“That book sat on my various shelves for decades until I got around to it, and then it seemed to be written especially for me.” This is from the title piece from Mary Ruefle’s The Book. And somewhere else this week I read something about the tenderness of books touching each other on the shelf…and now I can’t find where….Zagajewski? Probably? or perhaps Elisa Gabbert? I want to be a credit-giver rather than a stealer…but somedays it’s all just jumbling around in there, the old brain.

Well, Mary Ruefle. If you’ve read her, you already know you want this book. It’s classic Mary Ruefle and we can never have enough of that. Another piece begins, “I was at my desk pretending to be writing.” (Relatable!) And another, “As it happens, I travel a lot, therefore I am in a good position to know what happens when you die.” If you haven’t read Ruefle, start with Madness, Rack, and Honey, and then you’ll also want to read everything she writes, and you’ll be happy there is more.

Normally, I’m annoyed when a favourite poet has a “New and Selected” because then I will feel compelled to buy it for the new poems, even though I already own all the other volumes from which the selected are drawn. Still, I bought Jane Hirshfield’s The Asking, because how could I not? And then, I do love that cover. You’d think the title would be jarring for me, because one of my own books is titled, Asking, but nah, it’s honestly delightful to me.

The new poems are very much worth having and my annoyance, though minor, quickly was dispelled. These lines spoke to me deeply, for example:

I’ve been waiting to find again my own right proportion.
So often, a person’s size is too big.
Less often, too small.
Either you block the view completely
or you stand peering, squinting, one small hand
shielding your face from the sun.

Her new year’s morning poem begins:

The world asks, as it asks daily:
And what can you make, can you do, to change my deep-broken, fractured?

If you’ve not read Hirshfield, or if you have, it’s a beautiful thing to have so many wonderful poems in one volume.

As often happens, I discovered the last book of the 3 I’ll mention today on Kerry Clare’s blog. The book is Chelene Knight’s Let it Go. It begins with an author’s note: “This book is a space for soul work and dreaming.” If I had to describe this book in one word it would be: generous. It’s about learning, unlearning, joy, thriving.

The publisher says this, “For readers of Ross Gay and listeners of Therapy for Black Girls, a reflective examination of Black self-love and joy that guides the reader to ditch old beliefs, achieve difficult unlearnings and redefine language, relationships and love to find their own unique path to joy.”

Knight asks, “Does my joy attach itself to success? Well, in my experience as a Black woman who is excited and eager to share and celebrate things I’ve overcome, I do feel like we are either not successful enough or we are too successful, and then that success is suspect…but I think Black people should get the props they deserve for hard work, creativity, perseverance, and sheer determination.” She also notes, “My joy won’t be the same as yours. This is okay.” “As we continue to preach about needing more space for Black folks, we need to also focus on calling in the variety of stories that contribute to the massively diverse experience of being Black. The experience of being Black is not singular.”

Knight deserves all the props for this book which is kick-ass and truly joyful, and as I said, generous.

So, to wrap it up, we have a book written as though especially for me, one that asks how to assume the correct size and proportion and how to change our deep-fracturedness, and one that leads us into joy and thriving, and generously and lovingly teaches about the need for making space for black writers — whose experience is diverse.

Happy reading! and may you all find the right book at the right time — that magic!

February 12, 2024