Reading Jami Attenberg’s memoir, I Came All This Way to Meet You, I kept thinking it was unlike any memoir I’d ever read. Above all, it’s a story of increasing dedication to the art of fiction, to an identity as a writer. Everything else is subordinate to her work, and everything else except family and friendships is transitory, even the idea of home.

Many male artists have told a story like this, but Attenberg brings a womanist take to the “selfish artist” trope without relying on some cathartic event to create her identity. Instead, she writes about the logistics of making time and space for her work, of dedication to selling her work, of understanding how she works.

The book hops around in time, but I found this pleasing along with the reflective bits toward the end where Attenberg tries to understand some of her less-than-happy behaviors.
Many thanks to NetGalley for an advance review copy. (less)

Ill Will by Michael Stewart

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


I sought out this book, which imagines the “lost years” spent by the Wuthering Heights character Heathcliff, after hearing Michael Stewart speak on the one of the “Sundays with Jane Eyre” broadcasts done by the Rosenbach Museum (excellent series, highly recommend for fans of JE). I was taken with Stewart’s ideas about how class issues function in JE and appreciated his perspective as a working class person, so I was interested to see how he would write about Heathcliff, who must be one of the most controversial characters in British fiction.
The book far exceeded my expectations. Stewart invests Heathcliff with complex motives that derive from a complex history, including an authentic (I’m an adoptee) representation of adoption as trauma in Heathcliff’s yearning and confusion towards the mother he cannot recall. The novel is also rich in period detail about class and race oppression. Stewart doesn’t turn away from ugly truths.
TBH, I wasn’t optimistic about the novel. I don’t read many books by male authors, as their assumptions about women often irritate me, I’m not into fan fiction, and I hold the work of the Brontes sacrosanct. Every year, since I was 8 years old, I’ve (re)read at least one Bronte novel, usually Jane Eyre or Wuthering Heights. I’ll turn 65 this year, so that’s a lot of re-reads. Nevertheless, Stewart’s novel expanded my thinking about Wuthering Heights.



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Form is repetition

I think this is my seventh appearance in Mezzo Cammin: An Online Journal of Formalist Poetry by Women. The journal was founded in 2006 by Kim Bridgford, a brilliant poet, teacher, and critic who took every opportunity to support women poets. Tragically, she died in 2020 after struggling against cancer, but her colleagues keep her legacy alive by continuing to publish Mezzo Cammin.

Kim helped me and countless others to be a better poet by encouraging, critiquing, and publishing our work. Her own work, often written in traditional forms, is stunning for its mastery of tradition combined with incisive, contemporary political commentary, as in these lines from “Why Sisyphus Isn’t a Woman” :

Because it wouldn’t be mythological,
Just life. What woman hasn’t pushed a rock,
Or two or ten? It’s not an obstacle,
But a way of navigating. No shock.
Instead, it’s the efficient way to push
While also writing a book or raising a child.

The two poems I have in the current issue of Mezzo Cammin are both formal and experimental for me. The first, “Lost Ring,” is in the duplex form invented by Jericho Brown. Can we call something a traditional form if it was created in the 21st century?

The second poem, “How to Divorce” is intended as humorous, a departure for me and my usually grim outlook. Well, I guess divorce is kinda grim, right?

Check out both poems, and the fabulous poets who also appear in this issue, by clicking here.

Spoiler: it’s not because they are getting unemployment checks.

Working as a server or bartender is hard work. Like retail work, you have to smile while putting up with rude or demanding customers. Back when I was a bartender, one irate customer spat his false teeth at me.

Also like retail workers, you aren’t paid well. In fact, in most states you’re paid far less than minimum wage. Servers rely on tips to make up the difference.

Here’s a “friend link” to the rest of the story