Some straight talk about mental health
On hard days, I picture my memorial service in order to feel like a better person. I know this is bleak and self-absorbed, but so is depression.
In the final accounting, will people say “Well, she never fulfilled her overeducated potential. She never rose to fame as a solo-preneur or killed it in the po-biz. And she could have written more books…”?
No, they will not. Hopefully they will say I loved well, cherished the earth and its plants and animals, spoke out for justice, supported others, believed in creativity and movement as healing paths.
Hopefully someone will say, simply, “She was a good friend, a complicated person, a generous mother/ writer/ teacher/ human.”
And isn’t that enough? How vain and capitalistic-perfectionist of me to believe I need to be and do more. Did I not publish an entire book of poetry for teens with the central message YOU ARE ENOUGH? Should I sit down and reread YDHTBE right now? Should I take three deep breaths?
YES.
Speaking of which… Happy National Poetry Month!
It’s that time of year when poetry is hot… Not hot like wings or Beyoncé’s new album (sexiest song HERE) but mentioned a bit in the media and in certain circles. My favorite place to celebrate NaPoMo is Montpelier, VT, which transforms into PoemCity in April.
In shop windows and bus stops, you’ll find poems by acclaimed laureates side by side with poems by schoolchildren, farmers, teachers, and more. PoemCity is a true communal celebration of poetry, a lifting up of voices across generations and levels of “expertise.” And there are dozens of free readings and events in the public library and beyond.
I’m reading with four amazing women poets on April 7, the afternoon before the total eclipse. Vermont is possessed by eclipse fever right now, with dire predictions of gridlock traffic on the interstates and a shortage of gas and food as 200,000 people travel to the path of totality to watch a massive lunar shadow cover the sun for over three minutes.
It’s thrilling to imagine a wondrous natural phenomenon uniting thousands of humans in the digital age! Bring on the adventure and the unknown… and the poems of light and shadow. If you’re in the area, come join us on Sunday afternoon:
I’m excited to read poems from Dark Beds (which just received an honor I can’t share yet) as well as some new ones that fit the eclipse theme.
What is eclipse season anyway?
I’ve been listening to my go-to astrologer CHANI frame eclipse season as a time of profound instability. Our luminaries go dark and a shadow world is revealed. Plus Mercury the messenger is retrograding through Chiron the wounded healer, sending us back to grief we haven’t yet metabolized, lessons we haven’t yet learned.
Maybe it’s a time to review something in the past, or reclaim and rewrite stories that no longer serve us. This feels about right. I’m trying to see it all as an opportunity for healing, no matter how bitter the medicine.
If Chani is helping me, so is guidance from poets and doctors. Dr. Jen Gunter’s Depression, Low Mood, and Menopause was a vital read.
And I’m grateful for wisdom from Maggie Smith’s wonderful book Keep Moving: Notes of Loss, Creativity, and Change:
Write with me
Do you have a project that needs some attention or nurturing? I love supporting writers as an editor and coach at all stages of the writing process, from brainstorm to final polish. I have room for a few new clients this spring and would love to hear what you’re working on. You can read testimonials from some of my clients HERE or sign up for a free 20-minute discovery call. Let’s talk about your project(s), questions, goals, and dreams.
I’m excited to teach a generative workshop in May at Robin MacArthur’s magical Word House. Open to writers of all genres and all levels of experience! Find out more HERE.
3 Novels I Devoured in Days
This neurologist claims reading novels will keep your memory sharp. May it be so.
Bunny- Mona Awad. A delectable cross between Heathers and Carrie, tinged with dark academia. Bunny mixes mean-girl obsession and horror in the creepy setting of an elite MFA writing program. Addictive, subversive, witchy, brilliant. A hilarious cast of characters (writers, professors) who still haunt my dreams.
She’s staring at me with a neutral expression of infinite patience, the same expression she wears whenever I speak in Workshop. Of all of them, her prose is the most inaccessible and cryptic, etched on panes of glass using a dagger-shaped diamond she wears around her neck. She calls them proems. If forced to say something about her work in class, I’ll describe it as jewel-like and enigmatic. And she’ll look at me like she knows I’m lying…- Mona Awad
Birnam Wood- Eleanor Catton. This incisive eco-thriller about a guerrilla gardening collective in New Zealand kept me up till dawn, utterly obsessed. The novel is, as promised, “Shakespearean in its drama, Austenian in its wit.” Wish I could read it for the first time again.
Such a Fun Age- Kiley Reid. A page-turner about race and privilege that is complex and surprisingly compassionate, set around a young black babysitter and her posh white employer in Philadelphia. Features the most delightful 3-year-old child I’ve ever met in a book. Didn’t want to say goodbye.
New Poetry I Love
God in Her Ruffled Dress- Lisa Bernstein
Singer-poet Lisa B rewrites the old prayers in her new collection, weaving feminism with Jewish mysticism in strange, musical, funny, sexy poems. “I’m…tired of the One Dad God,” she writes, exploring shifting definitions of the divine while staying grounded in the body, its strengths and illness and need, its miraculous desires. Look no further for a deeply spiritual, feminist celebration in verse.
Thanks for getting into Girl Trouble with me. Catch you on the other side of the eclipse.
xo Diana
P.S. Thrilled to talk with Shanta Lee in The Adroit Journal about gender, myth, poetry and desire 🔥
P.P.S. Nearly 400 small presses are reeling from the sudden closure of Small Press Distribution last week. Thank you for ordering Dark Beds directly from June Road Press ❤️
P.P.P.S. To help keep a sense of humor during my job search, I’m returning to this New Yorker ideal writer-job posting 😂
I tore through Kiley Reid's Such a Fun Age when it was first published. I could not put it down. That three year old! Reid's complex portrayal of class and race. Then when I started a book group this winter, I chose this novel as our first read. I had been eagerly awaiting an opportunity to read it again. It did not disappoint.
I will add your other two recommendations to my list of books to read. If you liked this one, I will most likely appreciate the others you like. Thanks for posting g in Girl Trouble, Diana. I only wish you would post more often. Bi-monthly? I love hearing from you! And, yes, you are absolutely enough, just as you are.