Titles Read in 2024

January 

Modern Turkish Poetry

edited & translated by Feyyaz Kayacan Fergar

Fluent Forever: how to learn any language fast and never forget it

Gabriel Wyner

The Empress Is a Man: stories from the life of Jose Sarria 

Michael Robert Gorman

Running the Amazon

Joe Kane

Evening Street Review

#37, spring 2023

February

Songs from a Mountain

Amanda Nadelberg

The Rest of It: hustlers, cocaine, depression, and then some, 1976-1988

Martin Duberman

Ms. Marvel, vol. 1: No Normal

G. Willow Wilson, writer; Adrian Alphona, artist

The Gay & Lesbian Review

Nov-Dec 2023, v.30 n.6

The Rainbow People

Laurence Yep; illustrated by David Wiesner

Lives of Great Men 

Chike Frankie Edozien

Selected Poems

Edna St. Vincent Millay

March

Berkeley Poetry Review, #52: When the world moves on

[contains two of my poems]

Pidgin Eye

Joe Balaz

The Book of J

translated from the Hebrew by David Rosenberg; interpreted by Harold Bloom

Hint

Deborah Fruchey

Mei Yao-chien and the Development of Early Sung Poetry

Jonathan Chaves

Mr. Know-It-All: the tarnished wisdom of a filth elder

John Waters

Love Wins: the lovers and lawyers who fought the landmark case for marriage equality 

Debbie Cenziper & Jim Obergefell

April

Uncle Tungsten: memories of a chemical boyhood

Oliver Sacks

Waiting for the Barbarians: essays from the classics to pop culture

Daniel Mendelsohn

This Arab Is Queer: an anthology of LGBTQ+ Arab writers

edited by Elias Jahshan

Poetry

v.222 n.2, May 2023

The Nib: Drugs

#8

Ms. Marvel, vol. 2: Generation Why

G. Willow Wilson, writer; Jacob Wyatt, Adrian Alphona, artists

West Branch

n.56, sp/su 2005

Stupid?

mini comic by Harry S. Robins

The Best American Poetry 2023

Elaine Equi, guest editor; David Lehman, series editor

Whetu Moana: contemporary Polynesian poems in English

edited by Albert Wendt, Reina Whaitiri, and Robert Sullivan

Berkeley Poetry Review

#41, 2010

Ten-Word Tiny Tales to Inspire and Unsettle

Joseph Coelho

The Nib, n.1: Death

Day for Night

Valerie Sopher

May

Alta

issue #25

The Last Word

Hanif Kureishi

Wow

Bill Manhire

Restless

Joseph Kai

El Golpe Chileno

Julien Poirier

Art and Fear: observations on the perils (and rewards) of artmaking

David Bayles & Ted Orland

The Gay & Lesbian Review

v. 31 n.3, May-June 2024

June

Lifespan, v.8: Achievement

July 2023, edited by Matt Potter; contains my poem “Building a House”

City Poet: the life and times of Frank O’Hara

Brad Gooch

Mauri Ola: contemporary Polynesian poems in English (Whetu Moana II)

edited by Albert Wendt, Reina Whaitiri, and Robert Sullivan

The Year of Magical Thinking

Joan Didion

Talisman: a journal of contemporary poetry and poetics

#16, fall 1996

Edward Foster, editor

The Passion of Gengorah Tagame: master of gay erotic manga, vol. 2

Anne Ishii, Chip Kidd, Graham Holbeins, editors; Vincent W. J. Van Gergen Dei, translator

July

20,000 Steps Around the World: great hikes, walks, route and rambles

Stuart Butler and Mary Capteron Morton

Gaytheist: coming out of my Orthodox childhood

Lonnie Mann, writer; Lonnie Mann & Ryan Gatts, art

The Complete Kake Comics 

Tom of Finland; edited by Dian Hanson

Looking for Transwonderland: travels in Nigeria

Noo Saro-wiwa

The Gay & Lesbian Review

v.31 n.4, July/Aug 2024

Already Home: a topography of spirit and place

Barbara Gates

Fire Island: a century in the life of an American paradise

Jack Parlett

August

Queer as All Get Out: 10 people who’ve inspired me

Shelby Criswell

The Old Gays Guide to the Good Life

The Old Gays of TikTok

Normal: transsexual CEOs, crossdressing cops, and hermaphrodites with attitude

Amy Bloom

The Widow’s Handbook: poetic reflections on grief and survival

edited by Jacqueline Lapidus and Lise Mean

Gutted

Justin Chin

King-Cat Comics & Stories

#83, May 2024

John Porcellino

September

Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs: living and writing in the West

Wallace Stegner

The Book on the Book Shelf

Henry Petroski

Moms

Yeong-shin Ma, translated by Janet Hong

The Columbia Anthology of Traditional Chinese Literature

Victor Mair, editor

Undetectable

a play by Tom Wright

October

The Gay & Lesbian Review

v.31 n.5, Sept-Oct 2024

Our Deep Gossip: conversations with gay writers on poetry and desire

Christopher Hennessy

Pylon

box set of 4 CDs and an LP-sized book with an essay by Stephen Eisner

Transient and Strange: notes on the science of life

Nell Greenfieldboyce

The Land Between Two Rivers: writing in an age of refugees

Tom Sleigh

The New York Review of Books

May 2024, v.71 n.8

A Fast Life: the collected poems of Tim Dlugos

edited by David Trinidad

Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams: short stories, prose, and diary excerpts

Sylvia Plath

Grief

Andrew Holleran

Poetry

Sept 2024, v.224 n.5

The Wandering State: poems from alta, vol. 1: San Francisco

edited by Kim Shuck

Sor Juana’s Love Poems

Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz; translations by Jaime Manrique and Joan Larkin

Cheshire Crossing

Andy Weir and Sarah Andersen

My Body: new & selected poems 

Joan Larkin

December

Impossible People: a completely average recovery story

Julia Wertz

The Gay & Lesbian Review

v.31 n.6, Nov-Dec 2024

Mexican Poetry: 20/20 voices, a bilingual anthology

Brandel France de Bravo, editor

Complete Poetry and Selected Prose

Walt Whitman; edited by James E. Miller, Jr.

Surrealist Poetry: an anthology

edited & translated by Willard Bohn

The Homosexual Tradition in American Poetry: expanded edition

Robert K. Martin

Raven Understands: a happy memoir

Marvin K. Hiemstra

Have You Seen This Man?: the Castro poems of Karl Tierney

edited by Jim Cory

Writing on Empty: a guide to finding your voice

Natalie Goldberg

The Fifth Risk

Michael Lewis

*****

This list encompasses all books I finished reading in 2024, no matter when I happened to start them. It includes a few magazines, ones I’ve read from cover to cover, but not necessarily all of those. The list does not include anything I’ve read on the web. I have read a lot on the web, but it’s too hard to keep track of.  

word of the day: supererogation

word: supererogation

In his search for the source of Walt Whitman’s oracular verse Gary Schmidgall believes he has found in it opera. Whitman was a big opera queen! Schmidgall makes a good case — it’s certainly fun to read. The opera singer who had the greatest impact was an Italian named Marietta Alboni. Schmidgall quotes Whitman rhapsodizing over Alboni many times, even decades after her year in America. But Schmidgall also provides plenty of contemporary critical praise by other authors, from the dignified — “power, strength, and volume” — to the sensuous — “bubbling, gurgling, gushing” — to this bon mot combining the audience’s experience of the pre-air-conditioned summer theater of New York and the joyous reaction to the diva, “Men dissolved in rapture and perspiration simultaneously.”

Context for today’s word:

“‘The fame of this great artist is so thoroughly established in this City, and her performances so equal in their perfection,’ wrote Curtis in the Tribune, ‘that criticism has become almost a work of supererogation.’”

definition (Merriam-Webster): the act of performing more than is required by duty, obligation, or need

source: 

Walt Whitman: a gay life

by Gary Schmidgall

1997. A William Abrahams Book, Dutton/Penguin Putnam, New York

Are you embodying that meaning?

What are the materials of the artist? Can the artist create quality art out of just anything? Trash from the gutter? A finely embroidered robe displaying symbols sacred to a living religion? Another artist’s drawing? 

I tend to think anything is the answer. Good people will disagree. And my own principle quails somewhat before the pained reactions of those who see some particular art as attacking them. 

In Art & Fear David Bayles and Ted Orland express some ideas about what artists should do:

Artists are wrong in thinking they may “fill their canvasses and monitors with charged particles ‘appropriated’ from other places and times. It is as though you could incorporate the power of the Plains Indian medicine bundle into your work. Or convincingly complete the closing movements to Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony. Today, indeed, you can find urban white artists — people who could not reliably tell a coyote from a german shepherd at a hundred feet — incorporating the figure of Coyote the Trickster into their work. A premise common to all such efforts is that power can be borrowed across space and time. It cannot. There’s a difference between meaning that is embodied and meaning that is referenced. As someone once said, no one should wear a Greek fisherman’s hat except a Greek fisherman.” [italics in original]

Bayles & Orland mix a lot of elements in this passage. I disagree with much of it — especially the last line — but I sympathize, too. 

Should the Catholic Church be able to order destroyed a replica of the Pope’s clothing that included lots of little swastikas in the stitching? Should a scantily clad cheerleader on the football field have her decorative feather headdress yanked from her head by an irate tribal elder? Should every listener shun an attempt to finish an unfinished musical piece by a dead composer? 

I don’t think the Schubert example belongs with the others. Anybody ought to feel free to complete Schubert’s unfinished work. If the resulting music is beautiful the only people offended will be the fierce Schubert partisans. ‘It’s a fraud! That’s not how Schubert would have done it.’ The original, however unfinished, may feel sacred to them, but is it?

I also don’t think the Greek fisherman’s cap belongs with the others. I wore a Greek fisherman’s cap for a while because I thought it looked neat. It was black, worn close to the head (so hid my hair and wasn’t easily blown off by a breeze), and had pretty stitching on the brim. The authors are my first hint that there’s something sacred about a Greek fisherman’s cap, a kind of cultural power that not only does not transfer but in some way offends. Curious to see what I’ve been missing about the Greek fisherman’s cap, I did a little internet searching. 

GreekBoston.com says, “Although we traditionally associate these hats with Greek seamen or fishermen, variations of this hat [are] also present in other cultures. They are also known as a mariner’s cap, skipper cap, fiddler cap, or Breton cap. … [M]ost [historians] seem to agree that [the cap] started to become popular [in Greece] in the 1800’s.” Anthony Quinn wore the cap in the Zorba the Greek movie, which made it popular outside Greek fisheries. “John Lennon … wore the hat while the Beatles were at the height of their fame.” 

The anonymous Greek Boston author concludes, “Although this hat has been traditionally associated with those involved with the nautical culture in Greece, such as sailors, fishermen, ship captains, etc, there are no rules concerning who can wear them and who can’t.”

I don’t know which is the more authoritative source, Art & Fear or Greek Boston, but I will add that the rather more generic wikipedia entry lumps the Greek fisherman’s cap in with a bunch of similarly-shaped caps and there’s no suggestion in the article that non-Greek-fisherman wearers are phonies or posers or in any way sacrilegious. Or that there is any “power [that is attempting to] be borrowed across space and time” by a kid under a Greek fisherman’s cap. It just looks cool! Marlon Brando wore a leather version in The Wild Ones. Tom of Finland tops off his leathermen in his gay cartoon porn with a similar cap. So it’s got a bit of a butch aura. But ultimately it’s just material in a particular shape. 

Bayles & Orland hit closest when they talk about the offensiveness of the appropriation of Native American symbols and regalia. The authors do not mention appropriation of Western religious symbols or objects, but that happens, too. As I said above, I sympathize with people who feel attacked when their sacred symbols are treated in ways that they feel are degrading. But can you make degrading art? Probably? Can you make bad art? Definitely. 

If an American Indian artist uses a symbol from her own culture in a nontraditional way, a way that offends traditionalists, is she being a bad girl? In this case I suppose the artist is not “borrow[ing] across space and time;” she’s using local and contemporary material(s) that have power for her (and for a living community). Of course, our Native artist may be a crappy artist or may be misusing the symbol because she was raised outside her natal culture so doesn’t know any better, and what results isn’t really what one would call art. (Maybe bad art.) Say she isn’t Indian at all — and she is using Indian sacred symbols because they look cool. Or she’s making fun of them. Replace “American Indian” with “White Catholic.” Is the artist more or less justified? What if she’s wearing a Greek fisherman’s cap?

On the whole I liked Art & Fear. David Bayles and Ted Orland are trying with this book to lessen the anxiety artists feel. You are not alone, they want you to know. Everybody goes through moments — or years — feeling inadequate, being jealous of others’ success, afraid they are a hasbeen or a nevershallbe. Don’t worry, they say, as they root in their medicine bags for a pick-me-up. Just do it. If it turns out you have to cross space and time to borrow a cup of blue tempera, they might disapprove, but that’s life. Don’t panic. 

source:

Art & Fear: observations on the peril (and rewards) of art making

by David Bayles and Ted Orland

1993. The Image Continuum, Santa Cruz CA

always right, sometimes wrong

Why do you always have to right, I remembered John saying.

It was a complaint, a charge, part of a fight.

He never understood that in my own mind I was never right.

The memory of her dead husband comes up when Joan Didion is on a small plane with her daughter. It’s essentially an ambulance, her daughter being flown to a new hospital. 

One of the paramedics had a digital camera and was taking pictures of what he kept referring to as the Grand Canyon. I said I believed it was Lake Mead, Hoover Dam. I pointed out Las Vegas. The paramedic continued taking pictures. He also continued referring to it as the Grand Canyon.

Clearly Didion is annoyed by the misidentification — and the paramedic’s seeming insistence on it.

All right it’s the Grand Canyon, I thought, shifting position on the bench over the oxygen canisters so that I could no longer see out the window.

If she could see out the window, Didion would continually be confronted by the truth, which she feels compelled to defend, so she chooses to look elsewhere. 

“You always have to be right.” Kent said that to me once. It took me aback in that it was a charge I could have leveled at him. By this time I had also learned that if he called me on something — and I said you do that too — it was just going to escalate the argument. So when Kent accused me of always having to be right I had to pause to consider. I want to be right. Nobody wants to be wrong. I doubt Joan Didion seriously thought she was never right. But even when we are pretty solid on something, when challenged, we do for a moment wonder. If I think one thing, and someone else says different, there’s an instability. 

“I don’t think of it as having to be right,” I said. “I think of it as making sure I understand, that I’m not confused.” 

I am glad we have these magical research devices at hand, our phone/computers, and can quickly find a definition of a word or double check which president came after Wilson. I have absolutely no interest in being the One who is right. I want everybody to be right. 

Were I in Joan Didion’s situation, likely I would have dropped the issue, too. Who cares if somebody you will never see again misidentifies the landscape? Sure, you could turn around to the people on the plane and go, “Paramedic and I are looking down and he sees the Grand Canyon and I see Lake Mead. What do you guys see?” 

I try not to accuse people of being wrong. I try to be diplomatic, seek common ground, appeal to a neutral authority. But I’m human. I say, no, that’s not right. I don’t believe that. Really? Come on!

source:

The Year of Magical Thinking

by Joan Didion

2005. Vintage / Penguin Random House, New York

“the perimesencephalic cistern is effaced”

After Joan Didion’s husband died suddenly, she gave permission for an autopsy.  What she quotes in her memoir is a paragraph of medical jargon, much of which I don’t know. It seems the man died of a massive stroke. As I read the autopsy, I appreciate the words without knowing their definitions. 

“There is moderate to marked midbrain compression and the perimesencephalic cistern is effaced.”

The last four words of that especially.

“A thin posterior falcine and left tentorial subdural hematomas are noted. A small parenchymal bleed, likely contusional, is noted in the right inferolateral frontal lobe. The cerebellar tonsils are at the level of the foramen magnum.”

I don’t know whether you want your cerebellar tonsils to be at the level of your foramen magnum, but if it were generally to be esteemed, it would probably not be noted in an autopsy. 

I don’t know how many of these words I am mispronouncing, but I enjoy rolling them around in my mouth and trying out different emphases. 

Years ago I wrote a series of poems using words for their sounds rather than their meanings. Since the English writing system is variably phonetic, I used existing words rather than inventing any. I wanted readers to know how to pronounce them. When finished I flipped open a dictionary at random looking for a word I did not know but liked the look of. I would use it as a title. You can’t group together words without their having meaning, as words are meaning objects and they gain more meanings depending on their company. Thus the poems I’d written by ear could be seen to have meaning, meaning imputed to them. After I used the unknown words I often learned their meanings so the titles would suggest more readings for the poems. 

source:

The Year of Magical Thinking

by Joan Didion

2005. Vintage / Penguin Random House, New York

without you a book is nothing

I marked these lines by David L. Ulin, thinking it sounded like he was talking about Autobiography of a Book:

‘We possess the books we read, animating the waiting stillness of their language … but they possess us also, filling us with thoughts and observations, asking us to make them part of ourselves.’ 

Yup. That’s what Book wants — for you to give it life. Without a reader a book is nothing.

source:

“Say Yes: while his books may not pay the bills David L. Ulin has built a life around writing”

by Lauren Markham

Alta Journal

issue 25 “The Writers Issue,” 2023

San Francisco, CA

1918 ... 2020 ...

Slightly more than one hundred years separate the 1918 influenza epidemic and our covid-19 troubles. A CDC page offers the guess that about 10% of people infected died from influenza — maybe 50 million worldwide. Covid-19 has killed fewer, though it is still taking lives (as is the flu). As of 2022 the World Health Organization blamed covid for 15 million deaths. 

In a memoir that also includes digging into the history of her own Berkeley neighborhood Barbara Gates talks to a woman who collects oral histories. These lines about the influenza epidemic struck me:

‘One woman we interviewed just around the corner from here talked about the 1918 influenza epidemic and how it killed everybody off. At the Niehaus house, over on Delaware, everybody in that great big house died of influenza. Every last one. ‘

We live with flu these days. We’re living with covid. There are vaccines. Some people get a shot as soon as it’s available. Some are sure the vaccines are worse than the disease. I’m of the former camp. The recommended measures against covid have done me pretty good. Colds and flus, a stuffed up head, a fever that wracked me with bad dreams — I used to get whatever came through. Since 2020 I have had only the mildest forms of these, a couple of days of runny nose that I could nevertheless breathe through, a soft cough, a tickle in the throat. If I ever caught covid itself it was the (possibly mythical) asymptomatic variety. 

Whether it was washing my hands more frequently, wearing a filter mask in crowded places, or the vaccines, I now know that I don’t have to take for granted suffering through the seasonal bugs. I like it! 

source:

Already Home: a topography of spirit and place

by Barbara Gates

2003. Shambala, Boston MA