(Just to clarify, the monster isn't Tomasž Šalamun [left].)Listening to Šalamun read earlier this month helped clear my head. Or, more accurately, his reading made me realize I've been feeling out of sorts--not entirely absorbed by my coursework, unable to find the space to write much beyond academic prose or comments on student essays.
Šalamun's voice is soft and careful, and his consonants are round and full, so that you feel you are in possession of a secret. Or something beautiful and dangerous, like a tiger in a room with a baby. Maybe that's the closest I can come to explaining what it's like to read his poems in The Book for My Brother.
I'm excited to see his new poems, but his book is near the bottom of my to-buy barrel right now—my new $20 monthly spending limit on books is a necessary reminder of how little money I have. Thank you, graduate school.
Last month I snagged a copy of Lauren Groff's Delicate Edible Birds out of both loyalty and curiosity (okay, it cost more than 20 bucks). I met Groff at a literary festival hosted by my old college, waited and watched for The Monsters of Templeton and wasn't disappointed. I keep thinking of what shapes my own monsters might take and which fictive lakes they might belong in.
My next $20 is devoted, appropriately, to my friend Zach Savich's first/new book of poems, Full Catastrophe Living, which won the Iowa Poetry Prize. A prize I now think is awarded just for being able to come up with badass titles for poetry collections. I've only heard some of his newer "doodles," as some MFA students here call their poems for workshop, so it should be a pleasure to read something with nice strong lines. Especially since Zach's doodles are pretty damn impressive.
I keep trying to remind myself that it can be okay to hibernate for awhile as a writer, which is a difficult thing to do when all of your buddies are taking such great steps forward. I sneak in a horrible poem now and then, just to remind myself that I have a job to do when all my other work is done. I haven't quite managed to lock any babies up with tigers. But when I do, those babies better watch out.
All of these baby jokes are inappropriate, considering that two of my favorite people just welcomed a new son into the world. I really do like babies, I swear.
