You Want to Read More Poetry

Are mapping out your year or can quote “Bring It On”

Hi friends,

I hope you had a lovely weekend. I hosted a belated New Year’s brunch to kick off 2023 with good friends and good food.

Thanks to everyone who chimed in last week with accessible poetry book recommendations! It’s much appreciated.

And, now, what to read if …

You Too are Trying to Read More Poetry

I Hope This Finds You Well by Kate Baer

Speaking of poetry, I was delighted that so many of you suggested I Hope This Finds You Well, Kate Baer’s collection of erasure poems that are constructed from emails she received from fans and trolls. I recently read I Hope This Finds You Well and really enjoyed it. Unlike other poetry, I felt like I got it. It inspired me to read more of Baer’s backlist.

Erasure poems are a form of found poetry. The writer takes an existing text and blacks or whites out words and phrases to create a new work. Here’s an example from Baer’s book:

“Being Called a Mommy Writer”

Being Called a Mommy Writer by Kate Baer

It’s very cool to see Baer, a prominent Instagram poet, remix the emails she receives. The poems derived from messages her detractors send insulting her — for her political views or posting a picture in a bathing suit — and multi-level marketers attempting to recruit her are especially rich.

It’s a collection that made me think, “Huh. Maybe poetry could be for me.” So if you find yourself a tad intimidated by the genre as well, consider giving it a read.

You’re Trying to Map Out Your 2023

The Cartographers by Peng Shepherd

As Peng Shepherd’s magical realist novel The Cartographers opens, the protagonist, Nell Young, is feeling lost. It’s a bit ironic for a mapmaker, but Nell has had a dead-end job since her father, Daniel Young, the illustrious head of the New York Public Library, fired her years earlier after an argument over a cheap mass-produced map of New York State.

Nell hasn’t spoken to her dad in years when she learns he’s been found dead under mysterious circumstances at his library office. The same map that sparked their estrangement lies in a hidden compartment in his desk. Nell, curious to know why her father kept a document he insisted was useless, begins to investigate and learns that it’s priceless. A mysterious collector has hunted down every copy of it — and its former owners often die in unusual ways. Nell becomes convinced her father’s death, their estrangement and maybe even a mystery from her own past are all connected to this beat-up old drawing.

With The Cartographers, Peng Shepherd explores our obsessive need to document the world around us and how maps can both reflect and distort our reality. (“West Wing” fans will remember the episode about the flaws in the common Mercator map, which indicates Greenland is larger than South America.) But, more than that, it’s just a fantastic story, combining adventure, long-held family secrets and even a touch of magic. The perfect read for a cozy winter night at home.

You Know What “Spirit Fingers” Are — And That They Are Gold

Bring It On by Kase Wickman

In the weeks since I finished Kase Wickman’s Bring It On, a history of the seminal 2000s cheerleading movie and its influence on our culture, I’ve mentioned it to dozens of people. And nearly all of them responded the same way: “I love that movie.” In the book, Wickman posits that almost every American born after 1979 has fond feelings for the film that catapulted Kirsten Dunst and Gabrielle Union to fame — and my small experiment bears that out.

Drawing on dozens of interviews with the cast and crew, as well as Hollywood influencers, Wickman, an entertainment journalist, documents how a movie that grossed nearly $100 million and inspired dozens of spinoffs almost didn’t get made. Studio bigwigs weren’t convinced that people would pay money to see a movie about something as feminine as cheerleading.  “Bring It On,” though, ultimately proved these naysayers wrong. It’s a genuinely funny movie about race, female friendships and, yes, some impressive cheerleading stunts (front handspring-stepout, roundoff back handspring stepout, roundoff back handspring full-twisting, anyone?) that helped to usher in an age of smart, female-focused teen movies.

Bring It On is a great read for anyone looking to cloak themselves in early 2000s nostalgia (Wickman’s descriptions of the clothes worn to the film’s premiere were so perfect, I texted them to some pals) or readers looking to get an inside view of everything it takes to get a movie made. Wickman is a funny writer whose enthusiasm for her topic jumps right off the page. I inhaled her book and then immediately rewatched the film.  

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Thanks for reading. You can catch up on last week’s recs here and read my Q&A with James Kirchick, author of Secret City, here.

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