Katie Schmid : part three

What other poetry books have you been reading lately?

I just finished reading Jazz by Toni Morrison as part of this literary correspondence program I do with Pen City Writers, a writing program that I’m lucky to be a part of, where I get to talk about writing with writers living in maximum security facilities in Texas. Toni Morrison writes pure poetry. The lyricism in that book, in particular, is out of this world. I don’t know how she does it: the language is exquisitely wrought without feeling artificial. It’s stunning. It’s a place I want to live. You know that kind of writing where it feels like prophecy? That’s what reading Toni Morrison is like, for me.

I’m reading Ana Castillo’s new book, My Book of the Dead, and enjoying it very much. It reads like a book of this particular moment, and I’m finding it comforting, that women smarter than me will keep casting their minds into the future and coming back with wisdom to tell me how to live.

I’m also reading Natalie Shapero’s Popular Longing. I thought Hard Child was one of the darkest, funniest books of poems I’d read in a long time and I’m looking forward to reading more of this one. It really was so pleasurable to read a book that engaged in the dread of being a woman and a mother and a thinking person, and not only that, but it somehow made that dread funny! I’m not sure how poets write funny poems. It’s amazing to me. 

I’m also reading Heavy by Kiese Laymon and I think it’s one of the more brilliant books I’ve ever read. I’ve been a fan of his since I read an essay a while ago on Gawker, but I finally picked up this book because my dad recommended it to me. I think it’s oracular, almost. The prose is exquisite and the tension that he manages to build in the work is stunning. He’s got such a sense of pacing, and I think he’s one of the best writers that I’ve ever read on navigating received family narratives, received narratives about race, and thinking about how truth lives underneath the stories we tell ourselves and underneath the stories that are told about us.