Carolee Bennett –> poet. artist. crankypants.
I just finished re-reading* Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret in the context of a manuscript I’m working on in which the speaker confides in and seeks guidance from an alter ego named Gertie. I’m not 100% convinced I can pull it off, but I’m following it where it goes and using my writing journals to get me there.
I have no regrets about what I did/didn’t accomplish in 2021. I rested more than I wrote (2021 was also full of some huge life changes), I showed up for workshops and readings that will inform and inspire me for years to come.
Megan Culhane Galbraith’s memoir The Guild of the Infant Savior starts with “the first woman on Earth,” Adam’s rib, serpent, apple. And it’s important to start my response to the memoir with the context of Eve, as well, including and especially the questions the archetype raises about the shaming and blaming of women, about who gets to tell a story and from what angle.
Except for Arielle Greenberg’s I Live in the Country & Other Dirty Poems (which I LOVED and hope to write about at some point), the “reading books cover-to-cover” list hasn’t included poetry. Here are the fiction and CNF books that have been on my mid-pandemic reading list.