What I read in 2023
by Lynne Jensen Lampe
My mother was working on her master’s in social work when she met my dad on a blind date. He’d left school as a teen to join the Navy, eventually getting his GED and going on to a couple of months of college. Both of them loved reading. Mama died in 2011. Daddy had a stroke in 2017, after which he re-learned to walk, eat, speak, everything. Now 89, he still has difficulty moving his right side. Every step, every reach requires intense concentration. Widowed, long-retired from working on train cars, and no longer able to tend a yard, he reads for hours a day. The table by his chair had a book on it. Along the way he developed a love of reading. He travels the globe from his chair, and he finds joy in the escape, even reading thrillers and espionage (eg, The Borrowed by Chan Ho-Kei or Better Off Dead, the latest Jack Reacher novel by Lee Child and Andrew Child).
I inherited a love of mysteries—my favorite genre when I want to forget life’s details—from my dad and my maternal grandfather. Grandpa Sam loaned me his collected Sherlock Holmes when I was still in elementary school. My reading list has expanded considerably since then, though I still have a soft spot for Holmes pastiches (eg, The Whole Art of Detection and Dust and Shadow by Lyndsay Faye). In 2023 I spent time with various Substack newsletters, poetry collections, books on literary craft, and nonfiction. Here are some highlights.
Through https://substack.com
Oldster Magazine—a wonderful set of interviews and long posts curated by writer/editor Sari Botton, aimed at those 50 and older: Sober Oldster, general Q&A, and other lovelies related to aging.
Erin in the Morning—investigative reporting on legislative and other news about the trans community. Erin Reed’s writing is thorough, timely, expansive.
Lit Mag News—info about lit mags, submission how-to’s and support, generally thorny issues in the writing community that no one else but Becky Tuch seems ready to tackle honestly and upfront.
***I do still read social media and follow family, friends, writers, and writing organizations on Facebook, Instagram, Bluesky and, yes, X. I somehow avoid the meanies yet find discourse that drives to me to deeper thought. And joy—babies, puppies, graduations, and new books.
August is the month to read one poetry collection or chapbook per day. The challenge started with Nicole Sealey in 2017. This year, I resolved to complete it and pulled 31 books from my shelves. Months later I’m still working my way through my stack—turns out I don’t like rushing poetry as a writer or a reader. When I did finish a collection in a day, I marked poems to revisit and linger over. Some faves from the challenge:
Judas Goat by Gabrielle Bates—A Judas goat leads sheep to slaughter but is not itself killed. These poems compelled me to follow with no regard for comfort. Random lines: “cervix slapping the fifty-yard line / like a fried egg flipped down on a griddle to burn” (from “Strawberries”).
Partial Genius by Mary Biddinger—These prose poems jangle, discordant in pitting 1960s expectations of women against various identities, including French club president. I read this collection in 2022 too. The juxtapositions satisfy me, tweak my thinking. Random lines: “When I walked into the hallowed basement of the courthouse I felt like a manifesto or particularly bold haircut” (from “Some Truths”).
Who Will Cradle Your Head? by Jared Beloff—The collection comprises lineated poems, prose poetry (some about Sasquatch), and vispo (visual poetry) and erasures that investigate both environmental disaster and restoration. Random lines: “I am arrested as the water spreads, unhinges its jaw to swallow the land” (from “Sasquatch sees the ocean for the first time”).
Mysteries
The Marion Lane series by T.A. Willberg—The three YA books begin in 1958 London and involve a secret investigative group that operates in abandoned tunnels below London. The books do question the validity of extra-legal agencies and the use of gadgetry and technology for good vs evil (and which is which).
Nonfiction
How to Fight Racism by Black theologian Jemar Tisby—The book specifically deals with a process for predominantly white churches to become antiracist, beginning with a framework called A.R.C. (awareness–relationship–commitment).
My own book
I read from Talk Smack to a Hurricane, my debut poetry collection, throughout the year in Missouri, Kansas, and Illinois as well as online for readings in the UK and North Carolina. Reading the poems about my mother’s mental illness and its impact on our relationship, psychiatry’s treatment of women, and antisemitism did not get easier with repetition. Instead, I’ve realized how angry I am at psychiatry and ways my own internalized antisemitism diluted my mother’s joy.
Reviews/Critique
I was a beta reader for a friend’s memoir, began freelancing as a book reviewer, and joined Tinderbox Poetry Journal as a submissions reader.
Craft books, essays, and articles
Poets & Writers—A journal chock-full of submission calls, inspiring interviews, features on debut authors, advice from lit biz folks
The Art of _______ series from Graywolf Press—of attention, daring, description, syntax, recklessness, and more
A Primer for Poets & Readers of Poetry by Gregory Orr—A book I come back to again and again for Orr’s discussion of the threshold between order and disorder
Ordinary Genius by Kim Addonizio—full of writing exercises and also the concept of “necessary coldness” (where restraint, rather than blatant drama-trauma, creates the deeper emotional reaction in the reader)
PR for Poets by Jeannine Hall Gailey
Lynne Jensen Lampe’s poems appear in Stone Circle Review, THRUSH, Rise Up Review, Yemassee, and elsewhere. Her debut collection, Talk Smack to a Hurricane (Ice Floe Press, 2022), a 2023 Eric Hoffer Book Award-winner, concerns mother-daughter relationships, mental illness, and antisemitism. She edits academic writing, reads for Tinderbox Poetry Journal, and lives in mid-Missouri with her husband, two dogs, and lots of squeaky toys. She designed a number of covers for Aqueduct books in the first few years of the press. https://lynnejensenlampe.com; Bluesky/X @ljensenlampe; or IG @lynnejensenlampe.
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