Happy Pride, friends!
I posted a photo of me and Vika on Notes and immediately got trolled by some bigot telling me to “stay away from children,” so we’re starting the month off right!
I've been thinking about poetry. Particularly when the "debate" comes up (as it tends to) about whether poetry is necessary, especially in times of great strife and uncertainty.
(It is and it isn't. If you're starving, a poem will not feed you. But then again, it might.)
We don't need poetry. What we need is relief from pain. What we need is to grieve. What we need is to know we're not alone. That’s what poetry does.
Pain is horrendous. It's not only difficult to experience, it's extremely difficult to put into words.
To quote Sarah Manguso: "Depression is hard to describe not just because it's complex and abstract, but also because it occupies the part of us capable of describing things."
This is why we have poetry (and music and art, generally). It translates our aches into something acute, something immediate, something potentially healing.
When Adrienne Rich writes: "all the old knives that have rusted in my back, I drive in yours," I feel that in my body. The knives, the rust. The cyclical wounding of ourselves and those we love. I experience the poem and its pain, and in experiencing it, it moves through and out of me. (In theory.)
It's helpful. To feel these things. I've found.
And, as I said (in a poem, obviously), poetry allows us to experience pain vaguely, askance, to see it from a side alley, or a window three stories up.
There are some things we can't look at directly. To look at the dreaded thing straight-on is like sticking your head in the mouth of a cannon. We need the obscurity to help us bear our lives. Pop songs are also great for this.
Beauty is like that, too. Some things, some people are too beautiful—too bright—to be taken in all at once.
Like you.
Advice
This month’s Ask Anna columns
My girlfriend is still married—coping with a separated partner
My boyfriend almost had a threesome—now I’m questioning everything
Freebies
Sapphic Pride - Multi-genre giveaway
Pride Month - Grab a Free LGBTQIA+ Book
Linkspiration
Shout out to Contra Costa library, which has an amazing Pride book section (one for adults, teens, and kids) that’s worth exploring.
on coming out in your 30s (HuffPo) on 13 ways to have a joyous, powerful Pride (support queer writers!)Or support this queer writer by becoming a paid subscriber :) (Only $30 a year! BANANA SANDWICHES)
’s Substackers for Palestine Children’s Relief (fundraiser)A trans person peed here (
Femme fashion is queer fashion (Autostraddle)
- “Our experiences are poems in themselves. We dance on piano keys that play in tune with the sound of our hearts.”The actual questions shaping the future of trans health care (Assigned)
has tips on writing with disabilitiesPeek inside Alice Munro's notebooks (Paris Review)
- for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color writers on Substack (a data journalist) on why people hate Nickelback so muchOperation Olive Branch is a large repository of links to individual Palestinian families' fundraisers and several ways to help out
Hot Box
Yours,
P.S. This line from Margaret Atwood's poem—"Variation on the Word Sleep"
I would like to be the air
that inhabits you for a moment
only. I would like to be that unnoticed
& that necessary.
P.P.S. "It is the nature of glass to break," Joni Tevis writes in her criminally underrated essay collection, The World Is on Fire, "and once it does, it can never really be made right. You can choose to deny this basic fact or you can face it head-on."
P.P.P.S. "No artist is ever pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer divine dissatisfaction; a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others."—Martha Graham to Agnes De Mille
"People everywhere just gotta be free". . .someday this will be status quo and not just wishful singing set to music
Thanks so much for including me! Love this ✨