Floodmark: Reading List

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Your first exposure to comics may have been limited to the mainstream superhero genre, and as such, you may have been unwilling to dig deeper into what the medium has to offer. While it can be quite exhausting to rifle through stacks of celluloid depicting hyper-masculine beefcakes, there are gems to be found. This series of reading recommendations aims to find those gems for you. In the previous installment of this series, I picked a couple of my favorite "comics of the weird". For this week, the category is...

Postmodern Comics

This category of comics is dominated by the presences of graphic novelist Chris Ware. Contributor to The New Yorker and author of the recent Monograph and Building Stories experiments with the medium, consistently pushing the medium, trying to find the places where the comics are unique - places where they can do things that film, literature, and video-games can’t. Nowhere is this more apparent in Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth. Corrigan tells the parallel stories of two men named James Corrigan, one a boy living under the thumb of an rough and cold father in 1893 Chicago, the other his grandson, living in late 20th-century Chicago. The latter Corrigan, the titular Jimmy, meets his father for the first time and we experience his thoughts, his fears, and his fantasies through stream of consciousness non-linear narration told through some of the greatest innovations in visual storytelling, all of which builds to an emotionally devastating climax.

Image from Jimmy Corrigan courtesy of The Guardian

Also Worth Noting: “I Guess” by Ware, which Charles Hatfield called “a radical questioning of the way comics work”. Ware recognizes the creative potential of dissonance between word and image and uses it to brutal affect.

Image from "I Guess" courtesy of From Dusk Till Drawn

Runner Up: Here by Richard McGuire. The non-linear story of a place and all the people who interact with it. Absolutely one of my favorite graphic novels, but because I find myself thinking about and rereading Corrigan more often, Here is relegated to a runner up.

Image from Here courtesy of Harpers

See you next time as we explore another exciting genre of graphic novels!

WHAT IS RRR? Reading Resolution Round-Up.

WHAT IS RRR? It's a challenge to myself and to you. In 2017 and beyond, let's read more inclusively. Let's be better allies.

BUT WHAT IS RRR? Each month I'll will be actively seeking out poets whose voices have been historically marginalized (EX: PoC, LGBTQIAP+, women, immigrants, Muslims, refugees, ETC.) and I will share a round-up of what I've been reading. Expect relatively little commentary from me. This series is about their voices, not mine. Read more about this project in January's Letter from the Editor.

WHAT DID YOU READ LAST MONTH? Here's what I read in January.

What a whirlwind month! I had the fortunate opportunity to follow up on January's RRR post by being able to hear Danez Smith and Oliver Baez Bendorf read at AWP events. (BOTH SO SO INCREDIBLE.) I also bought Samiya Bashir's book Field Studies from the NightBoat Books AWP booth....from Kazim Ali! (Who is incredibly nice, by the way.) I also had the opportunity to learn more about Sibling Rivalry Press (which published Christopher Soto, featured last month) and their current collections. Although I didn't get to hear Ocean Vuong read at AWP (sobs), I do have the comfort of knowing I was in the same gigantic conference center as him for three days. So there's that.

FEBRUARY: Aracelis Girmay, Tim Seibles, Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib, Sarah Kay, Nicole Homer, Claudia Rankine, Brenda Shaughnessy, T Fleischmann, Vievee Francis, and Jamaal May.

1. Aracelis Girmay

via BOA Editions

I was able to hear Aracelis Girmay read the the Split this Rock/BOA Editions sponsored reading at AWP and I cannot even begin to describe the experience. It was intense, complex, painful, and so, so beautiful. I immediately bought two of her books: The Black Maria and Kingdom Animalia. I cannot recommend Girmay enough. Start with this excerpt from "The Black Maria" from Poetry.

The fight, first, to open, then to breathe,

& then to close. Each of us entering the world

& entering the world like this.

Soft. Unlikely. Then —

the idiosyncratic minds & verbs.

Beloveds, making your ways

to & away from us, always, across the centuries

2. Tim Seibles

via Etruscan Press**

I heard Tim Seibles read the Split this Rock/BOA Editions AWP reading as well. (This reading as fire, by the way. Danez Smith also read.) His work cuts to the heart of racial tension, violence, and inequality in America. He also has a wonderful reading voice that molds itself around the shifting tones in his work. Start with his poem "Mosaic" available from Poetry.

In America skin was

where you belonged, a who

you were with, a reason

someone might: how — at the

parties of hands unknown —

astonishing deaths

could meet you.

3. Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib

via Button Poetry**

I heard Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib perform at the Page Meets Stage event at AWP and....guys, I can't even describe how good it was. His book, The Crown Ain't Worth Much is out through Button Poetry, and I suggest you check it out. There's a lot of Youtube footage floating around of his performances, too. Here is a list of his published work available online. Check it out.

4. Sarah Kay

via Write Bloody

I also heard Sarah Kay perform at the Page Meets Stage event at AWP. I think I almost cried in the third row at one point because it was so overwhelmingly good. Start with the one that went crazy viral: If I Should Have a Daughter. (I linked to the text, but her performance is not to be missed and can be easily found on YouTube.) And then watch all her videos here.

5. Nicole Homer

via Write Bloody

Nicole Homer is a poet I ALSO say perform at the Page Meets Stage event at AWP. Spoiler alert: she is also an incredible poet, and her performance left me in awe. Here is video to her poem "Motherhood". And here is a link to all her published work available online.

6. Claudia Rankine

via Graywolf Press**

I mean, do I even need to sell you on Rankine's Citizen? It is so necessary that if you haven't read it, you need to go read it ASAP. It is a masterpiece.

because white men can't
police their imagination
black men are dying

7. Brenda Shaughnessy

via Copper Canyon Press

I have been a fangirl of Brenda Shaughnessy since my freshman year in college and I have never, ever looked back. I got to be in the same room as her at AWP and it was beautiful. You should read all her work, but you can start with her poem "I'm Over the Moon" (warning: intense lfeatured on the Poetry Foundation.

8. T Fleischmann

via Sarabande Books

I read T Fleischmann's book Syzygy, Beauty, after picking it up from the Sarabande Books booth at AWP. It's a nonfiction essay in (what I view as) prose poem units and it's incredible. I'm including the book synopsis from Sarabande Books' website below because they say it best:

"The word “syzygy” refers at once to the alignment of celestial bodies in astronomy, repeating relationships in mathematics, and male/female pairings in Gnosticism. T Fleischmann’s Syzygy, Beauty, then, is an essay ordered by complimentary needs: art criticism, the narrator's construction of a house, and the direct address of a lover. Playing with scale and repetition, the speaker keeps us off-center, and therefore always looking, as we are lead through an intimate relationship that is complicated and deepened by multiple partners, gender transitions, and itinerancy. In language both plainspoken and startling, Fleischmann attempts a reconciliation between the sadness and beauty that come with a love that must always be, in some ways, distant."

9. Vievee Francis

via Northwestern University Press**

I hadn't heard of Vievee Francis until I encountered her on a panel at AWP, but boy am I so, so glad I did. She rescued a panel about sentimentality in women's writing from the clutches of white feminism and overall said some incredibly powerful things about femininity and what it means to be a black woman. Check out an interview with her on Muzzle, and then read one of her poems published on Rattle.

10. Jamaal May

via Alice James Books**

I picked up Jamaal May's book The Big Book of Exit Strategies from the Alice James Books booth at AWP during their stellar Saturday sale, and I was not disappointed. Check out his poem "There Are Birds Here" published in Poetry for starters.

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WHAT'S NEXT? Share this post. Then share it again next week. Use your platform to make sure these voices are heard. Listen more and talk less. Support the featured poets -- buy their books, go to their readings, shake their hands, and thank them. Resist the urge to make their work about you. Reflect and listen some more. And of course, never stop reading better.

See you next month.

Read more of Alexandria's work on Floodmark.

WHAT IS RRR? Reading Resolution Round-Up.

WHAT IS RRR? It's a challenge to myself and to you. In 2017 and beyond, let's read more inclusively. Let's be better allies.

BUT WHAT IS RRR? Each month I'll will be actively seeking out poets whose voices have been historically marginalized (EX: PoC, LGBTQIAP+, women, immigrants, Muslims, refugees, ETC.) and I will share a round-up of what I've been reading. Expect relatively little commentary from me. This series is about their voices, not mine. Read more about this project in January's Letter from the Editor.

****

JANUARY: Christopher Soto, Ocean Vuong, Warsan Shire, Danez Smith, Sandra Lim, Kristiana Rae Colón, Samiya Bashir, Natalie Diaz, Oliver Baez Bendorf, and Monica Youn.

1. Christopher Soto

via Sibling Rivalry Press

Christopher Soto's chapbook, sad girl poems (Jan. 2016, Sibling Rivalry Press), was sent to me from a stranger through "Secret Stanza". The introduction (as well as the poems of course) is so necessary.

Start here: [Somewhere in Los Angeles] This Poem Is Needed, via The American Poetry Review. Here's an excerpt from the poem:

Mothers are getting // handcuffed & harassed. Homes are being

Crushed [like cigarette butts]. Everyone I know

Hates the racist police & wants a revolution. // But we seldom

Aim the gun... Have you heard // how the bullets

Sing their anthem // throughout the body?? // It sounds like

God shutting the door— Bang. Bang.

2. Ocean Vuong

via Copper Canyon Press

Like pretty much everyone in the poetry community, I read Vuong's Night Sky With Exit Wounds (Apr. 2016, Copper Canyon Press) and died a million tiny deaths because it was so, so, SO good. You need to read it. If you can't afford the collection, start with Aubade with Burning City, via The Poetry Foundation. I honestly can't choose which part of the poem to quote as a teaser because I love every syllable of it. You'll just have to take my word for it and read the poem. The Poetry Foundation also has a recording of Vuong reading the poem available. He has additional poems published online that are accessible. Find them on his website.

3. Warsan Shire

via Amazon

Warsan Shire has long been one of my favorite poets since I discovered her work in college. I even had the incredible opportunity to take an online class about poetry and trauma through The Poetry School. Her collection Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth (Dec. 2011, flipped eye publishing limited) is incredibly powerful and I highly recommend. I thought I'd share her poem The House, via The Poetry Foundation, which I recently found and have already read ten times over. Here's how it starts:
i
Mother says there are locked rooms inside all women; kitchen of lust,
bedroom of grief, bathroom of apathy.
Sometimes the men - they come with keys,
and sometimes, the men - they come with hammers.

4. Danez Smith

via Danez Smith's website

I found Danez Smith's poem From "summer, somewhere", via The Poetry Foundation, in the Ecopoetics issue of Poetry. I was on a plane home from Los Angeles, and I wept openly. (Note: not saying that to elicit sympathy for myself; only to showcase the raw power set loose in the poem.) Here's an excerpt from the first section:

...here, there is no language

for officer or law, no color to call white.

if snow fell, it’d fall black. please, don’t call

us dead, call us alive someplace better.

we say our own names when we pray.

we go out for sweets & come back.

5. Sandra Lim

via W.W. Norton

I had the great pleasure to hear Sandra Lim speak and read from her latest collection The Wilderness (Sept. 2014, W.W. Norton) when she visited George Mason University. Before that, though, I had the even greater pleasure of reading and living with her wonderful collection. Here's a good place to start: Vous Et Nul Autre, via Drunken Boat 18. This is how it starts:

I have hung our dwelling with enormous
nets, crackerjack feeler though you are.

But nets don’t help us in the awful
enormity of the emotion of thinking.

The electrifying interiors keep
turning their faces from the light.

6. Kristiana Rae Colón

via GoodReads

I found Kristiana Rae Colón while seeking out Latinx poets. I stumbled upon a remix for remembrance, via The Poetry Foundation, and was instantly captivated. She has many, many other talents outside of poetry as well. (Read more about that on her blog.) Here's a stanza from her poem "a remix for remembrance", dedicated to her students, that I found particularly lovely:

Speak away the limits to heights of your existence

Be a witness, be a record, be a testament, a triumph

Set your poems flying in the glitter of the planets

Feed open mouths with truth, the truth is we are famished

The Universe is starving for the symphonies you play

Clarinets and thunder and the syllables you say

are the instruments: you are infinite. Stretch your hands to heaven

7. Samiya Bashir

via Samiya Bashir's website,
forthcoming from Nightboat Books Spring 2017

Samiya Bashir is another poet that I found within the pages of Poetry's Ecopoetics issue. Her poem Blackbody Curve, via The Poetry Foundation, had my brain churning in a million directions with its innovative structure.

Here's how it starts:

Stairs: a rushed flight down thirty-eight; French doors unlocked always.

Always: a lie; an argument.

Argument: two buck hunters circle a meadow’s edge.

I know I'll be keeping an eye out for Bashir's forthcoming collection, Field Theories (left).

8. Natalie Diaz

via Copper Canyon Press

I heard Natalie Diaz speak and read at the Fall for the Book festival in Fall 2016 and she was incredible. The entire audience sat in stunned silence every time she finished reading a poem. If you aren't paying attention to her voice, you're not doing this whole "poetry thing" right. Start with this poem: My Brother at 3 A.M., via The Poetry Foundation. This is another one where I can't decide on an excerpt, so just take my word for it and go read the full poem. I'm currently in the process of buying a copy of When My Brother Was an Aztec (May 2012, Copper Canyon Press), so perhaps...more poems from Diaz to come on RRR!

9. Oliver Baez Bendorf

via Kent State University Press

I also discovered Oliver Baez Bendorf through the Fall for the Book festival last year. He read in the same session as Natalie Diaz, and was also absolutely incredible. I left this reading last night swimming through their poetry. The Spectral Wilderness (Jan. 2015, Kent State University Press) is another collection on my wish list. Bendorf's work is important and resonant on so many levels. Natalie Diaz introduces his work beautifully and selects two great poems ("Queer Facts About Vegetables" is a very memorable one from his reading in Fall 2016) to feature in this article from Poetry Society.

10. Monica Youn

via Graywolf Press

I missed Monica Youn when she came to read at Fall for the Book (argh!), but I did catch her episode on the New Yorker poetry podcast. Her collection Blackacre (Sept. 2016, Graywolf Press) has been kicking ass and taking names lately. Yes, this is another collection on my wish list. You can start with the collection's namesake poem, Blackacre, via The Poetry Foundation. Here's an excerpt from the second section:

A wide-eyed girl is extreme in her unliddedness, her bare membranes flinching at any contact, vulnerable to motes, to smuts, to dryness. A wide-hipped girl extends the splayed arches of her body to bridge the generational divide. A wide-legged girl unseals a portal between persons; she is disturbing to the extent that she is open to all comers, a trapdoor that must be shut for safety’s sake. A wide-eyed girl is often thought desirable; a wide-hipped girl is often thought eligible; a wide-legged girl is often thought deplorable. A wide-legged girl is rarely wide-eyed, though she may have started out that way.

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WHAT'S NEXT? Share this post. Then share it again next week. Use your platform to make sure these voices are heard. Listen more and talk less. Support the featured poets -- buy their books, go to their readings, shake their hands, and thank them. Resist the urge to make their work about you. Reflect and listen some more. And of course, never stop reading better.

See you next month.

Read more of Alexandria's work on Floodmark.

(source)

Add another poet to your must-read list. Ellen Bass is a contemporary poet currently living in Oregon and teaching at Pacific University. She is the author of three poetry collections and several other books meant to empower the LGBTQIA+ community and survivors of sexual abuse. Her poetry itself resounds with an unconventional wisdom, to match her verse’s delightful unexpected imagery. Read for yourself.

(source)

For My Daughter on Her Twenty-First Birthday

When they laid you in the crook

of my arms like a bouquet and I looked

into your eyes, dark bits of evening sky,

I thought, of course this is you,

like a person who has never seen the sea

can recognize it instantly.

They pulled you from me like a cork

and all the love flowed out. I adored you

with the squandering passion of spring

that shoots green from every pore.

You dug me out like a well. You lit

the deadwood of my heart. You pinned me

to the earth with the points of stars.

I was sure that kind of love would be

enough. I thought I was your mother.

How could I have known that over and over

you would crack the sky like lightning,

illuminating all my fears, my weaknesses, my sins.

Massive the burden this flesh

must learn to bear, like mules of love.

(source)

If You Knew

What if you knew you’d be the last

to touch someone?

If you were taking tickets, for example,

at the theater, tearing them,

giving back the ragged stubs,

you might take care to touch that palm,

brush your fingertips

along the life line’s crease.

When a man pulls his wheeled suitcase

too slowly through the airport, when

the car in front of me doesn’t signal,

when the clerk at the pharmacy

won’t say Thank you, I don’t remember

they’re going to die.

A friend told me she’d been with her aunt.

They’d just had lunch and the waiter,

a young gay man with plum black eyes,

joked as he served the coffee, kissed

her aunt’s powdered cheek when they left.

Then they walked half a block and her aunt

dropped dead on the sidewalk.

How close does the dragon’s spume

have to come? How wide does the crack

in heaven have to split?

What would people look like

if we could see them as they are,

soaked in honey, stung and swollen,

reckless, pinned against time?

Bass has a knack for stanch honesty, the kind the grabs you by the front of your shirt and forces you to open your eyes and stare at the reality of things, as they are, whether it be uncomfortable, dirty, crippling.

(source)

Relax

Bad things are going to happen.

Your tomatoes will grow a fungus

and your cat will get run over.

Someone will leave the bag with the ice cream

melting in the car and throw

your blue cashmere sweater in the drier.

Your husband will sleep

with a girl your daughter’s age, her breasts spilling

out of her blouse. Or your wife

will remember she’s a lesbian

and leave you for the woman next door. The other cat–

the one you never really liked–will contract a disease

that requires you to pry open its feverish mouth

every four hours. Your parents will die.

No matter how many vitamins you take,

how much Pilates, you’ll lose your keys,

your hair and your memory. If your daughter

doesn’t plug her heart

into every live socket she passes,

you’ll come home to find your son has emptied

the refrigerator, dragged it to the curb,

and called the used appliance store for a pick up–drug money.

There’s a Buddhist story of a woman chased by a tiger.

When she comes to a cliff, she sees a sturdy vine

and climbs half way down. But there’s also a tiger below.

And two mice–one white, one black–scurry out

and begin to gnaw at the vine. At this point

she notices a wild strawberry growing from a crevice.

She looks up, down, at the mice.

Then she eats the strawberry.

So here’s the view, the breeze, the pulse

in your throat. Your wallet will be stolen, you’ll get fat,

slip on the bathroom tiles of a foreign hotel

and crack your hip. You’ll be lonely.

Oh taste how sweet and tart

the red juice is, how the tiny seeds

crunch between your teeth.

(source)

Ellen Bass reminds us not to fear life, while simultaneously recognizing life is to be feared. She seizes the complexity and hardship and living and puts it into images we can hold on to.

Read more of Alyssa's work on Floodmark.

Pages

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See you next month. Read more of Alexandria's work on Floodmark.

JANUARY: Christopher Soto, Ocean Vuong, Warsan Shire, Danez Smith, Sandra Lim, Kristiana Rae Colón, Samiya Bashir, Natalie Diaz, Oliver Baez Bendorf, and Monica Youn.

1. Christopher Soto via Sibling Rivalry Press Christopher Soto's chapbook, sad girl poems (Jan. 2016, Sibling Rivalry Press), was sent to me from a stranger through "Secret Stanza". The introduction (as well as the poems of course) is so necessary.

2. Ocean Vuong

3. Warsan Shire

4. Danez Smith

5. Sandra Lim

6. Kristiana Rae Colón

7. Samiya Bashir

8. Natalie Diaz

9. Oliver Baez Bendorf

10. Monica Youn

Bass has a knack for stanch honesty, the kind the grabs you by the front of your shirt and forces you to open your eyes and stare at the reality of things, as they are, whether it be uncomfortable, dirty, crippling.

Ellen Bass reminds us not to fear life, while simultaneously recognizing life is to be feared. She seizes the complexity and hardship and living and puts it into images we can hold on to.

See you next month.

Read more of Alexandria's work on Floodmark.

1. Christopher Soto

via Sibling Rivalry Press

Christopher Soto's chapbook, sad girl poems (Jan. 2016, Sibling Rivalry Press), was sent to me from a stranger through "Secret Stanza". The introduction (as well as the poems of course) is so necessary.