1. It seems to me that this week the poems that struck me have in common something about space and time, memory and understanding. First, Matt Morton's poem "Not the Wind, Not the View," in which I feel the distance.
2. Then Sasha Pimentel's poem "Leaving the University Gym," in which one moment brings another with it, so that they happen together, which to me is what memory always feels like.
3. Then Wayne Miller's poem "We the Jury," in which, again, understanding is made impotent, or perhaps impossible. And what, then, does it mean to reckon with or to take responsibility?
4. This question of taking responsibility is at the heart of Matthew Salesses's forthcoming novel, Disappear Doppelgänger Disappear, which is strange and unsettling, but which also felt strangely familiar to me throughout.
5. Finally, Sarah Gailey's YA fantasy novel When We Were Magic, which I just realized that responsibility and reckoning are also central in, but also loving friendship and self-acceptance.

As always, this is just a portion of what mattered to me recently. I guess I'm thinking a lot about responsibility lately, and what it means to be responsible to each other. How freedom and responsibility seem opposite, but how both are necessary. I hope you're well.

Thanks, and take care.

1. I have often found over the years that I am most comforted by poems that acknowledge darkness, but choose to turn toward the light. Ross Gay's poem "Sorrow Is Not My Name" does that.
2. Lydia Kiesling wrote about meal planning, in a piece which is also about gender roles, and parenting, and the stress of isolation, and, I think, a certain grace in surrender. I think a lot of us will find it relatable.
3. Anna Watkins Fisher's essay "Nothing to Spare" is about the precarity of lean production, and how running the government like a business undermined our infrastructure. It's not comforting, but it is illuminating, I think.
4. This Twitter thread by Mary Neely, in which she reenacts moments from her favorite musicals, is hilarious and utterly delightful. Being a former theater kid, it really hit me exactly perfectly.
5. Last night, my friend Cecily sang us all a little lullaby on Twitter—the song "The Dimming of the Day," which I know as a Bonnie Raitt song—and it was so beautiful it made me cry a little.

As always, this is just a portion of what mattered to me recently. It's been a strange and difficult time for most of us. If you're upset, just know: it's okay to be upset when things are upsetting.

Thanks, and take care.

Last month, I was scheduled to moderate a panel at the annual AWP Conference called “The Craft of the Literary Podcast Interview,” featuring Rachel Zucker of Commonplace, Dujie Tahat of The Poet Salon, and David Naimon of Between the Covers, three of my favorite literary podcasts. Due to the coronavirus, we ended up having to cancel our appearance at the conference, which makes it all the sweeter to be able to bring you this podcast version of our panel. In this wide-ranging coversation, Rachel, Dujie, David, and I talked all about the “how”s and the “whys” of interviewing, including the importance of establishing rapport with our guests, questions about the ethics of interviewing, and what the role of the host ought to be.

Here are some links to where you can listen to the episode:

• Apple Podcasts
• Google Podcasts
• RadioPublic
• Spotify
• Stitcher
• TuneIn

You can also listen to the full episode and find show notes and a transcript on the episode page at the KTCO website.

Episode 12 of LikeWise Fiction features "Seasons of Glass and Iron," by Amal El-Mohtar.

In her 2017 WisCon Guest of Honor speech, Amal El-Mohtar described the genesis of this story, which came about when her seven-year-old niece asked for a fairy tale. “I wanted nothing more than to do so,” said El-Mohtar, “but what crowded my mouth were stories of women isolated, women won as prizes, women hating each other, step-mothers at their daughters’ throats. I was violently struck by how I knew stories full of firebirds and golden apples and djinn but somehow, more impossible to conceive of than all of these was the notion of two women talking to each other about something other than a man.” The result was this powerfully feminist and utterly beautiful story, a story that centers conversation and love between women, and in which women rescue each other. It’s one of my all-time favorite stories.

Listen to the story at:

• Apple Podcasts
• Google Podcasts
• RadioPublic
• Spotify
• Stitcher

1. Danny Ghitis posted a little "quarantinetet" to IG recently, and I thought it was such a jaunty tune, such a lovely little performance.
2. William Meredith's poem "The Cheer" has such a warm-heartedness to it, I found it quite buoying. "The cheer / reader my friend, is in the words here, somewhere. / Frankly, I'd like to make you smile."
3. This season of the podcast Scene On Radio has been exploring the history of inequality in America. They did a bonus episode last week showing how the themes they've been exploring of capitalist exploitation and anti-democracy are showing up in the current crisis. It underscores for me the importance of understanding history.
4. Lyz Lenz wrote about growing up in an apocalyptic evangelical culture, about leaving that culture only to be faced with crisis after crisis, about offering what you can and taking time to look away. The last sentence, especially, meant a lot to me.
5. Finally, this video from a 2009 Swell Season concert (courtesy of Stephen Thompson on an episode of Pop Culture Happy Hour this week), in which Glen Hansard pulled a singer out of the audience for an impromptu duet, was so wonderful and cathartic, and, yes, it made me cry.

As always, this is just a portion of what's mattered to me recently. I've been thinking a lot about what I need versus what I want. I hope that you're getting what you need right now. What's mattered to you lately?

Thanks, and take care.

1. Clint Smith's poem "When people say, “we have made it through worse before”" articulates something about the grief and fear and weariness of crisis—and not just this crisis—that is heavy, but the recognition of it feels like a breath.
2. These photographs by Abraham Votroba have a quiet beauty to them that is just lovely.
3. The breathlessness of David Baker's poem "Checkpoint," how birds and papers and interrogations and nature all run together.
4. Cseslaw Milosz's poem "Hope" was on Poetry Daily yesterday. It showed me something new, a new way to think about hope, and I appreciated it for that.
5. Finally, Lisel Mueller's poem "Things." At the beginning, the anthropomorphism feels funny, almost ridiculous. And yet that last line says something profound, I think, about why we do it.

As always, this is just a portion of what mattered to me recently. I hope some peace finds its way to you today. Tell me, what's mattered to you lately?

Thanks, and take care.

This week on Keep the Channel Open, I'm talking with writer Julian K. Jarboe. Julian’s debut story collection, Everyone on the Moon Is Essential Personnel, is a mix of body-horror fairy tales, mid-apocalyptic science fabulism, and blue-collar queer resistance. The stories grapple with body dysmorphia and transformation, and the realities of laboring under late capitalism. In our conversation we talked about different communities responses to the climate crisis, the frustration of white feminism, and “science fabulism” as a genre. Then in the second segment, we talked about different aspects of food and community.

Here are some links to where you can listen to the episode:

• Apple Podcasts
• Google Podcasts
• RadioPublic
• Spotify
• Stitcher
• TuneIn

You can also listen to the full episode and find show notes and a transcript on the episode page at the KTCO website.

Depending on where you live, we're about a week or so into our period of isolation and social distancing. Maybe a bit more. I hope not much less. It’s been interesting to me to see the different ways people are responding to this crisis. I don’t mean official responses by government or opinions from media, mind you. I just mean how individual people are feeling, and what they’re saying. It’s interesting to note who is responding by turning toward togetherness and who is responding by lashing out.

I don’t mean any judgment here. It’s a stressful time, and stress brings out a lot of emotions that we’re not always equipped to deal with. I just think it’s interesting. A lot of people are reacting in ways that are unsurprising—people I think of as kind being kind, people I think of as angry being angry, and so on. But it’s not all what I expected.

I don’t know that it’s exactly that crisis shows you who you are. There’s some truth to that, of course—for example, times of deprivation can help you see what’s important to you by showing what you miss and what you don’t. But I don’t know that it’s exactly correct that the “real” you comes out when you’re stressed. Stress can make certain emotions feel more urgent, and can lower certain inhibitions we have about expressing those emotions. But I don’t think that’s more real, necessarily. In part, I think that who you want to be is part of who you authentically are. I think your aspirations are an expression of what you value, and that’s real.

Still, I do think we sometimes find out things about ourselves when we’re in crisis, things that may surprise us in ways we find gratifying or unsettling, or perhaps confusing. Sometimes we might find ourselves behaving in ways that we don’t like, and that can make us feel bad about ourselves. That’s natural, too, but what I hope is that we can take the opportunity to reflect on our emotional processes, instead of just flagellating ourselves.

In crisis, we tend to seek a feeling of safety or control, and this can manifest in a lot of different ways. Sometimes it means turning inward, sometimes turning outward, and either way it can help or hurt others. I think that recognizing our behaviors as safety-seeking can be illuminating. Identifying the emotion without judgment and seeing the underlying need can help us get out of the moment where the emotion is controlling, and instead it becomes clarifying. That is, it can clarify what your desire is and what your need is, and how those aren’t always the same thing. Seeing our emotions and desires and needs with clarity gives us the opportunity to understand what our values are. Once we understand what our values are, we can then make intentional choices to act in ways that align with those values.

Remember, though, that it’s hard to act with intention when we are still inside that emotion. Emotions aren’t a bad thing. Emotions are the way your body tells you that you need something. So it’s important to pay attention to what your emotions are telling you about your needs. But your emotional mind isn’t as good at things like making informed choices, planning, analyzing, weighing options. You need your intellectual mind for that. Neither “side” here is better or worse. Both are performing important functions.

All this is just to say, I hope that you can take some time today—or at least soon—to slow down, to feel your feelings, and to be kind to yourself. I think that’s the way you can end up being able to be kind to others.

Many of you already know this, I imagine, but every Friday that I can manage, I post a little list to Facebook and Twitter of things that I read, watched, listened to, or saw that mattered to me. It's just a small thing I do to help me focus on gratitude, to tell creative people that I cared about their work, and to try to share things that others might enjoy. I've been thinking for a while that it would be nice to include these in my newsletter, and this seems like as good a time to start as any.

So, here are some things that mattered to me recently

1. I liked how Dion O'Reilly's poem “Gorge” keeps correcting itself, and how it layers and mixes different kinds of desire. Or maybe they aren't so different.
2. I've been listening to Gimlet Media's audio drama The Two Princes this week and it is a fun, funny, and heartwarming queer coming-of-age fantasy adventure. I like it a lot.
3. Finally, Helen Zaltzman made a special episode of The Allusionist this week, which is just 10 minutes of her reading words submitted by her listeners that they find soothing. It's such a lovely and gentle bit of generosity from a podcaster I admire. I got pretty emotional listening to it, honestly.

As always, this is just a portion of what mattered to me recently. It's been a little challenging for me to keep up with everything lately, but that's okay. I'm trying my best, and I know you are, too.

Thank you, and take care.

Episode 11 of LikeWise Fiction features "Evangelina Concepcion," by Ani Sison Cooney. A young Latina woman growing up in Los Angeles struggles with grief after her mother is killed in a car accident.

Listen to the story at:

• Apple Podcasts
• Google Podcasts
• RadioPublic
• Spotify
• Stitcher