Intergalactic Devotion

Do you have it? Do you want it? Do you need it?

Nikki Giovanni died recently, a human poet woman whose work has meant a lot to me over the years. Nikki offered me a lot of ideas regarding how I could be, both as a person and a poet; her poems are fun and funny and straight and sexy and alive. Sometimes they’re really short, sometimes she’s bossy, and she often mentions food, which makes me trust her. When I’m reading anything she wrote, a recipe, a saucy little essay, I’m right there with her, I’m nodding, I’m laughing along, we’re friends! We were. We still are.

Here’s a poem, written a couple of years ago, that I couldn’t have written if I hadn’t read so many Nikki Giovanni poems over the years. Listen here:

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Prayer To Get Over My Own Damn Self

Listen, lady, you’re not 
some cataclysmic event
that everyone on earth 
is wrestling to recover from.

Girl, get over yourself. 
You’re not tectonic,
not a crisis of faith. 
You’re one woman 

on one planet
unremembered by most.
People will choose to love you
or they will forget.

Or they will love you
but terribly. That's the world 
and we all live in it.
You’re no exception!

What, you think you’ve got 
sparkles coming out 
of all your holy places?
Maybe you do! But 

some people prefer 
sesame seeds, prefer 
snowflakes, prefer 
nothing sprinkling at all.

Some people prefer 
other people over you.
But do you know 
what adults do?

They love the people
that love them back.
You know why adults do that? 
Cuz it's better to cook 

with what’s in the pantry 
than to moon over recipes 
with pomegranate molasses.
Girl, you’re never gonna get

that fancy red molasses.
Put down your visions
of Intergalactic Devotion
where you are winged

and water-worshipped. 
You’ve got enough love 
on your one little stovetop
to last a whole life through

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I am reading books faster than I am eating cheese these days (which is saying a lot as I stand in my season of being 30% cheddar). Below are the ones I read at the start of winter; I have read eight (or one hundred and eight?) books since then that will have to wait for the next newsletter. Stay tuned, ladles & gentlespoons!!

Recently Read:

• Minor Feelings: An Asian-American Reckoning by Cathy Park Hong: I am grateful for what I learned in this book and think the concept of “minor feelings” will be useful as I move forward in life as someone who seeks to better understand how our culture works to minimize and often brutalize everyone who is not a cis white man. Cathy is a poet and now I will move on to reading her poetry!

• Every book by Melissa Febos. Here I will rank them in order of my favorites:
  1) Body Work - plz refer to the prior issue of this newsletter for more details, but basically, even if you are not someone who writes, you may highly enjoy this book on why it matters for us to talk about what has happened to us.
  2) Whip Smart - best-selling novel about the time she spent as a dominatrix, while also still getting As in college, while also doing a fair amount of heroin—compelling premise, I know, but it’s only good because she brought a great deal of self-awareness to the telling of it. I also learned a lot about what men want when they go to a dominatrix, which is information I don’t feel like I would have gained otherwise.
  3) Girlhood - Enlivening, enraging, encouraging, reinforcing essays on being a woman in this world (which is not something I would recommend to the faint of heart). I love this one! Maybe it should actually be in 2nd place. But I’m not gonna mess with my numbers now.
  4) Abandon Me - Some beautiful lines in here, and I enjoyed all the essays, but this wasn’t as cohesive as her other books, and there were a lot of words devoted to an unhealthy relationship that I didn’t find riveting. Also, by the time I read it, I’d been only reading Melissa for like 2-3 months and maybe I just needed a little space from her!

• Be Ready When the Luck Happens by Ina Garten - Oh, Ina! I loved your use of exclamation points in this memoir! I loved hearing so much about your beloved JEFFREY! I wish we could drink big martinis together and then eat that mushroom lasagna with white sauce whose secret ingredient is NUTMEG (gasp!)! This book was fun, and I value fun. It also satisfied my business owner's curiosity to learn how she became THE Barefoot Contessa. The short of it: she and Jeffrey spent a lot of time pursuing their separate dreams, and also living separately. They didn’t have kids. And she worked her ass off! Also, supposedly, there was luck involved. But I think she just had her eyes peeled for it. Really peeled.

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Wild but true: I love this song (even though I just found out one of the singers has a marshmallow as a head). After a decade of living rurally, pop country has finally made a few little inroads into my heart. I don’t hate it. I don’t hate anything that makes me sing.

Hey, it’s February! It’s Patti Smith month! We just passed Imbolc (Feb 2nd)! The light is coming back (post Feb 2nd)! I'm collaborating with my poet-sis Megan on our 2nd annual poetry and music reading in Putney (date TBD)! My birthday is coming up (March 2)! Pay no attention to the rich men at the helm, ok?! Pay attention to who is showing up for you and who you want to show up for! I am intergalactically devoted to you!

love & swirly cherry chocolate bread,
Taylor Mardis Katz Honeymeadow