1) Rhett Miller, “The Messenger” / I can’t count the portion or percentage of my life lived to a soundtrack of Rhett Miller songs. The Old 97s leader (and terrific solo artist) writes with a resonant mix of irony and sincerity, accenting head or heart depending on what the song and story requires. I revisited Miller’s 2018 solo album this week and was freshly charmed—and struck by how songs like “Close Most of the Time” and “I Used to Write in Notebooks” understand the dynamic of growing into your adult skin.
2) The songs of Dave Simonett / The Trampled by Turtles leader might be one of the most underrated songwriters we have. With new music out under his own name, Simonett once again demonstrates his ability to deliver a weathered mix of loneliness and hope. Simonett’s ache is always beautiful, and his beauty always hurts a bit. Sounds like real life.
3) Paisley Rekdal, “Appropriate” / Few books could be more sorely-needed for this moment than Rekdal’s latest. The poet-essayist pens a series of letters to students, guiding them (and the rest of us) through deeply-considered examinations of cultural appropriation, storytelling and empathy. Rekdal’s work should be required reading in any MFA program, journalism school … anywhere where storytelling is or should be prized.
4) Martin Espada, “Floaters” / Much of the veteran poet’s latest book is, rightly, spent on social and political concerns—the way America considers, ignores or excoriates seekers and sojourners based on the color of their skin. But what makes the political even more powerful are the poems in which Espada pauses to remind us what we’re all living and dying for; moments shot through with sheer glory and longing that keep our feet traveling down one path or another.
5) Kaya Oakes, “How the women of the Bible helped me reimagine my barrenness” for America Magazine / As part of a household shaped by infertility, I appreciate the ministry of those who examine the cracks and canyons existing between white, American Christian conceptions of the good life and what life is like for so many. My friend, the brilliant Kaya Oakes, finds heart and hope in the stories of Biblical women and offers a gentle corrective to our eager stamping of stories with the “Biblical” label.
“In the New Testament, Jesus first appears after his resurrection to another Jewish woman, Mary Magdalene, who runs and tells the male apostles what she has seen,” Oakes writes. “This means that the earliest embodiment of Christianity is in a single, childless woman.”
Oakes strikes that needed (yet too often rarest of) chords, discovering the universal in the personal, teaching us to see beyond our common constructs and growing our hearts to receive every kind of story.