Ahead of the launch of Issue #128, co-editors Cathy Song and Naomi Shihab Nye share book recommendations in an epistolary exchange.
Cathy,
One book I’ve been reading and deeply savoring at this moment is Anne Waldman’s Bard, Kinetic (Coffee House Press, 2023)
I love this book because it is more packed with life and energy than any writer’s memoir I read in a long time. (It includes many poems too)
It makes me feel like I did absolutely nothing in my own life, which I appreciate at this moment, because I am so frustrated about the horrid state of things in Gaza and many other places. It makes me feel there is still so much more to do.
Anne’s ferocious, blazing activism, her fearless calling out of injustice, and her splendid gusto for other voices (co-founder with Allen Ginsberg of the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics in Boulder, Colorado)—all are vibrant and stirring in a weird time such as now.
Love, Naomi
Naomi,
I know I’ve sent you this quote before:
“The old world is dying, a new one struggles to be born. Now is the time of monsters.”
A hundred years ago Antonio Gramsci warned about Mussolini and the rise of fascism. It seems to be one I repeat daily as a reminder that we’ve been here before and somehow reason and goodwill prevailed, however momentarily. A haunting refrain during these ominous not dissimilar times of ever-mounting casualties far and near, fast and furious, no longer in the shadows.
When bearing witness, speaking out, showing up, and meditation and prayer don’t seem to be working, I’ve found solace in a rediscovered treasure, a gift from a beloved sister-in-law—The Anthropology of Turquois: Meditations on Landscape, Art and Spirit by Ellen Meloy (Pantheon, 2002).
Reading her luminous passages is a respite from the chaotic realities assaulting our nervous system. I find myself comforted, floating in gentle blue air, calm water, the best kind of sensory deprivation chamber for these dark times. Open any page.
Love, Cathy
Naomi Shihab Nye describes herself as a “wandering poet.” She has spent more than 40 years traveling the country and the world to lead writing workshops and inspiring students of all ages. Nye was born to a Palestinian father and an American mother and grew up in St. Louis, Jerusalem, and San Antonio. Drawing on her Palestinian-American heritage, the cultural diversity of her home in Texas, and her experiences traveling in Asia, Europe, Canada, Mexico, and the Middle East, Nye uses her writing to attest to our shared humanity. Naomi Shihab Nye is the author and/or editor of more than 30 volumes.
Poet Cathy Song was born and raised in Hawaii. Her work draws on her rich Korean-Chinese ancestry as well as her experiences as an American and a woman. Her first volume of poems, Picture Bride, won the 1982 Yale Series of Younger Poets Award and was also nominated for that year’s National Book Critics Circle Award. Her other collections include Cloud Moving Hands (2007), The Land of Bliss (2001), School Figures (1994), and Frameless Windows, Squares of Light (1988). In 1994, she received the Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America. She is also the author of the short story collection All the Love in the World (2020).
Talk story