I’m very fortunate to be reading some very beautiful books. These books could sit by my desk for years to come.

. “What is found There” is a collection of essays by Adrienne Rich that meditates on the intersection of politics and poetry. She asks what do poets do when they investigate their current social situations. This book has helped me look at this life and my place in it from new angles. In my notebook I have seven or eight prompts or openings for new poems, and some essays I’d like to share with friends.

. “Texaco” by Patrick Chamoiseau is a playful novel that spans generations of Creole Caribbean life. The book spans from the plantation to emancipation to the World Wars to the formation of a “slum “ on the outskirts, full of life and nature and pain where the police collude with the owners to beat the folk out of their hand made homes. I love how this book shows how history is understood and misunderstood and lived within the characters bodies.There are so many characters, so much vitality humor and pain. I’ll turn to this book when I want to write people living together inside history that keeps changing. Thanks Arthur R Flowers Jr for putting me on to this gem.

… Please hope or pray or petition with me that “collapse: Notes from the Detroit Underground “ becomes a beautiful book and one day you’ll write a Substack about it. I have a deadline in mid April to send my collection of essays to a publisher so I’m re-reading, revising, thinking it through some more. It has moments of beauty, moments of power. Still cooking it, but there are some good ingredients. It’s fuckin’ hard to feel like every sentence, every paragraph is doing a thing, much less doing the damn thing.

They say that when you start reading more, your standard of writing gets higher and higher so it becomes difficult to FEEL that you’re writing well because your brain gets full of the rhythms and images of inspired craftspeople whereas before you only had your own intentions in your ear. In other words let’s not be too hard on ourselves, sometimes it’s part of growth to feel lost; that’s part of stepping beyond where we’ve already been.

It’s all learning and growth. The unfolding of my/our ori. May you find beauty care and creativity to accompany you on this journey into the unknown.