Read to Me from… The Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address (2019)

Today, we read and love “River House” by Diana Whitney. This poem is from Diana's forthcoming October 2023 collection, DARK BEDS (June Road Press). 

Pre-order DARK BEDS here and anywhere you buy books: https://www.juneroadpress.com/bookstore

Leam more about the Read to Me podcast and your host, Becky Karush: www.readtomeliteraryarts.com

DARK BEDS, Diana's second collection, juxtaposes the conflicted emotions of motherhood and domesticity with the intoxicating promises of transgression. Fantasies fulfilled or imagined play out against the haunted backdrop of Vermont’s woods and fields, a landscape both harsh and magical, conjuring longing and grief, dissolution and repair. Here we see how time is reflected in our bodies, our children, our choices, and the natural world. Dark Beds is an anthem for the “sandwich generation”—tired adults caught between the demands of growing children and aging parents, yearning to reclaim desire and a sense of self. Sensual, elegant, and deeply resonant, these poems lay bare the dark beds of a marriage, a garden, a human life: the intimate places where truths are buried, exposed, and sown again in hope of renewal.

Diana Whitney writes across genres with a focus on feminism, motherhood, and sexuality. She is the editor of the bestselling anthology You Don’t Have to Be Everything: Poems for Girls Becoming Themselves (2021), winner of the Claudia Lewis Award. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, the Kenyon Review, Glamour, Crab Orchard Review, Puerto del Sol, and elsewhere. Her first book, Wanting It, won the Rubery Book Award in poetry. Diana has received numerous grants for her writing, including from the Sustainable Arts Foundation and the Vermont Arts Council, and is completing her MFA in poetry at New England College. A feminist activist in her hometown and beyond, she lives in Vermont with her family and works as an editor and writing coach.

https://www.diana-whitney.com/

https://www.juneroadpress.com/

On Read to Me, we practice the essential, joyous skill inside great writing — listening. We listen for what we love in the work, and then put words to why it's so, so good

Today, we read from Unfollow Your Passion: How to Create A Life That Matters to You by Terri Trespicio. We trace a smart, beaming circle from the beginning of a wedding video, back to the beginning of a wedding video. Along the way, we get a completely new understanding of beginnings, endings, and the concept of forever.

Plus, the surprising appearance of Men in Black.

On Read to Me, we practice the essential, joyous skill inside great writing — listening. We listen for what we love in the work, and then put words to why it's so, so good

Today, we revisit a 2019 episode on the Haudenosaunee Thanksgiving Address: Greetings to the Natural World, also called, in Mohawk, Ohénten Kariwatékwen: Words Before All Else.

This Address’s legacy is much bigger than the United States Thanksgiving tradition. People of the Haudenosaunee nations recite it before ceremonial and governmental meetings. Their civic life grows again and again from acknowledgment of the natural world, relationship to it, and gratitude for it.

Is it ok for a white reader, which is me, to recite and explore the Address? Yes. There is ample documentation that the Haudenosaunee nations offer it broadly to the world.

Thank you to the bevy of voices who helped me recite the Address in 2019. You remain magical.

On Read to Me, we practice the essential, sensuous skill inside great writing — listening. We listen for what we love in the work, and then put words to why it's so, so good.

Today, we read “Transgender Heroic: All This Ridiculous Flesh” by Kayleb Rae Candrilli, from their 2021 poetry collection, WATER I WON'T TOUCH. We get to let this long poem sequence carry us on its currents. We get to feel its physical and spiritual transfiguration, and be inside its world-making love.

Plus, a tiny manifesto on the radical, strange pleasure of listening to poetry with an easy ear.

www.readtomeliteraryarts.com

Today, we read “Transgender Heroic: All This Ridiculous Flesh” by Kayleb Rae Candrilli, from their 2021 poetry collection, WATER I WON'T TOUCH. We get to let this long poem sequence carry us on its currents. We get to feel its physical and spiritual transmogrification, and be inside its world-making love.

Plus, a tiny manifesto on the radical, strange pleasure of listening to poetry with an easy ear.

www.readtomeliteraryarts.com

On Read to Me, we practice the essential, joyous skill inside great writing: listening. We listen for what we love in the work, and then put words to why it's so, so good. 

Today, we read from The Days of Afrekete by Asali Solomon. (And hear my son build with legos in the deep background.) We get to see how the author isolates two college-student characters (a senior from herself, a freshman from the world) with body detail, relationships to books, and physical space. But we also get to see how the writing turns that double isolation into an inevitable, luscious meet-cute.

The podcast comes from Read to Me Literary Arts. You have a gift for writing. Here is where you can open it — with writing groups, coaching, book programs, and more. www.readtomeliteraryarts.com

On Read to Me, we practice the essential, joyous skill inside great writing — listening. We listen for what we love in the work, and then put words to why it's so, so good.

Today, we read from Beneficence by Meredith Hall. We love its stunning hat trick: conveying devastating grief and deep family love, doing so through the embodied action of its characters, and carrying everything in sentences that are light and joyful on their feet. Plus, we explore why we never need credentials to love the written word.

The podcast is a branch of Read to Me Literary Arts. Here, you get the space, time, community, and method to grow as a writer and a reader. You have a writing gift! Now's the time to open it.  readtomeliteraryarts.com.

On Read to Me, we practice the essential, joyous skill inside great writing — listening. We listen for what we love in the work, and then put words to why it's so, so good.

Today, we read from The Book of Form and Emptiness, a stunning new novel from Ruth Ozeki. We love its radical premise, its clear-water sentences sparkling with gem-like words, and the voices of three distinct characters (not all entirely human). Plus, we explore how listening is like... magnificent fungus.

Join the Read to Me Podcast Club and get copies of all our Season 3 books! PLUS, online writing salons, monthly gift boxes, and a live podcast taping! Find the party at readtomeliteraryarts.com/podcastclub

On Read to Me, we practice the most fundamental skill of writing — how to listen for what we love in the work, and then put words to why it's so, so good!

Today, we read from Megan Baxter's Farm Girl. Here, a body at work, precisely described in strong sentences, becomes the site of shimmering ideas about faith and hope. We get to see Megan's specific artistry with the luscious language of vegetables, too.

READ TO ME podcast is supported by READ TO ME Literary Arts. Here, you get the space, time, community, and method to grow as a writer and a reader. You have a gift, no matter how much you doubt it. Now's the time to use it. Join us at readtomeliteraryarts.com

On READ TO ME, we practice the most fundamental skill of writing — how to listen for what works on the page. And then understand why!

In this live episode, recorded in front of a Texas audience, I read from "The Wit and Wisdom of Ann Richards" by the incomparable Molly Ivins. It's an amazing piece about regionalism and racism and sexism and the power of the woman to prevail above what's expected of her. We listen for Ivins genius — to be funny, devastating, brilliant, and casual in every sentence.

READ TO ME podcast is supported by READ TO ME Literary Arts. Here, you get the space, time, community, and method to grow as a writer and a reader. You have a gift, no matter how much you doubt it. Now's the time to use it. Find the program that's right for you at readtomepod.com.

On READ TO ME, we practice the most fundamental skill for excellent writing — how to listen for what works on the page. (And then understand why.)