Quick update

On my total silence and some hope of its ending!

Hello friends,

A quick update on us: we’ve been in a hard season. I haven’t had the space to do much “fun” writing. My mother has stage four cancer, and things have been very intense recently. She ended up going in for a major surgery in mid-June, which went sideways and she’s still in the ICU recovering. Plot twist: the surgery was in New York City (we live in Colorado), so we’ve been zipping across the country with our two littles… it’s been a lot. But now we are settled in at my in-laws’ in Detroit—much closer to New York + free help with the kids—and I’m hopeful that things will get a little easier.

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So be on the lookout for some pieces about Geoffrey Hill and other things soon. Till then, a few publications to share:

• “The Art of Presence: The Poetry of Les Murray”, an essay on one of my favorite poets, Les Murray, in the Easter 2021 Dappled Things;

• Two poems, “The Leap” and “Spring Evening”, in the summer 2021 FORMA Review;

• A poem, “New Year’s Morning”, in the winter 2021 Euphony Journal;

• A poem, “The Newlywed”, in The Classical Outlook, Volume 96, Issue 1;

• A sonnet, “The Trout”, in the winter 2020/2021 Able Muse.

I’m also nearly done with a draft of a verse play, and I’ll be sharing excerpts of that soon.

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I’ve read a number of wonderful books recently, but here are a few of the highlights:

• The End of the Affair, by Graham Greene — this is one of those books that makes me want to write a novel and also makes me doubt that I’ll ever write a novel. He makes it look so easy. The most remarkable feature of this book is the ending; Greene knows precisely where to end the story (down to the word). He has a poetic precision here that’s admirable and difficult.

• The Book of the Long Sun, by Gene Wolfe — the second massive Wolfe tetralogy I’ve read (Book of the New Sun was my first), and while I liked the first two books, I’m a little irritated by the shifting narrators in the second two. Wolfe’s laser-focused narration is his greatest strength, and it’s always fun to try to figure out how reliable his narrators are, but when the story begins shifting POVs in Book 3 it breaks some of that spell. Still well worth the read, and further evidence for the theory that genre fiction can be literary.

• Reflexions sur l’Amerique, by Jacques Maritain — still working through this one, but I’m pleased to share that my French reading level is up to this! I read a passage aloud to my husband and summarized it, and his response was, “Wow, that’s actually interesting.” A strong testimonial, indeed :)

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Please drop in comments/updates on your publications/projects, books you’re reading, and general life events. I’d love to hear from you.

~Jane