92Y's Read By

Sophie Herron on their selection: Last July, I read John McPhee’s Basin and Range for the first time and was immediately captured by the slim volume—its structure, its fluid sentences, the breadth and depth of its probity and its wry and ever-present humor. The titular basin and range is an area between Utah and California, but the book is as much about geology itself, both the movement of rock and the movement of minds that have studied it. In 1785, a Scottish geologist, James Hutton, presented to the Royal Society a new theory: that landmasses were formed over an indescribable amount of time, and that the evidence of these changes were in the different formations of rocks—where one era of rock met another. I’ve chosen to read McPhee’s accounting of Hutton’s search for this geological evidence; a narrative in which McPhee coins the term “deep time,”—a piece of history writing which, it seems to me, enfolds the transcendent experience of humanity’s tiny place in time and, concurrently, love for the work of discovery, communication, and of changing minds. It has stayed with me in the moments of excruciating ephemerality and eternity in the past year. Sometimes both at once. I hope, as a final episode for Read By, it serves for you, also, as a microscope that explodes. Basin and Range, by John McPhee Music: "Shift of Currents" by Blue Dot Sessions // CC BY-NC 2.0

Kenzie Allen on her selection: Growing up, I spent precious time each summer on a fire lookout, Sand Mountain, in the Oregon Cascades, and I still return there to volunteer with my father, as happened just last week. Each time I read “deer crowd up to see the lamp,” and “pancakes every morning of the world,” I’m transported back to the mountains, even (and especially) when I’m sitting on the fire lookout itself. For Philip Whalen, Gary Snyder, Jack Kerouac, and for me, these places invite philosophy and meditation, and an openness to wonder, which I hope Whalen’s “Sourdough Mountain Lookout” can inspire for others. "Sourdough Mountain Lookout," by Philip Whalen Music: “Shift of Currents” by Blue Dot Sessions // CC BY-NC 2.0

Alexandra Zuckerman on her selection: In her book, On Beauty and Being Just, it is as if, in Elaine Scarry’s view, the external world has the power to tumultuously expose to us our errors of judgment; wrong beliefs cannot merely be held. Her small anecdote about a palm tree that compels her to experience “being in error” about beauty has stayed with me through the years. She argues that such small experiences guide our instinct to be just. Her palm, its leaves “barely moving, just opening and closing slightly as though breathing,” reveals to her its true beauty. She had denied it even the right to be a tree. On Beauty and Being Just is grounding and gives me hope when it is hard to see where true change comes from. On Beauty and Being Just, by Elaine Scarry Music: “Shift of Currents” by Blue Dot Sessions // CC BY-NC 2.0

Mag Gabbert on her selection: I read Kathryn Nuernberger's essay "A Thin Blue Line," which comes from her wonderful collection of essayettes, Brief Interviews with the Romantic Past. I return to these pieces often because they give me new ideas about limits—what can happen to a poem if it's allowed just a little more room to breathe, if those braces or splints that keep it packed into tight lines and stanzas are taken off? And: what happens to prose when it's distilled down to marrow? "A Thin Blue Line" somehow accomplishes both of these, and it does so while weaving Nuernberger's personal narrative together with bits of research material and shreds of fairy tale. To me, this piece strikes the perfect note between genres; it isn't hybrid in the sense that it checks none of the boxes, but because it checks all of them. And this is the kind of work I turn to when I need to reimagine the boundaries of my own relationship with language, to see how I might shape it differently and ask it to function in new ways. Brief Interviews with the Romantic Past, by Kathryn Nuernberger Music: “Shift of Currents” by Blue Dot Sessions // CC BY-NC 2.0

Ina Cariño on her selection: Aracelis Girmay’s “You are Who I Love,” first published in 2017, is still so, so needed today. The repetition of the title throughout the poem gives it a musicality that mimics the chants of those who march in the streets. I chose this poem because it calls to and speaks for all of us: those who fight for what is dear to them, those who heal and need healing, and those who give and give even when no one is looking. It’s my hope that this poem and poems like this can be not just rallying cries for social justice, but also love songs to ourselves and to each other. the black maria, by Aracelis Girmay: Music: “Shift of Currents” by Blue Dot Sessions // CC BY-NC 2.0

Tracie Morris on her selection: I have the great pleasure of sharing small excerpts from Brent Hayes Edwards’ wonderful book, Epistrophies. In it, I repeat a quote from the legendary Mary Lou Williams to introduce Edward’s commentary on Sun Ra at the dawn of the Space Age. Epistrophies, by Brent Hayes Edwards Music: "Shift of Currents" by Blue Dot Sessions // CC BY-NC 2.0

Rowan Ricardo Phillips on his selection: The poem "This Lime-tree Bower my Prison'' was written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in the summer of 1797. He had been set to journey the Quantocks with a group of friends but burned his foot in an accident and thus was left behind, under a lime tree in the garden of a friend's home, while others––including William Wordsworth, Dorothy Wordsworth, Charles Lamb (to whom the poem is addressed)––embarked on the anticipated journey without him. Coleridge's poem nevertheless travels with them ("Beneath the wide wide Heaven") and in doing so makes something from nothing, pleasure from pain, and love from loneliness. I love the poem's own subtle journey from day to night unbowed by the encroaching dark. In light of recent times, Coleridge's dream of social connection from his position of isolation feels fitting and is a beautiful example of poetry's unique imaginative power. “This Lime-tree Bower my Prison,” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge Music: "Shift of Currents" by Blue Dot Sessions // CC BY-NC 2.0

Sheila Heti on her selection: I chose a chapter from Stefan Zweig’s The World of Yesterday, which he wrote between 1934 and 1941. It is one of the most fascinating and vivid descriptions I have ever read—not only of what Victorian manners and morals were like, but what it feels like to have lived through history, in particular the great political and social upheavals that occurred between his birth in Vienna in 1881 and his death in 1942. He gave his publisher the typewritten manuscript of this memoir the day before he and his wife died, by suicide. Zwieg grew up in a prosperous Jewish family, and this is the world he is writing about. I found in these pages one of the greatest and most fascinating and sensitive eyewitness accounts of history I have ever read. I love the details. I love the feeling that I am seeing the truth about another world with such intimacy. This chapter has stayed with me since I first encountered it years ago. I am at about the age he was when he wrote it, and though I don’t think the changes I have witnessed have been as dramatic, I feel I know what it’s like to remember a lost world, and to set now against then and to weigh all of it up. The World of Yesterday by Stefan Zweig Music: "Shift of Currents" by Blue Dot Sessions // CC BY-NC 2.0

Hi! Read By is taking a vacation this month. We'll be back in July with more episodes, from more great writers. Thanks for your support and see you soon! Stay safe. 

Tobias Wolff on his selection: I read three poems, two by my longtime friend and colleague, Eavan Boland, who died last year, a loss that I feel still. There is a tradition in Irish poetry, inflected by the long Independence movement and a certain kind of heroic poetry, that Boland confronts. The third poem is one by John N. Morris, a poem I have carried in my mind since the mid-70s, that has gathered meaning for me as I had my own children, and now grandchildren: the heroism of learning to let go. New Collected Poems by Eavan Boland  The Life Beside This One by John N. Morris Music: "Shift of Currents" by Blue Dot Sessions // CC BY-NC 2.0