seventy-first (2023-03-31)

“it is easy to believe one is sovereign when alone, to believe oneself strong when carefully refusing to bear any burden" ― simone de beauvoir, in the second sex

photo of me and my son hank abraham by steph byce, from 2019

poem (click here for my full list of poems on the docket for 2022)

Paul Laurence Dunbar, “We Wear the Mask”

what strikes me about this poem is that dunbar takes the highly specific experience of being Black in post-civil war america and broadens it to resonate with the universal human quandary of feeling unseen. the rondeau form makes us feel closed in, claustrophobic, and unsettled from the non-rhyming line “we wear the mask” in the second and third stanzas. he writes of double consciousness - the multiple lenses through which oppressed groups see themselves, including through the eyes of the oppressor - and the conflicting pride, resilience, and hidden fury from intergenerational dehumanization.

books

four minutes by nataliya deleva, 2021

this tiny book is hard to describe so i will write a haiku instead:

so sad. beautiful

but a little too noble

for me. not orphans!

civilwarland in bad decline by george saunders, 1995

this is the first short story collection saunders wrote. he acknowledges the coarseness of these stories - they’re crueler and less rooted than his subsequents - but the afterword is the real treat. there, he describes the process of writing these stories while working a mundane office job trying to be a Serious Writer. it’s a beautiful tribute to his own journey with so much credit given to his wife, Paula Redick, who told him truthfully that his hemingway obsession prevented his stories from being good, and giggled at his seuss-ian poems which changed the trajectory of his career for the better.

crudo by olivia laing, 2018

this is a weird little book. i’ve read olivia laing before and she has a kathy acker-bend (wacky, displaced) to her with the constant comma splices that british writers seem to love. it takes place in 2017 and references the current political events - which feels too close (still), but also accurately describes the disorientation and bewilderment i felt at the time. there were many sections that left me still, reading the lines over and over like poetry, buoyed by clouds of a chatoic protagonist who can’t sit still or think one thing at a time.

tv

vanderpump rules, on bravo, 2023

i have been a long time fan of the real housewives cinematic universe because i am fascinated by/horrified of/envious of people who feel no shame. vanderpump rules is a spinoff that started ~12 years ago following the chaotic, coked-up, 20-something fleet of waitstaff at lisa vanderpump’s restaurants in west hollywood. over the years, the former servers created their own business empires but maintained the same frenetic levels of cheating and backstabbing. a huge bomb dropped last month, revealing that tom sandoval, 10-year partner of ariana madix (likely the least rotten person on the show) had been having an affair with her very close friend for over seven months. with camera crews around! the audacity! i’m completely hooked by the chutzpah of it all.

articles

michaela the destroyer by e. alex jung, in vulture, 2020

steph and i started watching the show chewing gum the other day and i remembered this article that i’d bookmarked years ago but hadn’t yet read because i hadn’t watched michaela coel’s work yet. chewing gum is intense, bubbly, funny, and disorienting and it made me an immediate fan of michaela coel. (i recognize i am, per usual, very late to her and her work.) she’s bracingly honest, nuanced, relational, and fearless about not only the stories she wants to tell but the way she wants to tell them - unimpeded. i love how her grace in handling complicated truths without sacrificing integrity for narrative expediency, and i appreciate jung’s ability to capture her multifacetedness in this lovely profile in early 2020 with all of the challenges of the beginning of the pandemic.

thanks for reading - more to come -

bria