What I’m Reading

/2 Comments/in /by

I’ve had a mighty struggle this past few weeks to do even a minimum of writing (determined to catch up this week…we will see, and, after that, to begin blogging again). Reading obsessively about dementia, getting lost in political news…these things do not seem especially helpful to me.

On the other hand, reading poetry, and reading and listening to poets and creatives about their work is one of my go-to solaces. So here are three things. The first was shared by my good friend Francine, and I’m amazed at the prescience of this 2011 interview with Bill Moyers, who died last week at age 91. Though the news is dire, it’s good to know that such people have been walking this trail before us. It gives me hope.

https://www.democracynow.org/2025/6/27/rip_bill_moyers

I’m also reading When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chödrön — given to me by my friend Therese — and I highly recommend it.

When things fall apart and we’re on the verge of we know not what, the test of each of us is to stay on that brink and not concretize. The spiritual journey is not about heaven and finally getting to a place that’s really swell. (p. 7)

By “concretize,” I think the author means, don’t grasp, don’t turn it into thoughts or anything you can hold on to. Let it be as amorphous as it is. Just be with all of it.

The third source is the incomparable PÁDRAIG Ó TUAMA from Poetry Unbound. Clicking on his name should take you straight to his most recent substack. Here are a few lines toward the end of Dunya Mikhail’s poem, which Padraig shares in full:

I don’t know why the birds
sing
during their crossings
over our ruins.
Their songs will not save us,
although, in the chilliest times,
they keep us warm…

I don’t know why either, but when I’m outside, walking, at 6 a.m., I listen for them just the same.

Sleeping Lessons, a chapbook by J. I. Kleinberg

/2 Comments/in , /by

SLEEPING LESSONS: A POEM IN PARTS, J. I. Kleinberg. Milk & Cake Press, 2025.

If you find yourself awake in the night, fretting over political mayhem, have I got a book for you.

Twenty numbered parts. Twenty first lines: She taught me how to sleep –

A Dickinsonian cascade of variations on a theme.

Instructions for falling asleep: “string  / the stars hung overhead,” “listen for the sea,” “name the gemstones  / in the sky behind my lids,”  “memorize a poem of breath / each molecule of air a wing / upon my tongue.”

Descriptions of a “she” who is part mother; part ghost; part earth, our home hung spinning in space: “her sweater pressed against / my cheek, the blanket satin / frayed by dreams.”

Kleinberg is also an artist (see her blog featuring her word art, chocolate is a verb). Each line is compressed, every word weighed and weighted, and the effect overall – hypnotic.

iv.

She taught me how to sleep –
explained that I could savor
slumber’s flavor as it settled
on my tongue, each grain
of sweet a recipe devised
by bees, who understand
the dance of flight, the taste
of work, the tidy hexagram
of night.

– J. I. Kleinberg

Sleeping Lessons is a delight. Ideas for dreams, and maybe for your next chapbook on a theme.

You can find the book at Milk & Cake, and via either of Kleinberg’s websites, chocolate is a verb or The Poetry Department.

image from The Oregon Encyclopedia

Nature: Poems Old and New

/5 Comments/in /by

NATURE: POEMS OLD AND NEW, May Swenson (1913-1989). Houghton Mifflin, 2006.

In preparation for my Creative Retirement Institute course on May Swenson, beginning next Tuesday afternoon, I’ve been reading Swenson’s poetry and a collection of essays, Body My House: May Swenson’s Work and Life, edited by Paul Crumbley and Patricia M. Gantt (Utah State Univ. Press, 2006). I also searched for my photographs from my visit to her archives at Washington University, St. Louis, and I found my 2022 blog post about it.

Believe me, I have come very close to contacting CRI and screaming, “I can’t do it!” But, in calmer moments, I think it will be a good distraction from all else that’s going on in my life. Show up, Bethany, it’s only 4 weeks, 8 hours total. Read some poems together, talk about the poems. Talk about Swenson’s creative life and ideas and how far the tendrils of her influence have reached. Easy-peasy.

Of course we will read “Question” and “Centaur,” also “Bleeding” and more of Swenson’s iconographs. Here is a simpler, less well-known poem that, for me, shows off Swenson’s signature attention to our glorious and endangered natural world.

Shu Swamp, Spring

Young skunk
cabbages all over
the swamp.

Brownish purple,
yellow-speckled
short tusks,

they thicken,
twirl and point
like thumbs.

Thumbs of old
gloves, the nails
poked through

and curled.
By Easter, fingers
will have flipped out

fat and green.
Old gloves, brown
underground,

the seams split.
The nails
have been growing.

—May Swenson

Before I go, I really MUST tell you that I have an essay in the new edition of Tendon, published by the Johns Hopkins Center for Medical Humanities and Social Medicine. This link will take you to the home-page for the issue, and an intro to its theme of rest. If you scroll down you’ll find the table of contents and a link to my essay, “My Mother’s Work.”

As always, thanks for reading. And I hope you write.

Bethany

Plum Blossom Wine

/2 Comments/in , /by

PLUM BLOSSOM WINE, Poems by Li Qingzhao, trans. by Sibyl James and Kang Xuepei (Empty Bowl Press, 2024).

I had a hectic week, but this morning—with no where to go, no errands, no doctor appointments—I decided to read a book of poems. I cheated, perhaps, by picking up a small book.

But, oh my. Mostly I am here to tell you how exquisite and inspiring I found this “small” —only 30 poems, printed in a 7 X 5 inch format—but powerful book, produced by Empty Bowl Press. The original Chinese of the poems written by Li Qingzhao, a Song dynasty poet (1084-1151) faces the English translation by Sibyl James and Kang Xuepei. I don’t read Chinese, and have, really, not a clue about it, but there’s something about seeing (and almost feeling) the weight of the original characters that deepens the experience.

I remember the January day when I picked this up, from a book display at Book Tree in Kirkland. Despite my resolution to buy fewer books, I couldn’t resist it. (Just look at that cover!)

James and Xuepei explain in the introduction how in their partnership they tried to honor the original spareness and artistry of the poems. They do a brilliant job. They add titles to the poems, but preserve the poet’s habit of naming the song each poem honors. (Alas, the music is lost.)

Their introduction also succeeds in briefly sketching for us the life of Li Qingzhao, a rare woman poet of her time, lucky enough to be educated, and to have married a husband (also a poet) who valued her voice. When exiled during a time of war, she lost almost everything, including her husband. Her poetry persists. Even writing of despair, her lines sing.

Just to Console Myself

To the tune of “Washing by the Stream”

Healed again, but my temples suddenly gray.
From bed, I watch the thinning moon
climb my screen, drink cups of cardamom
steeped like tea.

Good to lie reading in bed, loving
the look of rain outside my door.
All day beside me one consoling friend,
Osmanthus, the sweet olive.

—Li Qingzhao

It was a lucky way to spend my time.

Kang Xuepei is a Chinese translator with three other books. Sibyl James is a Seattle native, though she lived and worked in China for a year; this is her fourteenth book (or fifteenth?). You can learn more about Plum Blossom Wine at its page at Empty Bowl Press.

Apple blossoms from my morning walk