What I’ve Been Reading
Reflections on some recent reads.
It’s been awhile since I shared some thoughts on what I’ve been reading. Today I have for you a poetry collection, two memoirs, and a book that resulted from a series of Twitter posts.
I listened to Duende: Poems by Tracy K. Smith (Graywolf Press, 2007) on audio. This is her second collection of poetry. She won the Pulitzer Prize in 2012 for her third collection, Life on Mars (Graywolf Press, 2011) and was the 22nd Poet Laureate of the United States from 2017–2019. Most recently Smith stepped down from hosting The Slowdown, a poetry podcast which was one of my favorites.
Duende takes its title from a descriptor by Federico García Lorca (1898–1936), a Spanish poet, playwright, and theatre director who said that duende is “that dark and elusive force that is the creative and elastic power that an artist seeks to channel from within. It can lead the artist to revelation but must also accept and even serenade the possibility of death.” Knowing that, you would assume Duende is a fairly dark collection of poetry. And you would be correct.
I initially downloaded this on audio from my library’s OverDrive collection after seeking something calming to ward off a migraine. I do not recommend Duende for that purpose. These are poems taken from harrowing headlines and history; some of the most powerful ones are about 9/11 and the lost girls of Uganda. Another poem, titled “I Killed You Because You Didn’t Go to School and Had No Future,” was in response to a note left by the body of a 9-year old girl left in a Rios street. Disturbing (to say the least), heavy and chilling. 3/5 stars.
Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times by Katherine May (Riverhead Books, 2020) was getting a lot of buzz around the end of the year. I loved its premise: that there are “winterings” in all of our lives, times when death or trauma or illness prompt us to go inward and retreat from the world. What purpose and…
