Supporting Each Other in Difficult Times, and Recommendations for Young Poetry Fans

Charlotte in a basket

Supporting Each Other in Difficult Times

Hello there, readers! I hope you are all doing as well as possible. Last week, as you might have noticed, I was feeling somewhat distressed. But this week, my perspective is a bit changed, mostly by the interactions I’ve had with other people, old friends, new friends, and even almost-strangers. Charlotte is a basket is a picture I hope will give you some comfort, too.

I had a long talk with a super intelligent writer a little older than myself, full of incredible stories and incredible ambition. I got in touch with two old friends who are both going through hard times through no fault of their own, but it was so good to hear from them. All of these peoples’ stories put my own worries in perspective, and the news in perspective as well.

The conversations have also made me think about my own goals in writing. Should I only be writing poetry? Should I try memoir, or fiction, which would surely get bigger audiences? I had a dream that was such a fully realized YA novel that I actually wrote down the details, though as to next steps, I’m a big baffled.

But though this week was filled with the chaos of a house full of cardboard and plastic and shuttling between the house and a hotel, and then having an allergic reaction to the hotel food (after specifically telling them I was allergic to wheat, sigh.) I’ve had a minor head cold. The news, I’m sorry to say, has not gotten any better, but my feeling about the ability to make a difference is perhaps a bit more bolstered? The courts – and even stranger, popular opinion – may change the course of Trump and Musk’s destructive ideas. Perhaps connecting with others is more important than I imagined. Getting out of your own head. Seeing that there may be others who need your help.

Recommendations for Young Poetry Fans

Someone wrote me a question about what her young daughter should read, if she enjoys my poetry, but couldn’t find other poetry like mine. I thought hard about the poets that had inspired and influenced me when I was a young girl, although I was certainly a somewhat unusual reader – Edna St. Vincent Millay, Emily Dickinson, Carl Sandburg, E.E. Cummings, and Louis Simpson as a ten year old. I was reading my mom’s college poetry textbooks and encountering T.S. Eliot and Yeats and Robert Frost. In college, definitely inspired by Rita Dove, Louise Gluck, Margaret Atwood, and of course, Sylvia Plath. If my own work seems somewhat unusual, it could be because it was the kind of poetry I wanted to read and couldn’t find – funny and pop culture-y and dark and not afraid. Of course, besides poetry, I was very influenced by mythology and fairy tales, prose like A.S. Byatt and Margaret Atwood and Terri Windling’s collection “The Armless Maiden” and later on, Kelly Link. I read a lot of male science fiction writers as a kid, from Isaac Asimov to Ray Bradbury, but also read female science fiction writers, like Andre Norton and Anne McCaffrey and Madeleine L’Engle. What recommendations would I make to a young person today? There are so many more young women writing and getting published than when I was a kid.  Who would you recommend?