1) The music of Bon Iver / Over the past dozen years, whenever I need a musical mood-shifter, a reset in synths and string beds, more often than not I reach for the music of Bon Iver. As 2022 slouches toward its successor, I do so again. Justin Vernon’s work feels perfect for this time of year, each record describing Christmastide if you close your eyes tight enough; desire and hope reaching toward its fulfillment, waiting given its voice, the cold breath of winter meeting the warm air our lungs expel.
2) Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, “Jingle All the Way” / As Christmas approached, I sought both familiar and new (to me) musical accompaniment. On first listen, the 2008 holiday offering from this band of aces draws the sublime and strange from the season in a wholly pleasing way.
3) Cormac McCarthy, “The Passenger” / The American lion offered a two-novel narrative this year. The first of these books, “The Passenger,” is my first “good but not quite great” read in McCarthy’s catalog. It’s a busy book, and features at least one device I really struggled with. And yet! The characters compelled me. I wanted to press forward to every next page. And the last 40 or so pages … among his best. I know a novel rearranged something in me when I reach the last page, lean back, recover my breath and know these characters are fixed somewhere in me. This one fits the bill.
4) Tara Stillions Whitehead, “Drive” for Trampset / I stumbled upon this summer offering just this week and was staggered by the fully-realized world its creator delivers. It’s shot through with the specific details of a life and thousand-yard gleanings on grief and temporality. The kicker is a stunner, as are passages like this:
The last day I see you alive, you smell like morning surf and patchouli, an entire summer of want. We split a piece of Big Red and drive to Tanglehood where you fix the pickup on Bill’s guitar, break his E string while playing “Rivers of Babylon,” apologize to the cat, clear the bong chamber, draw tiny infinities on my ankle with a Sharpie, and cry about the letter you got from Joe.
5) Sara Elkamel, “I Have Not Been A Child In Years” for Tinderbox Poetry Journal / This sequential poem forms a wondrous, often painful ode to the ways our bodies and faiths mature, split apart, seek unity. God is present in this poem, shaping the speaker’s view of the self, ready to face the music of our most pointed questions.
“So many sharp edges in the mouth
and still we expect God’s name
to come out soft,
fall into His ears
like the scales of a living fish.”