TALKING IN THE DARK and other Poetry Memoirs

Hello and Happy Poetry Friday! Be sure to visit lovely poet-teacher Catherine at Reading to the Core for Roundup.

First a couple of newsy items: FRESH DELICIOUS will be representing Alabama this weekend at the National Book Festival. Yippee! I'm excited to see Laura Shovan's THE LAST FIFTH GRADE representing Maryland. Yay yay yay!

And second, thanks to friends in poetic places, I will be speaking to students in the Seattle area (thank you, Sarah and Ramona!) before meeting so many great folks in Bellingham for POETRY CAMP. So excited!!! This probably means I won't be posting next week, but who knows?! I may get a spare moment, in which case I will of course say hello.

So, poetry memoirs. There's HOW I DISCOVERED POETRY by Marily Nelson and BROWN GIRL DREAMING by Jacqueline Woodson and ENCHANTED AIR by Magarita Engle. There's YOU REMIND ME OF YOU by Eireanne Corrigan, which I haven't read yet. And others... readers: any poetry memoir titles to recommend?

Meanwhile, have you read TALKING IN THE DARK by Billy Merrell? So, so good! Indeed, each poem is a stand-alone poem, which I appreciate. Here's an example:

Moth

I know neither how to open nor to close. - Peter Sirr


How does it happen? That flicker in the dark
like a candle lit and then blown out.
The smoke after, the smell of it. I need you

to hear this. Do you ever stop, halfway?
Or having crossed the street do you ever cross back
to look more closely at something in the road?

Do you walk on? Washing dishes,
do you catch yourself wandering
toward the light on the glass?

I don't know, finally, how to love.
And yet I do. Daily and wholly,
and not only people. We live:

stop at the bank, have a cup of coffee,
forget to write, remember to lock the door.
How often do we live,

having that steady nostalgia even as we live it,
feeling memory create itself as we stand there,
wandering? Wondering? Both, I think, together.

Do you ever wonder if these moments
are what life really is? These lit moments
you rise into will be what is cut together

to finally be your life. We open into it,
we catch ourselves, and we stop. Who saw me
staring into the candle like that?

What must they imagine I'm thinking?
Let us catch ourselves opening
and then catch ourselves stopping

and not. Let us open and open,
without knowing how.

- Billy Merrell

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I'm actually working on a memoir. NOT poetry. So I am reading a bunch of memoirs right now. One I've loved recently is THE SOUND OF A WILD SNAIL EATING. Please shoot any recommendations my way! Thank you.