Many remedies

Happy mental health awareness month 🌷

May 02, 2024

May is here

and I’m reminded that May Day is not just a joyous pagan rite of spring but a cry for help. In aviation, pilots in distress use the Mayday call, originating from the French phrase “m’aider”— help me.

I didn’t realize it was Mental Health Awareness month, but for the past week I’ve been rereading “Having it Out with Melancholy” by Jane Kenyon. It’s one of my favorite poems about depression, which Kenyon calls “the anti-urge,/ the mutilator of souls.” Her lines are precise and lyrical, brutally succinct, yet ending on a note of hope. The epigraph from Chekhov is apt:

If many remedies are prescribed
for an illness, you may be certain
that the illness has no cure.
A. CHEKHOV, The Cherry Orchard

If you’re struggling, know you’re not alone

When you’re clinically depressed, it can feel impossible to ask for help, reach out to a friend, schedule a doctor’s appointment, or even get dressed. But you’re not alone. If you’re in crisis, you can call the 988 lifeline and a kind counselor will talk with you and offer words of comfort, help you figure out next steps for your care (I’ve done this, and it was vital).

I’ve written about my depression for years— in essays in the Huffington Post and Vermont newspapers (see “Coming Out of the Happy Closet” in the Rutland Herald) as well as reported articles and various and sundry poems. I wrote the “The Ever Given” during the depths of the pandemic, and my friend James Crews featured it as a Sunday Poem in Gwarlingo.

I’m grateful to readers who reached out and told me it resonated with them. Also grateful it will appear in a forthcoming anthology for young people about mental health and healing 🌱

Can we talk about menopause?

A year ago I wrote “Romancing the Crone,” about embracing a new/old archetype for female wisdom, magic, and power in our elder years.

Ha! It turns out I had not yet been through the crucible of menopause. Now I’m there for real, and looking for any writing I can find about the change.

My go-to poem right now is “to my last period” by the incomparable Lucille Clifton. And of course the essay “Pause” by Mary Ruefle. Do you have a beloved book, essay, poem or other menopause resource? If so please share.

Dark Beds was a Finalist!

I’m trying to celebrate this honor, despite the voices of depression. Dark Beds was the Second Finalist for the Poetry Society of Virginia (PSV) North American Poetry Book Award!

“Whitney’s rich, sensual, formally deft and often erotic poems of transgression and fidelity in realms domestic and beyond remind us that there is always a place in the Zeitgeist for the lyric poem of interiority and beauty. Whether delivering snacks to hungry first-graders and then rushing home to vacuum glow-in-the dark stars from the Berber carpet or swooning over ‘rapture without consequence,’ this is a speaker who turns again and again to the natural world for its lessons of indifference and transformation…”
—Final judge Lisa Russ Spaar

You can listen to a few poems and order Dark Beds directly from June Road Press.

Write with me in May

There’s still room in NATURE & DESIRE, a generative workshop at Word House in Marlboro, VT. Join me to create new work in a magical writing cabin, surrounded by wildflowers and woods. Everyone is welcome—writers of all genres, ages, and experiences. If you’re curious, you can learn more and register HERE. And please reach out if you have any questions.

Vermont has a Youth Poet Laureate!

I was thrilled to be on the panel selecting our state’s first-ever Youth Poet Laureate, a national program in partnership with Sundog Poetry Center. Congratulations to winner Harmony DeVoe and to runner-ups Emma Paris and Gracie Batsie. I’m so proud of these youth poets, their beautiful poems, and the powerful work they do in the world. Stay tuned to find out about YPL readings and events.

BREAKING NEWS: Bianca Stone was just appointed Vermont’s new Poet Laureate!!! From her brilliant poems to her poetry podcast to the thriving community she’s created at the Ruth Stone House, Bianca is a dream PL!

I loved getting to read with her at Seen & Unseen, our eclipse-themed poetry reading with Alison Prine, Karin Gottshall, and Elizabeth Powell the day before the total solar eclipse. You can watch the event HERE.

The path of totality feels like a dream

Twilight fell in the afternoon. The temperature dropped like an ominous portent. The moon blocked the sun and the stars came out. We shivered on the knoll in the strange filtered light, connected to the hopes and fears of ancient peoples, waiting for our star to return. My heart thudded in my chest.

When it was over, we were overcome with exhaustion and needed a nap. Later we cried driving south with the throngs of eclipse-seekers, small bodies filled up with beauty, wonder, and the fact of our mortality.

Stuff I’m reading

Vievee Francis’ poem “The Shore”— from her extraordinary book The Shared World, a finalist for the Vermont Book Award and IMHO a contender for the Pulitzer.
The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression by Andrew Solomon. Revisiting a classic after 22 years. This resonates: "Grief is depression in proportion to circumstance; depression is grief out of proportion to circumstance.”
Belonging: Remembering Ourselves Home by Toko-pa Turner. Exploring the origins of estrangement.
Students protesting for peace, demanding divestment ✊

Best new books and micro-reviews will be back next issue.

Thanks for getting into Girl Trouble with me. Be gentle with yourself in the blazing rush of spring.

xo Diana

P.S. Antidepressants are so not a big deal 🎵 Crazy Ex-Girlfriend for the win, again.

P.P.S. The news may be terrible but every time I read this sign I feel better: