Volume 5, No. 7: School Notes & Massachusetts Things

Greetings, book friends. How is being in the world feeling for you this week? For me it is feeling heavy, watery, impossible. It is also feeling full—with school, with poems, with friends, with my brain, with the never-ending overwhelm of being a single adult trying to manage my life and house (I’m reading How We Show Up by Mia Birdsong right now for book club and I have a lot of feelings).

I did really enjoy writing this newsletter. Getting back into a weekly-ish (no promises) newsletter flow feels great. I am going to keep reminding you that if you enjoy these weekly missives from me, you can become a paying subscriber. Having some income from this newsletter makes a pretty big difference for me when it comes to being in school, so if $5/month in exchange for these newsletters (plus a whole Poetry School Syllabus!) sounds reasonable/is affordable for you—my deep and abiding gratitude.

A quick note about the table of contents: I’ve learned that it doesn’t work in most email providers, but if you click through to read this issue on the web, it will!

In this issue...

• Recent Reads

  • A Longish Review of Occupying Massachusetts

  • Queer Hockey Land

  • Also, Lesbians!

• Ama Codjoe on Between the Covers

• School Notebooks

• Some Art: Maryam Hoseini

• Tree Talk

• Good Words: An Art Newsletter I Love

• Some Actions for Gaza

Recent Reads

Occupying Massachusetts: Layers of History on Indigenous Land by Sandra Matthews (2022)

When I was making my 40 Before 40 list, I did some research into books on the Indigenous history of New England, and Massachusetts specifically. This is one of the books that came up on one of those searches, and while it wasn’t exactly what I was looking for, it looked intriguing, so I put it on the list. It blew me away.

This is a collection of photographs Sandra Matthews took over several years—mostly in Western Mass, but not exclusively. The photographs are of structures—houses, barns, trailers, storefronts, sheds, garages. Very few of these structures are historically significant; a lot of them don’t even have a compelling visual story. They are in various states of repair and disrepair. Some are models of structures in miniature. Others are echoes—old stone foundations and entrances to underground spherical chambers. What unites them all is their unobtrusiveness. They are ordinary and ubiquitous, markers of mundane, everyday human habitation.

Scattered among these photographs of dwellings are photos (along with transcribed text) of eleven historical markers from throughout the state that describe interactions between settlers and Indigenous people. There are also several photos of ancient Indigenous structures called wetuash, traditional Algonquian dwellings—not surviving structures, but structures that have been built for teaching and ceremonial purposes.

All of the photos have simple captions naming the Indigenous homelands where they’re located, the name of the town, and the date. The captions don’t describe what the dwellings are (though notes in the back offer some additional context for some of the photos).

I’m not sure if I can convey how powerful this book is, how deeply it moved and unsettled me. Partly it’s that many of these photos are taken in places I know well. Partly it’s that there’s not much text—beyond the introduction, there are two insightful essays, one by Indigenous writer David Brule, and another by non-Native Massachusetts writer Suzanne Gardinier.

The photos forced me, the viewer, to confront how I take up space—not emotionally or intellectually, but physically. What do the structures I live in look like on the land? What was there before them, and what might come after? What’s missing? Likewise, the historical signs Matthews highlights are chilling. Many of them are blatantly racist, and still exist all over the state. In these images of ordinary suburban houses, commemorative road signs, and stone pillars, layer upon layer of myth and colonial violence is laid bare.

I’ve been thinking a lot (always, but more than usual lately) about what home means, and about how home can become a weapon. I’ve been thinking about what I know and don’t know about this land I love and live on. I’ve been thinking about how we read landscapes—not just natural landscapes, but human ones, too. Quietly, through silence and image, this book tangles with all those big questions. It shows the Massachusetts I love as it is—a place with a bloody history, a place that has not reckoned with that history, a place that presents one face to the world and hides (sometimes, to some people), it’s more sinister private face, a place of incredible beauty, a haunted place, a place in mourning, an unhealed place, a harsh place.

This is exactly what the book does. It’s not revelatory—both Indigenous and non-Indigenous people have been thinking and writing about these questions for decades. But I found this book particularly generative—because of its silences, because of the space it makes for grappling, and because, as a resident of Massachusetts, it’s impossible to read this without feeling implicated and entangled.

Personally I think everyone who lives in Massachusetts should read this, but it also offers a powerful way to think about the intersections of daily life (driving to work, turning on the heat in winter, going to the store) and the ongoing colonial project, no matter where you live. You can buy it direct from the publisher. I also loved this essay about the origins of the project and Matthews’s process.

Queer Hockey Land

I’ve spent most of July so far reading through Rachel Reid’s entire catalog of queer hockey romances. You may have heard me shouting about them on IG. Or, if you’re my friend Camilla, you may have heard me shouting about them via multiple voice note podcasts. (Camilla is the one who told me to read these books and I thank her.) The duo Heated Rivalry and The Long Game (part of the longer Game Changers series) is a romance feat, truly, and the standalone The Shots You Take is also very, very good. The rest are fun, too. I promise you don’t have to be into hockey or men with abs to enjoy these books (I’m not).

Also, Lesbians!

When I emerged from queer hockey land I listened to Shoshana von Blanckensee’s debut novel Girls Girls Girls. It’s about best friends/girlfriends Hannah and Sam, who, after graduating high school in the summer of 1996, drive from Long Beach, NY to San Francisco. They’re desperate to be free, to be gay, to be in love, to inhabit their bodies. It’s a quiet book about first love and heartbreak and the blurriness of queer relationships (friends, lovers, mentors, family). It’s a love letter to queer San Francisco in the 1990s. My favorite character, without question, is Hannah’s Bubbe. I didn’t fall head-over-heels for this novel but I did really enjoy it.

I also read and enjoyed Keetje Kuipers’s poetry collection Lonely Women Make Good Lovers. It’s about queer marriage, the ongoingness of partnership, fighting and forgiving, parenthood, sex and pleasure, love worn and tarnished. It didn’t totally wow me, but that is likely because I was reading Leila Chatti’s upcoming collection Wildness Before Something Sublime at the same time and wow wow wowie wow. wow

A Poem & Its Worlds: Ama Codjoe on Between the Covers

I took a little break from listening to my celebrity crush David Naimon have world-opening conversations with brilliant writers, but now I’m back! I listened to the BTC episode with Ama Codjoe about her debut collection Bluest Nude, which I loved, and wrote about a bit here. I loved listening to Codjoe talk about visual art, making art, seeing/being seen/looking, the conversations her book enters, the collective nature of poetry, and so much more. Here are a few tidbits from the conversation:

A question Codjoe asks herself: “What are the things that are shaping my sight?”

I am basically always thinking about paying attention and what it means, maybe even more so now that I’m taking a drawing class, which includes a daily sketchbook practice. Codjoe talks about how the vocation of being a poet, more than being about writing, is about how you move through the world, and the kind of looking you do. Yes, yes, yes.

“I think of literature as a river.” This isn’t a new thought, a new idea, a new image, but still, when she said this, it entered me. Lately I’m skeptical of the whole idea of “new” and “first.” She was talking about all the poets, writers, artists (especially visual artists) who are alive in her work, and how she simply wants to be inside that stream. Yes. I want to be in the stream. I want to let the textures and colors of its waters change me. I don’t want to make a new stream.

Finally, the thing I can’t stop thinking about, the thing that is haunting me. “I want to risk something in every poem. There needs to be blood in it. If there isn’t, I revise toward putting something on the line.”

Here’s a poem from the collection I adore.

School Notebooks

School started! I’m taking a drawing class and I am really into it and also holy fuck I don’t get drawing! Trying to draw from observation feels like trying to translate a language I do not speak. In addition to doing lots of in-class drawing with charcoal, we have to keep a sketchbook for the entire 7-week course. The idea is to make one sketch (5-15 minutes) every day. Here’s a page from my sketchbook:

My professor (who is fantastic!) says that she wants us to think about our drawings as just existing. “They aren’t bad, they aren’t good, they just are,” she says. In that spirit, I’m going to share some sketchbook pages here. Drawing literally feels like magic to me, incomprehensible. I do not understand how anyone translates a 3D image onto a 2D surface. I still have no idea, after a week of classes! However, we’re just getting started, and I’m committed to continuing. Observational drawing isn’t something I feel like I need to be good at, but I am excited about trying to learn.

I can already tell it’s good for my brain, despite its continued mystery. Even after a week, I’m learning to let go of some of the frustration I have around sketching, slow down, and just look. Looking—paying close attention—is at the heart of poetry and drawing. I know how to look closely and translate what I see into a poem. I do not know how to translate what I see into a drawing. But I’m really good at making attempts!

Some Art: Maryam Hoseini

My drawing professor had us watch a bunch of short videos of different artists working in their studios. I loved this (very short) video about Iranian artist Maryam Hoseini. Their work is so strange and beautiful. You can check out a bunch of it here and more of it on their instagram. I love this piece especially and I enjoyed this short write-up about the work.

Tree Talk

After being away from home for a while, I’m back swimming at the lake every morning and it’s true love. The other day I noticed a bunch of the trees along the parking lot had new plaques, including these ones on a silver maple:

I haven’t been able to find much information about Hope Packard, but I love these two plaques together. Other trees have other plaques commentating other Ashfield people (a poet, and a “farmer and bachelor extraordinaire”), along with information on the trees themselves.

Good Words

A while ago I signed up for the daily newsletter from the online art magazine Colossal. I can’t remember where I heard about it but I love it. Some days I ignore it; some days I skim it; some days I read every article. It feeds me. I loved reading about this exhibition and am dying to get my hands on the book published in conjunction with it.

Also: this poem by Jim Moore.

Wonder & Care

Israel is murdering starving people in Gaza. You have probably heard how impossibly dire the famine is becoming. Are you also walking around with this horror pulsating through your days? You can donate to The Sameer Project, a donations-based initiative led by diasporic Palestinians, here. You can also donate through Open Books. They’ve been struggling to buy food but are still providing families with water and medical supplies.

Earlier this week I got a long voice note from my cousin about the Minneapolis DFL (Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, the official branch of Democratic Party in Minnesota) convention. During the convention they passed a BDS resolution and endorsed a leftist candidate for mayor. I’m not telling you this because I believe in the Democratic Party (I don’t, it’s trash). I don’t know anything about Minneapolis politics beyond what my cousin has told me. Resolutions passed by political parties are not going to save the people who are being killed in Gaza right now. I’m telling you this because of what it reminded me of and the way hearing it made me feel: people have been working hard in that city for years to change the way things are. You can do that in your city, in your suburb, in your little rural town. I can do it in mine.

Nothing we do is ever enough and everything we do matters. It sometimes feels absurd to me, sharing these donation links, because what needs to happen is so much more massive, so much more disruptive. I share them anyway. I donate anyway. I go to the collective meetings and the volunteer days and mark my calendar for town meeting next year. I keep going.

As always, a little bit of beauty to send you on your way: The sun, the sky, the hills, the clouds on one of my favorite morning walks.

Thanks for reading, friends. Come talk to me in the comments about drawing, trees, what’s reminding you that we keep going. Come show me your Sealey stacks!