Poetic feet [sprained]

I visited my sister in NJ a little over a week ago–just before a few days’ vacation with my eldest child–and my sister was bruised and scraped from falling during a run. I, meanwhile, recently gave myself a sprained ankle by…walking on the beach? I have no idea, honestly. As a kid, I broke an arm once by flying over a bike’s handlebars. As an adult, I sprained an ankle hiking a rocky trail. The other breaks, sprains, and stitches–and there have been a lot of these episodes–came about completely unathletically. I wrote in Poetry’s Possible Worlds about another kid’s bike hitting me while I was standing around on a sidewalk at age nine: twenty stitches. A couple of times I tripped while strolling: sprained wrist; broken leg. My current unvalorous injury may be connected to sciatica flaring again. It’s the same leg, and I wonder if I’d changed my gait or something in response to radiating pain. At any rate, walking is my main form of exercise, and I miss it. I’m bummed out, and worrying I’ll have limited hobbling ability in Ireland. Chris and I fly to Shannon Airport on Wednesday for a few days exploring Connemara and a few days in Galway, where I’ll present at an environmental literature conference hosted by ASLE-UKI.

[This is where I write then delete the paragraph about how world violence overshadows my small worries. Both the erasure of that perspective and its performance–briefly, apparently virtuously but with no special insight, to an audience with similar politics–feel wrong. No wonder this isn’t my best summer for writing. The world is so much bigger than the page.]

Yet I’ve been reading poetry gratefully, meandering through books I picked up during this injured but wide-traveling spring and summer, remembering the authors I met along the way. I’m giving the small-press books social media shout-outs, although I’ll hit pause on the Sealey Challenge while I’m in Ireland. I’ve never been successful, anyway, at actually reading a poetry collection per day for a month; one or two a week feels better suited to the genre’s intensity. But most people posting under the hashtag aren’t either. It’s still a kindness to other authors to use it, I think, because it slightly amplifies their accomplishments as well as the efforts of poetry publishers.

[While slightly amplifying the person doing the posting, too. Social media highlights the trickiest parts of poetry’s economy, mostly gifts but sometimes barter and, worst of all, in a way that’s monetized by tech bros. I still hope someone posts about Mycocosmic during this month’s Sealey Challenge flurry.]

Also on the Good Stuff List: the Emily Dickinson Museum has now posted a recording of that virtual reading I enjoyed so much. If a short yet still mushroom-flavored recording is more to your taste, the DMQ Review just included me in their Virtual Salon, too. The featured image above is from a live event in DC at Kramers Bookstore, another highlight of recent months–my fellow readers Steven Leyva and Tonee Mae Moll were outstanding. My thanks to all of the generous, thoughtful organizers. And wandering through the Phillips Collection the next morning was great: lots of poetry and politics in that space, as well as Van Goghs I’d never seen! The beachy pictures are from Corsons Inlet, where I had to stop and take a limping walk in honor of the A.R. Ammons poem: “risk is full: every living thing in / siege: the demand is life.”

[Not pictured: doomscrolling in the vacation rental. Ice packs. Literary rejections always scattered among the golden moments. Also, mosquito bites, because on our golden hour poetry pilgrimage, we forgot the bug spray.]

See you in a couple of weeks, I hope, with scenery and poetic news from the West of Ireland. [Gods of air travel, please be kind.]