In the nonfiction/poetry realm (I'm not sure where the line is for some of these selections), I read:
Sound Machine by Rachel Zucker. A kind of meta-exploration of confessional poetry and the life of the poet/mother/wife as she writes the poems and teaches poetry in a form I'm not sure how to describe: really short paragraphs, sentences broken into stanzas--proesms?
Bluets by Maggie Nelson. This is the go-to book whenever anyone talks about lyric essay or fragmented writing, and while I enjoyed the style, I was a little more meh on the concept--obsession over a color and obsession over an ex-boyfriend. I mean, ugh, get over him and move on.
Heating & Cooling by Beth Ann Fennelly. I loved these "micro-memoirs," some only a sentence long, most around a page, and I just love Fennelly's spirit that leaps right off the page in humor and insight.
The Book of Delights by Ross Gay. This book is a joy to read. Gay set out to write about one delight per day for a year and ended up with around 100 short meditations on quotidian aspects of days spent in gardens, coffee shops, and airports, and finds something wonderful in everyday, ordinary things. I did not want it to end.
Flash Count Diary by Darcey Steinke. This book veers away from the ultra-short prose theme of the month, being a memoir in longish essays about a year in the midst of menopause. I'd heard about it as a book about "menopause and whales," which intrigued me. Whales do make a significant appearance--the killer whale being one of the few animals other than humans that experiences menopause--but there's a lot more to it as Steinke explores the medical, cultural, and scientific approaches to this stage in life that half of the human population goes through yet is poorly understood, little discussed, pathologized, and stigmatized.
Writing Wild by Kathryn Aalto. I really enjoyed this book of mini biographies (back to the miniature theme) of women nature writers of England, the US, and Canada. I was familiar with many of the writers featured but enjoyed learning more about them, and I was thrilled to be introduced to a few I'd never heard of. And I love any nature writing anthology or collection that isn't just "a bunch of old white dudes plus Rachel Carson." It's also beautifully illustrated, which is fun.
Onto fiction, and back to fragments, I read Jenny Offill's novel Weather, about a woman juggling motherhood and climate anxiety in near-future New York City. The fragmentary nature of the prose is a perfect fit for the mental state our modern times engender.
Finally, I finally read a book a friend gave me many years ago, a collection of short stories by Lucia Berlin, A Manual for Cleaning Women. Oh! These stories are so good! I read a lot of short stories in grad school, and so many of them leave me cold, but these are so colorful and lively and interesting and heartbreaking and funny and all the feels. I can't believe I've never encountered Berlin anywhere else. This would have been a brilliant book to read when I was trying to be a short story writer. Go forth and find yourself a copy!
So much has happened this month! The babies turned 16 and 16 and 20, which is...like...I don't even know what to think about having a 20-year-old child. I need more time to process it, like another 20 years. In the meantime, outside, the grass has grown and the trees have made leaves. Flowers have come and gone on the alders and aspens and apples. We already have buttercups and blue-eyed grass in the meadow. Does it seem like spring is happening faster than it's supposed to? Does it seem like everything is happening faster than it's supposed to? (See: babies, above.)
Right now the whole world (or at least my tiny corner of it) is that perfect shade of new green where every leaf and blade is fresh and unmarked by drought or caterpillar nibble, and I want it to stay like this forever, except that I'm as much in love with the caterpillars that nibble the leaves (excluding the brown-tailed moth caterpillars; I don't love those at all) and the warblers that nibble the caterpillars as I am with the green. The other day I was watching a dragonfly whir around my yard and I saw a Phoebe dart after it and I didn't even know which one to root for. This is why I can't watch sports; I want everyone to win--the leaves, the bugs, the birds.
In other news, a painted turtle crossed our driveway the other day, heading away from a patch of soil Curry just rototilled. I'm hoping it laid eggs (and that raccoons don't find the eggs; okay, I'll root for turtle eggs over raccoons). We have tree swallows nesting in at least three birdhouses, bluebirds (for the first time) in another, chickadees in another, and a family of phoebes under the deck. Someone is building a nest foundation of moss in yet another house, and I'm hoping it's tufted titmice. We had a nestful last year and they were the most attentive parents, bringing bugs and clearing out the fecal pellets (unlike the swallows who live in insect-infested filth), and the babies chirped so sweetly from inside the box. I came very close to seeing them fledged but missed it due to impatience. I'm hoping for a second chance.
And this week so many butterflies appeared: tiger swallowtails, azures, American coppers, common ringlets, and a possible sighting of a harvester (the only carnivorous butterfly; if that doesn't give you nightmares I don't know what will). There's simply too much going on to waste time on things like work. I'm working on a plan to reconfigure my life. It's not fleshed out yet, but whatever it eventually entails, I know I need to leave May wide open so that I have time to watch the world unfold and contemplate how old my children have become.
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