A Year in Reading: Eve L. Ewing
This year, especially the tail end of it, has been an embarrassment of riches when it comes to good reading. I’ve felt sort of like how I feel at a dessert buffet—pressed to try everything, distressed that I can’t possibly have room for it all, and urged to make space to just enjoy what I can without being sorrowful over what I can’t. This is especially the case because in 2017 I was pushingwhich I was editing throughout February, and my second book , which I have been writing since last fall in a process that feels roughly like army crawling across a gravel floor. Given that—and the overall dismal state of affairs beyond my own front door—I suppose I could have spent the year bent on escapism. Instead, I found myself drawn to authors whose work could sharpen my thinking about the world’s miseries rather than pretending to offer me an exit route away from them. Who knows why. I spent a February in Georgia revisiting ’s incredible collection as I thought about the ways poetry can help us document and respond to horrific social failures. The book is a phenomenally imaginative recounting of the Katrina aftermath and it’s helped me think through what documentation looks like in my own work.
