fade into you
Dear You—
First things first: my book, The Loneliest Show On Earth, is available now from Bottlecap Press. It would mean an awful lot to me if you bought it, read it, told people about it, reviewed it on Goodreads or on your blog, any or all of the above.
I also have a poem in the new issue of Parentheses—which just so happens to be an excerpt from TLSOE. (Read it here, and then be sure you read the rest of the issue, cuz it’s a stunner.)
I’m still not writing or submitting as much poetry as I feel like I should be right now; still feel like I should be doing more. Capitalism fuels that feel, that “if you’re not successful it’s because you’re not working hard enough” feel. So does social media—seeing everyone always posting about their acceptances, their new projects, their triumphs, their publications is enough to make anyone feel like they’re not doing enough. I try to remind myself that social media only shows what its users choose to show, and it’s skewed—it’s easy to feel like everyone in the world is doing more and better than you when you don’t see all the rejections, struggles, and hard work that go on behind the scenes. And while those things fuel my not-enough feelings, a large part of it is just who and how I am and have always been. I’m ambitious to a fault, and I’m one of those bipolar folks who tend more toward mania, and those two things combined mean I always feel like I should be doing more, and I should be doing it yesterday. So I'm trying to remind myself that it's okay to take a tiny breather, and that, in fact, I have done and am doing a lot. "Calm down, you," I say to myself. "Your book came out two weeks ago. You published two chapbooks last year. You've got five or so works-in-progress. Just keep working on what you're working on but don't rush it!"
And I'm reminding myself that I am, in fact, a cross-genre writer. I haven't been writing a lot of poetry lately but I'm working on non-fiction again, and I have a few pieces in-progress/coming out in the next month or so (details to come); plus a (not-so) Top Secret Zine Project which I will reveal nothing of yet except to say that it will be a split with one of my all-time favorite zinesters who just so happens to also be one of my all-time favorite people.
(Speaking of zines—a few of my zines/chapbooks from the past four years are now available for download on Payhip, for a pay-what-you-can, sliding-scale price: Reckless Chants 23, Reckless Chants 24, and kinda sorta valentines.)
I have written a few poems this year. When coming up with my own poetic words is difficult, I find that working on found forms like erasures and centos is helpful. I wrote a cento last week that I'm not planning on submitting to any publications, so I've included it below. (As a bonus, it also serves as a pretty good guide to the poems I've been reading/loving recently.)
What else? I've been trying not to freak out about COVID-19. I have anxiety disorder, and a tendency toward hypochondria, so it's difficult. (In 2003, during the whole SARS thing, I experienced one of the worst anxiety attacks of my life, and during it I convinced myself I had SARS and wound up going to the emergency room.) The things that have helped me feel less scared are the things that tell me to prepare, but not panic. (Namely this, and this.) And I'm trying to just keep living my life. Because it's all a crapshoot anyhow, and I don't want fear—of anything—to prevent me from doing what I need and want to do.
I'm deeply sad about the death of David Roback. I've been listening to Mazzy Star a lot since he died, mostly just "Fade Into You" over and over. For a certain type of melancholic, romantic person, particularly one who remembers when the song came out, it's one of those ultimate songs. It's got David Roback's mesmeric guitar riff and Hope Sandoval's perfectly imperfect voice; it's dreamy and sad and beautiful, and it's not a country song but there is something country song-esque in the utter longing of it.
I've been reading a lot. Other than the sources cited for my cento (how's that for alliteration?!), here's some of the stuff I've been reading and loving—
online:
How to Transition When Your Models of Masculinity Are Macho Biker Dudes, by Cooper Lee Bombardier
The Body is a Place: An Interview with Lidia Yuknavitch, by Cornelia Channing
More Than the Beauty or the Heroine, by Zan Romanoff
The Middle of Everywhere, by Timothy A. Schuler
& off:
Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to A Tribe called Quest, by Hanif Abdurraqib
A Handbook of Disappointed Fate, by Anne Boyer
The Carrying, by Ada Limón
Tracing the Desire Line, by Melissa Matthewson
I'm tired of winter, but I have seen spring peeking out here and there. Snow melting and flooding the gutters, daffodils at the market, the sound of trains blowing so close it sounds like they're runnin' through my backyard. It'll be here, soon. And if you (yes you) are tired of winter, or afraid of illness, or wanna talk about poetry or Mazzy Star, or are just lonesome—please write me an email. I'd love to hear from you.
strange you never knew,
Jessie Lynn McMains
