CBR14 #1 - Revenge Body by Rachel Wiley

Cannonball Read #14. Hope springs eternal, I guess. 

I have to say that Rachel Wiley is probably my favorite living poet. I've been a fan since first seeing Youtube clips of her performing her work live, and I own both of her previous books. I pre-ordered Revenge Body as soon as it was announced and read it the day after it arrived.

Revenge Body feels less relatable to me overall, since it seems like a much more personal journey for Wiley. She writes more about her relationship with her family--about recognizing and working to heal from their overwhelming dysfunction and rejection. She also works through a break-up and processes the emotional turmoil from that. Still, her musings on white feminism (A poem called "Intersectional Feminism (AKA Actual Fucking Feminism) Plays the Dozens With White Feminism" is a particular standout), the experience of being fat and female in society, and on searching for love while not being sure one is worthy of it rang true to my experiences.

As always, Wiley's use of word-play and imagery is striking--in  "Exective Functioning" she says "my truffle/ pig brain broke her teather/ again/ and wandered off to unearth some/ sweetly moldering dopamine." which is a feeling I'm all too familiar with (your author said...as it took her months to actually complete a proper review for this book). Her voice and attitude shines through, and as a reader I root for her (the point in her journey when she clearly found a good therapist was a high point to me). While I found the majority of the poems in this collection extremely readable and evocative, I didn't connect as much on a personal level as I did with the work in Nothing Is Okay. Which is fine! I'd still recommend this because aside from the joy of watching her wield words as both shields and weapons, there is also a lot in this work that hits on a more universal experience.

CBR13 #2 - A Book of Luminous Things - Edited by Czesław Miłosz

 I don't think I've read a poetry anthology since college -- and even then, I mostly just read the poems we were studying and ignored both the commentary and all the other poems. A Norton Anthology of Poetry can be a very intimidating book, after all.

I didn't actually intend to read one this time, either. However, I happened to come across a poem by Eastern European poet Czesław Miłosz which I liked, and when I googled him I discovered he'd edited this anthology. I figured it might be nice to branch out and experience some new poets, so I picked it up.

When I started reading, I really appreciated what Miłosz had to say about the poems, why he'd included them, and how they related to each section of the anthology. He had some really great stuff to say about how poets over the centuries relate to nature, and why he like and had selected each poem. The selection leaned pretty heavily on Eastern European and ancient Chinese poets, but since I really like EE poetry and don't have a lot of experience with ancient Chinese poetry, I figured that would be a nice broadening experience.

After a while, I began to wonder if maybe Miłosz should have just done an anthology of Chinese poetry instead.

Still, I read on.

Then there came the chapter entitled "Women's Skin" which was ostensibly about women. 

Except only maybe a third of the poems were BY women. And of those that were, Miłosz was...somewhat uncomplimentary? As I read, I began to get a very distinct feeling that Miłosz was not super fond of women, or very interested in their work. His little descriptions and notes about the poems felt almost snide in their dismissiveness. 

After that, while I finished the book, I no longer trusted or appreciated Miłosz's observations.

It's a shame because I really did enjoy some of the poems. I probably would still even enjoy Miłosz's poems, but there are other places to find those. 

I would not recommend this book -- if you're interested in Chinese poetry from the 700s, you could probably find an anthology by a Chinese author that would be better, same with the modern Eastern European poets. 

CBR13 #1 - Psychedelicate: The Luckiest Guy Alive by John Cooper Clarke

 So it's been a while, but it's never too late to try and get back into the swing of things. Every year is a new opportunity to try and do the Cannonball Read.

I started out with a book by British poet John Cooper Clarke. I've seen Clarke several times as the Dictionary Corner guest on 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown, and I always really enjoy him. It took me a while to get one of his books, though, since it seems that his focus is mostly in spoken word performance rather than published work. This turns out to make a lot of sense because his poetry absolutely BEGS to be read aloud. There is something about his word choices and the way he strings them together that I find extremely enticing. 

The poem above, for example--the sound of the line "A rather dissolute but not yet destitute suit" and the way those words work together, combined with the repetition of the "oot" sound throughout is fantastic. Briscoe was not as impressed with my renditions--I will admit that my attempts at Clarke's accent were a massive failure--but I found speaking the words out loud really enhanced my experience.

Not all the poems are as good as this, of course. There are one or two that read as mildly homophobic or transphobic (nothing outright, really, but I noticed regardless) and some that I maybe don't get because they're more specific to Britain. However, for the most part, I enjoyed this little book quite a lot. His sense of humor is biting and slightly dark, which suits me right down to the ground, and his way of playing with language is just...fun.

On the whole, I'd recommend this to anyone who enjoys modern poetry, though I'd also suggest searching out some recordings of him performing his own work as well, since that's the way it's really meant to be consumed.

I'll end with one of his haikus:

No 1

To freeze the moment

In seventeen syllables

Is very diffic

CBR11 #3 - Fat Girl Finishing School by Rachel Wiley

I need to preface this by saying I did really like Fat Girl Finishing School. Because I think my review is going to sound like I didn't, but that's not the case.

If I had found this book first, I'd probably be in love with it. Rachel Wiley's work is intense, personal, and her poems--specifically those about being a fat woman--strike a very strong chord with me. Unfortunately, I read Nothing is Okay first, which spoiled this a bit. In comparison, FGFS seems a bit unpolished. The poems are good, but seem to still be struggling with style. I didn't find them to be as strikingly specific. Some of them feel like very very good class assignments. They're great, but not not transcendent the way NIO is.

I'd recommend reading this, just because it does contain some real gems, and because I think it shows the clear progression and development that happened in between Fat Girl Finishing School and Nothing Is Okay.

CBR11 #2 - YES. THIS. -- Nothing is Okay by Rachel Wiley

I have a confession to make: I am a monster. No, not the kind who stampedes through Tokyo (though #goals) or the kind that lurks outside your window at night. I am dog-earer. I know, a shiver ran up the spine of book lovers everywhere--I could feel you all cringing. I know, it's a bad habit. But when I read (poetry especially) I like to be able to mark the page where I found something really striking, so I can double back and find it later. When it comes to my books, a turned down corner means "HERE! THERE'S SOMETHING IMPORTANT HERE!"

I'm telling you this dirty secret of mine so that you'll understand what it means when I say that by the time I got through Nothing Is Okay, nearly every other page had a bent corner. Some were bent over twice because there was something valuable to me on both sides of a single page.

I discovered Rachel Wiley after someone posted a video of her performing her poem "Ten Honest Thoughts On Being Loved By A Skinny Boy," and I knew immediately that I had to have more.

These poems are personal and specific, but speak to the broader experience of existing as a woman in today's society. They are by turns hilarious and heart-wrenching, sometimes both at the same time. I laughed out loud at many examples of her dating travails (as a fellow Tinderer, the Rejection Letter poems were a delight) and also cried when faced with "Letter to My Cat," knowing (because I follow her IG like a weirdo) that Clementine passed away last year. Wiley's turn of phrase makes every poem shine, and the way she opens up her own emotional wounds for inspection makes this book feel very intimate. It's a bottle of wine with the funny, empathetic, strong bestie we all wish we had. My absolute favorites were the poems which touched on existing as a fat woman in today's society. "Fat Joke" was a stiletto straight to my heart, and I want to staple a copy to the forehead of...everyone, pretty much.  I don't have the experiences to compare, but I imagine for those who identify as biracial and/or queer, there will be a lot of that same "YES. THIS. I KNOW THIS FEEL." with her poems which touch on those aspects of her life.

So to sum up: buy this book. Buy her other book, Fat Girl Finishing School (which I will be reviewing as soon as it arrives). Go see her perform if she's in your city. Tell your friends. You won't be disappointed.

CBR11 #1 - Writing Internally*: Salt by Nayyirah Waheed

Hi! Gonna try this Cannonball Read thing again. We'll see how it goes...

I received Salt by Nayyirah Waheed as a Christmas gift -- I'd never heard of her or of her poetry before, but I'm always happy to give contemporary poets a try.

There's very little information available online about Waheed herself - I tried to look her up in order to perhaps put her work into context -- but her poetry touches a lot on race, and how the world relates to Africa and Africans. There are some pretty hard-edged critiques about tourist culture, and also about the divide between Africans and African-Americans.

The poems that stuck resonated more for me were those that had to do with personal relationships -- the one in the attached photo in particular really hit me where I live.

However, I will say that as far as micro-poems go (that's what I call these), they're not really my favorites. I do sometimes enjoy the format, but frankly most of these were not evocative enough to really make me feel strongly about them. Many of them felt like stuff you jot down in your phone while riding the train, formatted in an "interesting" way, and then compiled. And while I'm sure the extremely stark design of the book would appeal to many people, it felt very empty to me.

Although a few of them were thought-provoking, I don't really feel like I got as much out of this as I'd like. This one is probably not going to win a place on my already tightly packed poetry shelf.

*“remember,
you were a writer 
before
you ever 
put 
pen to paper.
just because you were not writing 
externally. 
does not mean you were not writing
internally.” 
― Nayyirah Waheed

CBR6 #4: Poems New and Collected by Wisława Szymborska

Wislawa Szymborska is one of my very favorite poets. Her work is often both abstract and specific, and she combines remarkably evocative imagery with a variety of emotions, ranging from frustration to detached interest to dry humor. She is one of the few things I got out of a college lit class that was worth remembering.

Poems New and Collected is a retrospective of her work, and spans forty years of poetry. My favorites were probably from the pieces published in her 1972 work Could Have, though I liked poems from her entire collection. She writes on a variety of themes, including love, death, and most often what it means to be a part of humanity, and the collective experience thereof. It's kind of interesting to see how the themes change and develop over the course of forty years of writing.

The piece below is an example of one of her shorter works, this time from 1957's Calling Out to Yeti.

FOUR A.M.

The hour between night and day.
The hour between toss and turn.
the hour of thirty-year-olds.

The hour swept clean for roosters' crowing.
The hour when the earth takes back its warm embrace.
The hour of cool drafts from extinguished stars.
The hour of do-we-vanish-too-without-a-trace.

Empty hour.
Hollow.  Vain.
Rock bottom of all the other hours.

No one feels fine at four a.m.
If ants feel fine at four a.m.,
we're happy for the ants. And let five a.m. come
if we've got to go on living.

It's brief, and it's simple, but it paints such a clear picture of a particular time and emotion.

For those who like poetry and don't mind a bit of a challenge, I'd highly recommend this.