di Prima, Diane. Haiku. Illustrated by George Herms. 1967. South Pasadena, CA: X Artists’ Books, 2019.

I love di Prima’s work and I love haiku, so of course I would eventually buy this book! It was originally printed in an edition of 100 unbound copies in 1967, so I’m glad it’s currently available in a more accessible format.

—. Revolutionary Letters. 50th Anniversary Edition. San Francisco: City Lights, 2021.

I recently read di Prima’s The Poetry Deal, which includes several “Revolutionary Letters,” and I enjoyed them enough that I decided to buy the full collection.

Tiessen, Hildi Froese. On Mennonite/s Writing: Selected Essays. Edited by Robert Zacharias. Winnipeg: Canadian Mennonite University Press, 2023.

Hildi Froese Tiessen is perhaps the most prominent figure in the history of Mennonite literary criticism, so I am very glad that this volume of selected essays now exists.

Ward, James. Adventures in Stationery: A Journey Through Your Pencil Case. 2014. London: Profile Books, 2015.

I’ve always enjoyed stationery, and I have become obsessed with fountain pens over the past year, so I have been looking for books to read about the subject. There are surprisingly few considering the overlap between the analog cultures of book people and pen people. I recently heard about Ward’s book, and it sounded interesting, so I decided to buy a copy.

Baêta, Sabrina. Impressions. N.p.: Sabrina Baêta, 2020.

This is a book by one of my colleagues that I recently found out about and look forward to reading.

Munroe, Randall. What If? Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions. 2014. London: John Murray, 2022.

I received this book as a gift.

I attended the 2024 Modern Language Association annual convention in Philadelphia this past week. As usual, I bought a number of texts at the book fair:

Awkward-Rich, Cameron. The Terrible We: Thinking with Trans Maladjustment. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2022.

Castillo, Ana. Doña Cleanwell Leaves Home. New York: HarperVia, 2023.

Chen, Mel Y., Alison Kafer, Eunjung Kim, and Julie Avril Minich, eds. Crip Genealogies. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2023.

Choi, Franny. The World Keeps Ending, and the World Goes On: Poems. New York: Ecco, 2022.

Gornick, Vivian, ed. The Best American Essays 2023. New York: Mariner Books, 2023.

Heti, Sheila. Pure Colour. 2022. New York: Picador, 2023.

Hilderbrand, Lucas. The Bars Are Ours: Histories and Cultures of Gay Bars in America, 1960 and After. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2023.

Rodríguez, Juana María. Puta Life: Seeing Latinas, Working Sex. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2023.

Schalk, Sami. Black Disability Politics. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2022.

Shelley, Mary. Frankenstein. 1818. Edited by Michael Bérubé. New York: W.W. Norton, 2021.

Singh, Julietta. No Archive Will Restore You. N.p.: Punctum Books, 2018.

The influential avant-garde publisher Hanuman Editions has just been re-started, and their first books are a boxed set reprinting some of their classics. I saw it advertised on Twitter and pre-ordered it immediately because it includes difficult-to-find books by three queer authors I love, John Ashbery, Dodie Bellamy, and Eileen Myles. My set arrived yesterday. It is numbered 57/300.

Ashbery, John. The Ice Storm. 1987. London: Hanuman Editions, 2023.

Beckman, Max. On My Painting. 1988. London: Hanuman Editions, 2023.

Bellamy, Dodie. Feminine Hijinx. 1990. London: Hanuman Editions, 2023.

Daumal, René. The Lie of the Truth. 1989. London: Hanuman Editions, 2023.

Mueller, Cookie. Garden of Ashes. 1990. London: Hanuman Editions, 2023.

Myles, Eileen. Bread and Water: Stories. 1987. London: Hanuman Editions, 2023.

Since January 2021, I’ve been keeping a list of my writing activity for each month (here’s last month’s). I do so partly as a form of encouragement for myself to show that I am still able to do some writing despite the energy-sucking terrors of our times (which were especially terrible this month), and partly as an archive that I can look back on in the future. As such, I will include negative happenings (e.g., receiving rejections), not just positive ones.

I think that it is important for me to share my list publicly as a genderqueer bisexual disabled Latinx writer because mainstream discourse tries to either pretend voices such as mine do not exist or actively tries to suppress them. Whether one is part of an oppressed group or not, writing is an essential act of resistance in these terrible times, so I hope that my list offers encouragement to others.

The list is basically in chronological order.

1. Wrote a haiku or senryu on most mornings.

2. Updated the Mennonite/s Writing Bibliographies.

3. Had the eight poems I sent to Frogpond last month rejected.

4. Had my poem “sunrise / on the escalator / a delivery bike,” which was published in the October issue of Kingfisher, nominated for a 2023 Haiku Foundation Touchstone Award.

5. Had my novella manuscript rejected by a press.

6. Recorded a podcast interview with New Books Network about my new book.

7. Submitted a commissioned essay on Maxwell Kennel’s Ontologies of Violence: Deconstruction, Pacifism, and Displacement to a journal.

Here are the books that I received as holiday gifts, or, in the case of Fiebig’s and Waite’s, bought with some holiday cash:

Fiebig, Johannes, ed. The Tarot of A. E. Waite and P. Colman Smith: The Story of the World’s Most Popular Tarot. Cologne: Taschen, 2023.

Waite, A. E. The Key to the Tarot: Being Fragments of a Secret Tradition Under the Veil of Divination. London: William Rider & Son, 1910. Rpt. Cologne: Taschen, 2023.

These books are part of a box set that also contains a facsimile of the 1910 Rider-Waite-Smith deck.

Grayhall, Patricia. Making the Rounds: Defying Norms in Love and Medicine. Berkeley, CA: She Writes Press, 2022.

Harper, Faith G. Unfuck Your Kink: Using Science to Enjoy Mind-Blowing BDSM, Fetishes, Fantasy, Porn, and Whatever Your Pervy Heart Desires. Portland, OR: Microcosm Publishing, 2024.

Lakoseljac, Bianca, ed. Rudy Wiebe: Essays on His Works. Toronto: Guernica Editions, 2023.

Rajunov, Micah, and Scott Duane, eds. Nonbinary: Memoirs of Gender and Identity. New York: Columbia University Press, 2019.

Schlund-Vials, Cathy J., Sean Frederick Forbes, and Tara Betts, eds. The Beiging of America: Personal Narratives About Being Mixed Race in the 21st Century. New York: 2Leaf Press, 2017.

Cruz, Daniel Shank. Ethics for Apocalyptic Times: Theapoetics, Autotheory, and Mennonite Literature. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2024.

My author’s copies of my new book FINALLY arrived after some shipping snafus on the printer’s part. (The book was released on November 21.) The book’s copyright date is 2024 even though it is already out, and even though its Library of Congress call number lists it as 2023. It’s very exciting to finally hold it in my hands!

Erlick, Nikki. The Measure. New York: William Morrow, 2022.

My partner has been listening to the audiobook of this dystopian novel, and bought me a copy so we could discuss it together.

Joseph, Janine. Decade of the Brain: Poems. New Gloucester, ME: Alice James Books, 2023.

Rosenberg, Dan. Bassinet. Pittsburgh: Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2022.

Two of my best friends were recently at poetry readings by Joseph and Rosenberg, and bought me signed copies of their books.

di Prima, Diane. Pieces of a Song: Selected Poems. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1990.

—. The Poetry Deal. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2014.

I love di Prima’s memoirs–I recently read Recollections of My Life as a Woman–but haven’t read much of her poetry, so I decided to buy these two books. I’m about a third of the way through Pieces of a Song and am enjoying it thus far.

Since January 2021, I’ve been keeping a list of my writing activity for each month (here’s last month’s). I do so partly as a form of encouragement for myself to show that I am still able to do some writing despite the energy-sucking terrors of our times (which were especially terrible this month), and partly as an archive that I can look back on in the future. As such, I will include negative happenings (e.g., receiving rejections), not just positive ones.

I think that it is important for me to share my list publicly as a queer disabled Latinx writer because mainstream discourse tries to either pretend voices such as mine do not exist or actively tries to suppress them. Whether one is part of an oppressed group or not, writing is an essential act of resistance in these terrible times, so I hope that my list offers encouragement to others.

The list is basically in chronological order. It was a busy month!

1. Wrote a haiku or senryu on most mornings.

2. Updated the Mennonite/s Writing Bibliographies.

3. Submitted eight poems to Frogpond.

4. Submitted my memoir to a publisher.

5. Had my memoir reach another publisher’s final judging round, but then ultimately get rejected.

6. Had a poem accepted by Modern Haiku for their next issue.

7. Submitted the ekphrastic poem for an anthology of artwork celebrating Anabaptism’s 500th anniversary in 2025 that I was commissioned to write last month to the editor.

8. Interviewed Casey Plett about her new book, On Community, at an event at McNally Jackson Seaport.

9. Had a poem published in the Haiku Society of America’s 2023 members’ anthology.

10. Had my second book, Ethics for Apocalyptic Times: Theapoetics, Autotheory, and Mennonite Literature, published by Penn State University Press.

di Prima, Diane. Recollections of My Life as a Woman: The New York Years. 2001. New York: Penguin Books, 2002.

I loved the other two of di Prima’s memoirs that I’ve read (Memoirs of a Beatnik and Revolutionary Letters), so I’ve had this one on my list to read for a while. I bought it and Dear Vaccine with a gift certificate I received for my team winning a trivia contest at work.

Nye, Naomi Shihab, David Hassler, and Tyler Meier, eds. Dear Vaccine: Global Voices Speak to the Pandemic. Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 2022.

I remain obsessed with literature about the pandemic, and have therefore had my eye on this poetry anthology for a while. I was able to find a new copy for a deeply reduced price.

Whipple, Allyson, ed. Fractured by Cattails: The Haiku Society of America 2023 Members’ Anthology. New York: Haiku Society of America, 2023.

The Haiku Society of America’s annual anthology came in the mail earlier this week. It’s always a fun read because a lot of people (myself included) submit poems that are more playful or adventurous than the stuff that usually gets accepted by journals.