Well, I have to be honest, I am feeling rather uninspired. After two years on this blog interviewing poets about their favorite poems, I had decided to switch things up this year and ask people silly questions in a good-humored attempt to promote my book (see below).

But, you know what?

I would rather burrow under the covers and eat chocolate right now. I would rather binge watch “Ozark” or “Sanditon” or “Tiger King.” I would rather attend an all-day zoom cocktail party with my friends or try to figure out how to be of service to some of the brave people who have to venture out into the world every day. Yesterday, I ran into a nurse who lives down the street from me and I almost burst into tears thinking about the tremendous contribution she is making to the world. My best friend is sewing masks. Other people are making signs and gift bags for the doctors and nurses at our local hospital. It’s impressive and inspiring, not to mention all the young people (including my four kids) who are handling being cooped up in the house with mom and dad for months on end without the slightest complaint. All I’m really hoping for now is that we all stay safe and well.

BOOK LAUNCH: APRIL 7TH!

My book is still launching on April 7th, and I hope you will consider buying one.

I’m giving a two-minute reading at A Mighty Blaze on April 7th to celebrate, and I would love to see you there.

The book is for sale at Pages Bookshop, the Wayne State University Press site and Amazon. I’m also available for zoom book clubs, so please feel free to contact me anytime.

Here are some recent reviews:

North of Oxford.

The Book Slut.

And lists:

Quarantine Reading at Entropy.

The Big Other Most Anticipated Small Press Books 2020.

Recent Pre-Publication Awards!

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One of the things I miss most during quarantine is our local library where I work as a sub in the circulation department. I miss seeing people milling around in the library. I miss the book recommendations. I miss handling the new books and reading the jacket copy. I miss my awesome, zany co-workers. I hope this book recommendation list will be of some assistance until we have our real librarians back again!

Much love to everyone.

BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS FOR QUARANTINE:

Beautiful “memoir in pieces” about the lived phenomenon of grief.

A stunningly beautiful novel about the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic. If that is the last thing you want to read about now, I completely understand, but it is ultimately about love, and what it means to be human and Maxwell’s quiet, lucid prose is mesmerizing.

I could not believe the woman who wrote this memoir is only in her 20s. Riveting. Necessary.

OK. So this is another one about death. But death as the prism through which we better view and appreciate life, so beautiful, imho.

 

Jenny Offill is just a terrific writer. Period.

Here’s the synopsis. I’m running out of bandwidth, so I’m just pasting it in. I loved this book:

A surgeon flees a scandal in the city and accepts a job at a village clinic. He buys antibiotics out of pocket, squashes roaches, and chafes at the interventions of the corrupt officer who oversees his work. But his outlook on life changes one night when a teacher, his pregnant wife, and their young son appear. Killed in a violent robbery, they tell the surgeon that they have been offered a second chance at living if the surgeon can mend their wounds before sunrise.

After I created this list I realized there wasn’t anything funny here in case you need to laugh, so here you go 🙂 David Sedaris is the best.

And here’s a song I found by Jack Lyle called “I Have the Answer.” Don’t you just love the title?