I’ve been reading more poetry lately.  For a while it I read all Regencies, all the time, because I want to write more Regency novels, but the last one I read was really bad.  Like, I’ve been half-way through it for two months and am wondering if I—gasp—dare not finish.  Life is too short to read bad books, I believe, but I also hate to leave a book behind.  So instead of tossing it out altogether and starting a new one which will hopefully be more engaging, I’m reading poetry. It’s good to have a break anyway because even when poetry is “bad,” there’s always something to be learned from it—some new connections with language and thought and creativity to be made.

Last December I ran Atlanta Review’s first ever chapbook contest, and we received 115 chapbook submissions, all of which I read.  Some of the poems were wonderful, some were dreck, and some weren’t poems at all (at least, not what I’d call poems), but reading 115 chapbooks was quite the enterprise and it often entertained or moved me.  It certainly reinvigorated me as far as reading poetry goes—even though it was just part of my job.  And it reminded me that writing books of poetry really is something lots of people do—it’s not just the few of us living in our ivory towers, but it’s insurance salesmen, and accountants, machinists, nurses, software engineers, fast food workers, and teachers.  It’s not just MFA-ers trying to publish their theses, and that’s beautiful that the poetry community is so broad these days.

I don’t remember if I mentioned my friend Ed before, whom I met last year at the Tinker Mountain Writer’s Workshop, but he and I started a book club—Leopard Aesthetics Book Club to be exact—with the goal of reading contemporary books of poetry and spending 3 hours on a Saturday morning discussing it.  So far we’ve read We Contain Landscapes, by Patrycja Humienik, The Parachutist by Jose Hernandez Diaz, Happy Everything by Caitlyn Cowan, Nocturne in Joy by Tatiana Johnson-Boria, and Slaughterhouse for Old Wive’s Tales by Hannah V. Warren.  We may have read one or two others, but those are the ones that I’m remembering right offhand.  We meet at Marietta Coffee Company on Roswell Road and we just hang out and dish poetry. MCC has great iced caramel macchiatos which I syphon down in a snap as Ed and I go through the poems of the book, make incisive (or inane) comments about what we’ve read, and generally spend a lot of time laughing and talking. 

We get together about once a month and I become so energized by our discussion that it makes me hungry for the next time we visit.  I realize I don’t have a “poetry friend” group, not anymore, and so I feel really lucky to have met Ed and to have formed a great friendship with him.  He’s a neat person—generous, funny, and interesting—and we text  and share poems too.  It would be wonderful if Leopard Aesthetics would grow a community of poets and poetry readers around it, but so far neither Ed nor I have branched out like that. There’s still time, but for now, Leopard Aesthetics is just the two of us.

And if you’re wondering why “Leopard Aesthetics,” it has to do with a conversation we had where we were discussing different writing “schools” and the different aesthetics they espouse.  We couldn’t think what our aesthetic was, so we each came up with a list of names for our book club that somehow represented what we thought our aesthetic should be. Ed chose my top suggestion and we became Leopard Aesthetics.  We haven’t determined what that is exactly, but it’s becoming clearer the longer we hang out.

Anyway, our next book club selection is Real Phonies and Genuine Fakes by Nicky Beer. Dolly Parton graces the cover which I’m taking as a good sign.  I’m hoping Ed and I can meet soon.  I think this book is going to be great.

I know I took a year off from writing my blogs, but I promise it won’t be that long before I write again.  After all, I’m going to Scotland again this summer—and you know I’ll have plenty to say about that!