Boy and the Bindi. I’m in the middle of She of the Mountains. This means I’m only one book away from having read her whole catalog—I need to find a way to get a copy of Next Time There's a Pandemic!

She’s such a thoughtful and creative writer. My favorites are People Change, The Subtweet, and The Boy and the Bindi, but there’s truly not a bad one in the bunch.

There’s Always This Year & Martyr!

I read Hanif Abdurraqib’s new book and it was the best book I read in March. It is: singular, expansive, stunning. It’s a book-length poem. I can’t stop thinking about it. I don’t know how to write about it. It blew open my heart. I ordered a print copy when I was halfway through the audiobook because it’s that kind of astonishing. It is also deeply entwined with Martyr!, they are spiritually connected, the experience of reading them is astoundingly similar (in a remarkable way, not a rote way). They both believe deeply in the power of earnestness. I want to write about this idea forever.

Poetry School

I have been gobbling poetry all month. I’m still writing poems. I’ve been copying out poems I love into a notebook and writing down what I love about them. I go on walks and think about poems. I just started listening to Wild & Precious: A Celebration of Mary Oliver, and I was sobbing within ten minutes. My name for all of this emoting and creating and walking and thinking and poem-ing is poetry school.

I do poetry school in the mornings and the evenings. I’ve made a ritual of it. I light candles, open my notebook, and play with words. I’ve been slowly working my way through Robert Pinsky’s Singing School, which I’m enjoying.

I do poetry school while reading poems. I’m reading a little bit of Mary Oliver every month. In March I read West Wind, which I loved, but I also spent awhile thinking and writing about New and Selected Poems Volume 2, which I read in January.

In March I did a lot of poetry school while walking around. I walked through a glittering afternoon of ice and sunlight and thought about language and what it can and cannot do.

I walked on the ridge with my pup, and tried to write some of the truth of her—her creature-ness, her nowness, the way she sniffs—into poems.

I read a lot of incredible collections in poetry school this month. Two of my favorites: Black Pastoral by Ariana Benson (a truly breathtaking work about Blackness, nature, American history, futurity) and An Ordinary Woman by Lucille Clifton. It’s Lucille Clifton, do I need to go on? But this poem did something to my brain and heart and the palms of my hands.

new bones

we will wear
new bones again.
we will leave
these rainy days,
break out through
another mouth
into sun and honey time.
worlds buzz over us like bees,
we be splendid in new bones.
other people think they know
how long life is.
how strong life is.
we know.

I wrote a golden shovel after Lucille Clifton using this whole poem, and it’s a mess, but writing it was a joy. I love poetry school. I love poets.

My Friend Rosamond’s Newsletter

My friend Rosamond writes a newsletter about books and dogs and being a human with a heart in a hard and beautiful world. Here’s a secret: I don’t actually read that many newsletters. I read the special ones. Hers is a special one. It’s only hers, you know? No one else could write it. In March she wrote an especially beautiful piece about grief.

On Grief Memoirs

I also love reading her monthly reflections on books and trying and loving dogs and being gay. Like, hard relate! Anyway, here are some beautiful flowers we looked at together a few weeks ago.

And here is my pup in bed the other morning. Roz would want me to show you this.

Great Falls Books Through Bars

I spent a few hours volunteering with Great Falls Books Through Bars, packing up books to send to incarcerated people. I wrote about it here. Their next volunteer day is on April 13th, maybe I’ll see you there?

Poetry Events

I’ve started following a lot of poets on Instagram because it’s a great way to learn about events and opportunities. That’s how I found out about a virtual workshop taught by Shelley Wong on maximalist poetry. I loved Wong’s book, As She Appears, and also I am a maximalist, so. It was such a lovely hour of talking, thinking, reading poems, and writing. It was hosted by The Poetry Society of New York. They have $20 virtual workshops almost every Thursday led by some amazing poets. I just signed up for this one!

This is not a picture of a poetry-related event. This is a picture of one of the weekly-ish study dates I’ve been having with my friend Will. He comes over to my house and we co-work and then we have tea. It’s lovely. Just like poetry.

Picture Books

I READ SO MANY AMAZING PICTURE BOOKS THIS MONTH!

I love picture books SO MUCH. I am so grateful to Sarah Miller who is 90% of why I read picture books now. All adults deserve this. Don’t deny yourself! Here are my favorites from March. Links will take you to my reviews.

• Chirri & Chirra: The Rainy Day: Whimsical perfection!

• Guji Guji: A new all-time favorite. Warm and hilarious. Absolutely stunning.

• Blue Floats Away: A poem of a picture book about growing up and also the water cycle and also change.

• A is for Bee: My favorite alphabet book I’ve ever read! An amazing book about language and translation!

• Kapaemahu: A beautiful and thoughtfully told story.

• Bodies are Cool: Truly a perfect book about bodies.

• My Rainbow: A joyful book about a family who helps their trans daughter solve a problem.

• When Aidan Became a Brother: Another joyful book about all the magic a trans kid brings into his family.

• Benjamin’s Thunderstorm: A beautiful ode to rain.

Catch you next week, bookish friends. I hope you’re staying open, as much as you can, like spring.