Summertime and the living is really weird (Plus: I am reading at the NYC Poetry Festival *tomorrow,* 7/12, at 12:30 pm)
/(Cross-posted from my Substack)
The day before my Brooklyn book launch for Cosmic Tantrum, I found a raccoon’s jawbone in the park. This is not the first time a bone has presented itself to me on a walk. I thought I don’t need that and tried to walk away, but I was lying and I couldn’t. So I pocketed it.
Fifty paces later, I was reunited with a glove I’d been missing since last spring. Someone put it on top of a fence like a flag. (Thank you, stranger.) I hadn’t recognized it at first as mine—my raccoon brain just noticed an object of interest, the way it always does. An object out of place! My object out of place!
Launching my collection and going on tour felt a little like that—being at the right place at the right time many months after setting something in motion. Following breadcrumbs. Finding something I didn’t know was lost, or that I had learned to live without.
Other than touring and getting to talk poetry, consciousness, and brattiness at all the fantastic journals and podcasts I’ll list below, I’ve spent most of the past months just putting one foot in front of the other. Maybe you have, too. I love editing, but working for myself is a balancing act on a good month, and is even harder when the background frequency of life is chaos, the snip-snap of wars and tariffs, disgusting attempts to eradicate trans people, the normalization of kidnapping. I’m pretty sickened and also I guess not surprised that elected officials want to defund basically every public service and safety net to increase the budget for ICE, an organization that anyone could pretend to be part of right now, as masked and badge-less individuals abduct American citizens and disappear people to El Salvador.
On bad days, I ask myself why any of us make anything, and what the point of art could possibly be when people struggle to have their basic needs met, and to have any access to peace or calm. My poetry collection is about lots of things, but one important thread is that when a system is dysfunctional enough and you have tried to change it over and over again from different angles and approaches, to no avail, sometimes you can find peace only by leaving. That can work for relationships, workplaces, apartments. But lately the dysfunction feels like A Lot and From Too Many Simultaneous Directions.
I don’t have answers. But this is what I think about when I ask myself Why bother?
Because creating fictional worlds flexes our possibility muscles.
Because it’s not possible to write an interesting character without understanding—and, to at least some degree, sympathizing with—their perspective.
Because writing memoir requires honest engagement with our shortcomings and our capacity to grow.
Because writing anything good requires the ability to see the big picture in the small details and vice versa, and to understand how structure creates meaning.
Because reading about and falling in love with an imperfect character can give us compassion for those faults in ourselves and others.
Because creative writing is a practice of meaning-seeking and -making, a quest to understand and to share that understanding.
Because curiosity is the antidote to contempt.
Because contempt will kill us.
Because we turn to poetry during life’s big transitions—weddings, funerals—when everyday language feels insufficient.
Because there’s nothing so enchanting as following the movement of associative thought, as poetry allows, and finding yourself changed by the experience.
Because reading their writing connects us with people who lived hundreds of years ago.
Because I am always moved almost to tears when I see ancient handwriting. Maybe you are, too.
Because people of the future will want to know what real people thought, not just what the papers printed.
Because attention is a currency and we should spend it on each other.
Questions/thoughts/experiments:
Experiment:
It was a few weeks ago now, but in honor of the solstice, I’m riffing on a visualization exercise I learned from Liza Fenster (Crow Mother), for remembering the light you carry at your center. Imagine you have X-ray vision and can see a flame inside your body, near your tailbone. This is your own personal sun. Think of it like a battery. When you inhale, picture that flame climbing. On your first inhale, it climbs as high as your belly button. On the next, as high as your heart. Then your throat. Then your forehead. Then the top of your head. How does that glow feel as it takes up more and more space in your body? Does it have any lingering effects?
What does it do for your creative work if you power up like this before starting it?
Question:
This is an old favorite from Jessa Reed, for when you feel stuck about what decision to make, in your art or in your life: Which option would you choose, what path would you take, if no one would be mad at you?
It’s been so sweet and surreal to see my book out in the world, and to talk to friends and family who aren’t usually poetry-readers who’ve been excited about it!
I’m very grateful to Brooklyn Poets, Northwestern University Press, AWP 2025, The Ninth House shop, The Booksmith, Bishop & Wilde, and Open Books: A Poem Emporium for hosting me for events, and to these writers who agreed to read and/or be in conversation with me: Lauren Milici, Leigh Stein, Lena Moses-Schmitt, AngieDoe, Megan Pinto, Jes Baker, Maggie Tokuda-Hall, Sage Danielle Curtis, Joe Wadlington, Preeti Vangani, Sally Ashton, Ellee Achten, Genevieve DeGuzman, Julia Gaskill, Jessica E. Johnson, Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, and Gabrielle Bates! Thank you all for a fantastic first book tour.
A fall tour might be in the cards? I have a few other stops in mind but nothing set yet. If you’re interested in setting up an event with me in your area, and/or inviting me to your classroom or school, give me a shout.
As referenced above, here’s my List of Links to Cosmic Tantrum podcasts, interviews, essays, reading lists, etc.:
Podcast interview at Bevin: A Femme Over 40 and Her Friends
Interview at The Rumpus
Interview at Electric Literature
Essay at Write or Die on Gilmore Girls, Grey Gardens, and the mother wound
Essay at Literary Hub on the speaker as a mask, poetry as a ritual space
Reading list at Electric Literature, 10 books with scorpio/eighth house energy
Three poems on the Debutiful podcast, First Taste series
Three poems at DMQ Review’s Virtual Salon
The Best Debut Books of 2025 (So Far) at Debutiful
Best Poetry of 2024 and 2025 at Ms. magazine
Most Anticipated at Debutiful
What to Read in 2025 at 303Magazine
Most Anticipated at Electric Literature
Most Anticipated at Write or Die
New Poetry feature at Philly Chapbook
New Books feature at Literary Hub
And I can’t resist including this post-pub blurb from a master of the tragicomic mode, Lemony Snicket:
“This is such a terrific book—so generous and marvelous as it careens (but carefully!) from place to place.” —Daniel Handler, a.k.a. Lemony Snicket, author of And Then? And Then? What Else?
If you read and loved Cosmic Tantrum, tell your friends! (If you didn’t like it, keep it to yourself! lol) And consider leaving a review on Amazon, Goodreads, and/or The StoryGraph—this helps strangers find it. If you’re a writer and reviewer, consider pitching a review at a journal that accepts post-publication coverage? Thank you, friends.
