A Saturday (Wednesday) Letter (Notebook)

A MacArthur Fellow visits!

Hanif Abdurraqib doesn’t know where his National Book Award finalist medal is.

“Decoration is fine, but it’s sort of out out your control,” the music-obsessed poet/critic/essayist/MacArthur Award-winner told the crowd assembled for his visit to my institution ten or so days ago. “If all they talk about is my awards, and not as someone whose body of work got progressively more challenging…” then he’s not interested.

Abdurraqib’s work has gotten more challenging, from his first book of essays through his consideration of A Tribe Called Quest and up to A Little Devil in America, his multifaceted series of essays “In Praise of Black Performance,” in which “performance” comprises everything from Beyonce’s “Lemonade” to Josephine Baker to blackface and its repudiations to the ways masculinity does and doesn’t leave room for tenderness.

Starting his career in slam poetry circles “reformatted my idea of what publication is. … I wasn’t writing to publish at first.” He was instead writing things down long enough to memorize them.

“We’re so proof-driven, wanting to see the proof of one’s labor — where can I see your poem?” He said, adding that his early poems don’t and can’t exist in the form in which they originally appeared.

That orientation toward orality gives Abdurraqib’s prose a cascading breathlessness that pulls you through the piece: “The way I’m reading what I’m writing informs its shape on the page.”

Abdurraqib’s attitude toward publication put me in mind of, of all people, John Donne, with whom I just got reacquainted via Katherine Rundell’s Super-Infinite: The Transformations of John Donne. Donne’s poetry career existed pretty much exclusively in letters to friends and patrons¹. He wrote his fancy little poems of praise or news in order to inform and delight a very specific audience. The poems we have are those that survived by chance or because they were copied into commonplace books and circulated to other readers. It was either that or get the plague, I guess.

In any case, Abdurraqib and Donne have lately “reformatted” my attitude to publication. Abdurraqib spoke of the writer’s need to “massage our obsessions” and added “to keep our obssession alive is like keeping a plant alive.”

All of which is to say:

We are so back. Until such time as it’s over.

Welcome (back) to this little garden where I will tend to my obsessions and … rub them? In front of a very special audience?

This analogy is getting away from me.

When I told Katie that I was restarting the newsletter and that my goal was to send 26 of them in 2024, she responded with the very specific enthusiasm of someone who’s just been told their driver’s license is up for renewal.

That’s because, when this thing was really rolling two years ago, I was putting it out on a near-weekly basis and spending what might fairly be described as an “inordinate” amount of time on a project that a) didn’t pay and b) diverted my attention from other writing projects that I am, ostensibly, more invested in.

But then, the newsletter’s biggest fan died and the newsletterer lost heart. In the almost two years since, I’ve been jotting down ideas and wishing for a place to work them out a little. That place has been here all along. So, here are the new terms: this is a mental gym in which I’m working things out, not necessarily publishing fully-baked ideas or essays with, like, an ending. If I get stuck, I’m going to follow the advice of poet William Stafford: “lower my standards and keep going.”

When I sit down to do one of these, I’m going to give myself an hour, and then send it out. Constraints are good! This is a thing I tell students, anyway. So, it’s going to be “notes” or a “notebook”

Negotiated target number for the year is 20. This is #1 Buckle up. Or don’t! It’s going to be a gentle ride².

Speaking of obsessions

Yes, my team is in the Super Bowl, again.

Yes, I’ve written (10 years ago!) about the ethical compromises it takes to keep watching pro football

Yes, my team has a name that I still think should be changed.

Yes, I’m still watching. This late success is beyond my greediest childhood imaginings.³

—

And speaking of Kansas City

I’ll be there next week for the AWP Conference. I’m part of a reading. That never happens! Come through?

Incredible flyer by my friend and colleague Caitlin Thorn — who was also responsible for the Hanif Abdurraqib visit. Full circle!

1. His sermons were published, but even those were often reconstructed from diligent notes taken by his parishioners.

2. At some point, this ride will probably move to Beehiiv or Ghost. For reasons, many people are leaving Substack, and I probably will eventually because I don’t want to worry about whether or not I should. But we’re removing one inertial barrier at a time, here.

3. The fact that your tween’s favorite pop star is dating the world’s greatest tight end is a surreal sidelight, IMO, but it’s much-commented upon in this house.