Not That Sort of Woman

But I know some great women

Hi hi. I should have sent this newsletter out a full month (two months?) ago when I wrote it, but everything feels heavy lately, and I’m not sure what my voice can add. There are so many brutal and unnecessary deaths, and it’s election season in America again, plus it’s winter, the time when I am both resting and reaching into the inner depths to clear out all the gunk. (Btw, I didn’t win the Sundog Book Award—thanks to everyone who asked me about it & then responded with kindness, jokes, and support when I didn’t get it.)

Here’s a poem for today:

Not That Sort Of Woman

"Mouths don't empty themselves unless the ears are sympathetic and knowing." 
— Zora Neale Hurston, Mules and Men

I thought I could love you, sink in among couch pillows
as you whisked batter in a Pyrex bowl, tickle your child, 
delight in the clothes slathered gorgeous on your body, 
the dusklight angling in yet blinding no one, not even 
the cat licking his paws on the armchair’s arm.
I thought I'd eat your pies, offer you my old clothes, 
that we'd stain our fingers together weeding beets 
or gathering currants. I'd give you bouquets of thyme 
and sage with a little ribbon, you'd drop off a portion 
of your final batch of butter as the summer drizzled 
its last beads of sweat into air made chilly 
by the dying leaves. You'd drive us places at night 
where there was wine and women we didn't know, 
where there was music for us to dance to, 
our braids loosening from the way we threw our bodies 
side to side, laughing even when we spilled our drinks, 
laughing at our calloused feet, our filthy toenails. 
I was prepared to know your mother and your mother's 
way of convincing you to rest; I'd have given up acres 
of my Sundays to help you card your wool or cut squares 
of fabric on the bedroom floor. But there was none of that—
no yelling flower names across a field, no spitting cherry pits 
into a hissing fire, no jokes whose inception has been lost,  
no loaning you my favorite sweater, no the two of us
asleep in your bed on a husbandless night, you woken 
at dawn by the rooster, I sleeping through his howl.

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I finished out 2023 with a week of COVID, a fondue party, and a night out dancing. The night of dancing reminded me of the above poem, which I wrote many years ago. It’s an elegy to friendships that did germinate: no seed bursting open, no stem popping out, no leggy stalk unfurlings its first leaves—no new friend there.

But now, so many years later, I do have those friendships, and I believe it’s partly because I could always see their contours before there were people to fill in that space. HEART EMOJI.

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Currently Reading:
American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America by Colin Woodard: Very into this book, underlining things constantly, laughing out loud, reading lines out loud to Misha, frequently exclaiming things like “It makes so much sense!” 10/10 would recommend. I did not know non-fiction could be this fun.

The Years by Annie Ernaux: Somehow I totally missed knowing anything about this Nobel Prize-winning author. So far this book is potent. So French. I’m into it. Thank you to Kathryn for sending it to me out of the blue.

Recently Read:
Wellness by Nathan Hill: A big ole novel, very easy to get into. Technically about a marriage, or more broadly, about two different people who got married.

Walking to Martha’s Vineyard by Franz Wright: I had to read this book after listening to this amazing radio piece about Franz Wright (twice! cried both times). Despite all my Poem Exposure via school and friends & etc, I had never read Franz Wright. I thought this book was beautiful—spare and heartbreaking and surprising. I wrote five full poems while reading it.

Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin: Rereading this book (one of my top 5) was like remembering emotions I had earlier in my life. Every single line is so beautiful and brutal. James Baldwin can teach you something by looking closely at anything. G-d this book is good!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The Art of Blessing the Day by Marge Piercy: Jewish poems from a Cape Cod poet! I’d never deeply explored her work until now & I appreciate her. This book also inspired a lot of poems for me.

Phoebe’s Diary by Phoebe Wahl: An illustrated “mostly true” journal of one year of a teenage girl. Very sweet! It made me remember some Big Feelings from high school that I’d forgotten about. Plus it’s gorgeously illustrated.

Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston: Somehow I had never read this until now, and reading it was somehow like a coming home. To say that I loved it would be to be putting it mildly, and I’m not a mild person. So let me say: THIS BOOK IS A PART OF ME.

KIDS BOOK ALERT: By the Shores of Silver Lake by Laura Ingalls Wilder: Here are some hot takes as I move through this classic series (that I never read myself as a kid) : 1) How did anyone survive back then?! Blizzards for days! A plague of grasshoppers! Balls of fire coming down the stove pipe! 2) It sucks to be Ma, Pa makes all the decisions, & now he's having them live in a shitty little shanty in a temporary railroad shantytown? No, Pa. Ma wanted the girls to be near a town so they could go to school. Not near all these “rough men”!! 3) If you don’t have a cow, you don’t have milk.

The Hare with Amber Eyes: A Hidden Inheritance by Edmund de Waal: Another nonfiction book, gasp. A compelling story that follows many generations of one family via a single set of Japanese art pieces. I learned a lot, despite struggling with all the place names and dates. Because I’m a poet! Don’t need the specifics! Just just need the feeling of the thing.

Tom Lake by Ann Patchett: The coziest book ever. Reading it was like a perfect glass of iced tea. Lovely and gone too quick. You’ve probably already read it! I read it months ago but wanted to make sure it was in here cuz its fun.

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Instead of buying me a coffee, please consider buying an olive tree for Palestine. The destruction of human life there is horrific enough, but to also think of the way the land is being destroyed…it’s too much, really, to hold (though we must).

Olive trees have been cultivated across Palestine for thousands of years and have come to symbolize Palestinian resilience against Israeli occupation. The harvest takes place between October and November, and about 80,000 to 100,000 Palestinian families rely on this crop for their income.¹

Olive trees grow very slowly; I think of their fruits as a sort of desert miracle. The olive is a holy food. The human body is a holy site. The earth will regenerate with or without us, but we can play a role in its flourishing. I think of all the Jewish holidays that have a tree focus and I plant a tree in Palestine, to remember my humanity and my ability (my right) (my responsibility) to disagree with military actions against human bodies.

LOVE,
Taylor

1. Al Jazeera, Infographic: Palestine’s olive industry