I tried once before, years ago, to write about Malte, to someone who had been frightened by the book, that I myself sometimes thought of it as a hollow form, a negative mold, all the grooves and indentations of which are agony, disconsolations and most painful insights, but the casting from which, were it possible to make one (as with a bronze the positive figure one would get out of it), would perhaps be happiness, assent,—most perfect and certain bliss.
— Rainer Maria Rilke in a letter to Lotte Hepner on November 8th, 1915
La vie est là
Qui vous prend par le bras
Oh la la la
C’est magnifique
I am so grateful to everyone who pre-orders My Heresies in the month leading up to its existence. In all honesty, the darkness this year has been very loud for me, and, the way my black dog works often involves extraordinary self-doubt and self-loathing, culminating in self-sabotage. I did not ask for blurbs. Even when friends offered, I felt too ashamed to take them up on those offers.
You might wonder why a writer would feel shame—- especially since we know how shame lies— and the best answer I can come up with is that the last person I wanted to hear from during this US-sponsored genocide of Palestinians was myself. A human can spend the better half of their lives fighting against the ghosts of extremist nationalism only to find these ghosts return in different forms. Language, itself, can hardly hold this. Language can barely make space for the decimation across this planet. And so, one goes silent. One writes in the notebooks and submits nothing. One tries to imagine how best to use ‘your voice’, while despising the sound of your voice.
I am lucky that Ilya Kaminsky said such generous things about the book. I am surrounded by writers, editors, and publishers who encourage me. I am speechless and humbled by that. Ultimately, I am a human who lives more in books than in what my parents called “reality,” which is the space where you learn about publishing and how to line up readings and ‘market’ your own labor. I am still clueless about the business side of writing.
And now, since this book is about the present in its own way, I quote myself in order to speak to my own silences:
Oh la la la, thank you to BOMB magazine for their generosity and the love in that community. Thank you to Eric and Erin and Kristen and Kira for their extraordinary labor in what has been a challenging year for Sarabande. Thank you to all the journals in which these poems were first published. Thank you in advance to all who invite me to talk about poetry and read it and share it, including my peers at New Orleans Poetry Festival, where I shall make a fool of myself next week. It is a joy and pleasure to be a fool for poetry. It is the only foolishness I know by heart.
You can learn more about the poetry collection here, and you can support the incredible work that BOMB has done for decades by purchasing a subscription. You can imagine a world that refuses to accept the given, a world in which empire and the weapons of the most powerful are not celebrated and defended. A world AGAINST GREATNESS. (Fuck Trump and the Neo-Fascist International completely.) You can join Writers Against the War on Gaza. You can support Workshops 4 Gaza and work with Haroon to create a workshop. You can donate to Heal Palestine and commit to the work of love. Either way, no matter what, you make my day by reading this, even if the other things are not possible due to finances. Thank you, humans. Thank you thank you thank you.