In no particular order:

film: Platform by Jia Zhangke (2000)

• I’ve been working my way through Jia’s films after watching Xiao Wu in late 2020. Platform is my favorite by far. I wrote a bit about two of his films that center on the Three Gorges Dam in my little essay / list “On Dams.”

fiction: Forever Valley, Rose Mellie Rose, Hotel Splendid, and Understudies

• Related to the above, I also read and wrote about (in the dams link) a few novels by Marie Redonnet.

fiction: Harrow by Joy Williams (Knopf, 2021)

• I received a galley of Harrow this summer as I promised to write a review. But when I read it, I was so stunned (quite literally), that I didn’t feel like I could write a word, despite copious notes. I refused to read any other reviews, and I still haven’t. I was overcome with despair after Harrow. Williams is one of my favorite writers, and The Quick and the Dead and The Changeling are on my list of top books—I return to them constantly. But Harrow? I read it again, and, still: stunned. It’s possibly my favorite book I’ve ever read. I’m not sure what else to say.

nonfiction:  How to Blow Up a Pipeline by Andreas Malm (Verso, 2020)

• … except that this is an appropriate accompaniment to Harrow and might explain a bit of my despair.

poetry: No Knowledge is Complete Until It Passes Through My Body by Asiya Wadud (Nightboat, 2021)

tower: This radio? cell? weather? something tower I saw while riding in a car in Kansas City. It was raining.

fiction: An Apprenticeship or The Book of Pleasures by Clarice Lispector (trans. Stefan Tobler, New Directions, 2021)

art: Expo Superstudio Migrazioni exhibit at CIVA in Brussels

music: Lately I’ve been listening to recorded sets from NTS Radio more than anything else. Recent favorites:

• Born N Bread (mostly rnb, hiphop, afrobeats)
• Klein Blue w/ Lorenzo Daniels (mostly funk, soul, jazz, ambient)
• Gilded Sound Reflection, the “New Wavey” episode (new wave, synth pop)

reading: Nathaniel Mackey & Will Alexander (Woodberry Poetry Room, October 7, 2021)

• The rhythm of Mackey’s reading from Double Trio has been stuck in my head since. 

nonfiction: Dear Science by Katherine McKittrick (Duke, 2021)

poetry: Demystifications by Miranda Mellis (Solid Objects, 2021)

• This latest work by Miranda Mellis sent me for a cognitive spin. Our conversation about it is published here: “An Interview with Miranda Mellis.”

facebook marketplace item for sale: 

art: Related to the above: PH-315 by Clyfford Still (1945) (My photo from a visit to the Clyfford Still Museum in Denver.)

nonfiction: Thought-Forms by Annie Besant & C.W. Leadbeater (The Theosophical Publishing House, 1901)

poetry: Corpse Whale by dg nanouk okpik (University of Arizona Press, 2012)

film: Until the End of the World (director’s cut) by Wim Wenders (1991 / 2014)

text messages: A friend sent me a long series of texts from the parking lot of an AutoZone near the horrific Suncor oil refinery in Denver — about what he was seeing at the AutoZone and refinery — and though he gave me permission to post them anonymously here, I don’t want to start publishing screenshots of text messages no matter how poignant. But I’m tempted.

fiction: J R by William Gaddis (NYRB, 2020)

poetry: Thirteen Quintets for Lois by Jay Wright (Flood Editions, 2021)

• More on this soon, but go ahead and read it so we can talk about it.

nonfiction: Scandal of the Speaking Body by Shoshana Felman (Stanford University Press, 2002)

music: Flood Network by Katie Dey (Joy Void, 2016)

reading: The piece that Ish Klein read at the What Happens issue 2 release.

art: Copper plate print one of my former middle school students gave me years ago. I recently framed it and hung it up in my office. I’m not sure if it’s intentionally crooked, which is part of what I love about it. It’s a little hard to see here, but it’s a drawing of a flying car in (or outside of?) a building. Other flying cars / helicopters in flight. The text notes the print number, 12/12, and the title, “The Future of Transportation.” [name redacted]

fiction: The Hour Sets by Michael Boyko (Calamari Press, 2007)

essay: “The Dust That Measures All Our Time” by Steven Connor (The Public Domain Review, 2021)

lectures: “On Vibration” by Patrick Farmer via the Sonic Arts Research Unit at Oxford Brookes University

• I attended this series of nine lectures last spring, and reading, writing, and drawing around and through them took up much of my brain space during that time. I have many notes, resources, ideas, and plans for work coming out of it. Some I hope I can share soon. 

interview: “Fleur Jaeggy Thinks Nothing of Herself” by Dylan Byron (The New Yorker, 2021)

nonfiction: Renegade Poetics by Evie Shockley (University of Iowa Press, 2011)

old book: I found this in the mathematics section of the library at Western Colorado University:

nonfiction: Various pedagogical texts. In preparation for recent articles and lectures, I reread a couple of classics: 

• Education for What is Real by Earl C. Kelley (Harper & Row, 1947)
• Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paolo Freire (trans. Myra Bergman Ramos, Bloomsbury, 2018)
• Teaching to Transgress by bell hooks (Routledge, 1994)

film: La Ciénaga by Lucrecia Martel (2001)

poetry: Earth on Earth by Bin Ramke (Omnidawn, 2021)

• Bin Ramke is very dear to me, and I love his poems. In Earth on Earth, his latest, I found a poem about a child remembering a small, imaginary fox terrier. My dog was a toy fox terrier, and she died just before the book arrived. 

art: This painting by Claudia Keep:

You can view 2020’s Roundup here.