80. Ashley M. Jones and Mary Szybist, poets

We howlers met today, as we do more or less weekly, to discuss a poem from the anthology You Are Here: Poetry in the Natural World (Milkweed Editions, 2024). The poem that rose up for discussion was this one, by Ashley M. Jones.

Lullaby for the Grieving

at the Sipsey River

make small steps.
in this wild place
there are signs of life
everywhere.
sharp spaces, too:
the slip of a rain-glazed rock
against my searching feet.
small steps, like prayers—
each one a hope exhaled
into the trees. please,
let me enter. please, let me
leave whole.
there are, too, the tiny sounds
of faraway birds. the safety
in their promise of song.
the puddle forming, finally,
after summer rain.
the golden butterfly
against the cave-dark.
maybe there are angels here, too—
what else can i call the crown of light
atop the leaves?
what else can i call
my footsteps forward,
small, small, sure?

Jones is the poet laureate of Alabama, 35 years old, author of three poetry collections. Two poems of hers are featured on the Poetry Foundation website, including this one:

Hymn of Our Jesus & the Holy Tow Truck

after Mary Szybist

And yes, of course, I next had to investigate Mary Szybist. This poem of hers delighted me, partly because it's an abecedarian, partly because it's about jigsaw puzzles, partly because it's about girls chatting.

Girls Overheard While Assembling a Puzzle

Are you sure this blue is the same as the
blue over there? This wall’s like the
bottom of a pool, its
color I mean. I need a
darker two-piece this summer, the kind with
elastic at the waist so it actually
fits. I can’t
find her hands. Where does this gold
go? It’s like the angel’s giving
her a little piece of honeycomb to eat.
I don’t see why God doesn’t
just come down and
kiss her himself. This is the red of that
lipstick we saw at the
mall. This piece of her
neck could fit into the light part
of the sky. I think this is a
piece of water. What kind of
queen? You mean
right here? And are we supposed to believe
she can suddenly
talk angel? Who thought this stuff
up? I wish I had a
velvet bikini. That flower’s the color of the
veins in my grandmother’s hands. I
wish we could
walk into that garden and pick an
X-ray to float on.
Yeah. I do too. I’d say a
zillion yeses to anyone for that.

Finally, Ashley M. Jones had this to say about her "Lullaby": "I wrote this poem at the Sipsey Wilderness near that same river in Alabama. I didn’t expect to write about my grief process, but it seemed the Wilderness was showing me that my grief for my father was very similar to the difficult hiking path to the river. I’m not an experienced hiker. I was afraid of ticks and injury. This large, all-encompassing grief is new to me, too. I’m afraid, constantly, of its prick and haunt. But there are angels and carriers of light, and I know my dad is one of them now."

79. Goodbye Milo

And so this evening we bade farewell to our beautiful boy Milo. A mobile vet, Carrie Nagel, came at half past six, and we sat on the floor next to him and talked for quite a while about what might be going on, about potential options, but slowly we circled into the clear fact that he's just not thriving. And so David and I gave her the go-ahead.

Here are a few last photos (all from today) of our sweet sweet boy. We will miss him so so so very much.

Thanks to Carrie for taking such good caring care of all of us.

Not really a book report: Land of the Blind

I won't number this, because it's (as I say in the heading) not really a book report—because I didn't finish it. Heck, I barely started it.

I love Jess Walter. The various books of his that I've read—most recently the 2025 So Far Gone—have been 100 percent enjoyable. I ordered this book with great anticipation.

So yeah, I was disappointed to start this one and, early on, find myself completely uninterested. 

It's the story of a man who's arrested after he's climbed high on a landmark hotel in Spokane, Washington. As he talks with the interrogating detective, he says he wishes to confess. A murder, it seems.

The book (as far as I can tell) then switches between his confession as he writes it out and the detective's detectiving.

I fell out of the story at the start of his confession, which is (a) written in a tediously formal legalese (he fancies himself a lawyer) and (b) harks back to childhood in excrutiating detail. Excrutiating.

I fell out, and then skipped forward, finally, to the end of the book, where the confessor and the detective find themselves again high on the originating hotel. Both alive. Both, apparently, with stuff to consider. 

I guess I'm patting myself on the back for abandoning a book that just doesn't grab me. So many books, so little time! But I'm sorry this one didn't draw me in. 

Book Report: Man's Search for Meaning

3. Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning (1959, 2014) (1/22/26)

I've had this book forever, and when I arrived at M in my alphabetical approach to reading, I figured it was about time—but of course I couldn't find it. It's around here somewhere! But an online search of the library holdings said they had it, and it was in. When I got there, however, it wasn't on the shelf; as I was about to leave, feeling dejected, I decided to ask the checkout person, and she went and rummaged around among the recently returned books, and there it was! Another of those small miracles of life . . . which I suppose is appropriate for this particular book. You can find meaning in many things.

And so now I've finally read it. For some reason, I wasn't as impressed as I thought I might be. I guess I thought Frankl had an answer to the question of meaning (silly me). But I got something from it, and that's enough.

The edition I read features what I believe are the original two constituent essays, "Experiences in a Concentration Camp" and "Logotherapy in a Nutshell," as well as a few shorter pieces—a 1984 postscript, "The Case for a Tragic Optimism," and selected letters, speeches and essays. The book was originally published in German in 1946 as Trotzdem Ja zum Leben sagen: Ein Psychologe erlebt das Konzentrationslager (Saying yes to life in spite of everything: A psychologist experiences the concentration camp) and in English in 1959 as From Death-Camp to Existentialism: A Psychiatrist's Path to a New Therapy. 

The section on life in a concentration camp—Frankl spent three years in four camps: Theresienstadt, Auschwitz-Birkenau, Kaufering, and Türkheim, part of the Dachau complex—was, needless to say, harrowing. He speaks of the suffering, the uncertainty, the deaths, matter-of-factly, always pointing to the importance of a responsible, responsive, positive attitude. As he puts it in the logotherapy section (logotherapy being an approach that he created, focused not on the psyche but on the mind), 

We must never forget that we may also find meaning in life even when confronted with a hopeless situation, when facing a fate that cannot be changed. For what matters is to bear witness to the uniquely human potential at its best, which is to transform a personal tragedy into a triumph, to turn one's predicament into a human achievement. When we are no longer able to change a situation—just think of an incurable disease such as inoperable cancer—we are challenged to change ourselves. 

And later he writes:

Man is not fully conditioned and determined [by external conditions] but rather determines himself whether he gives in to conditions or stands up to them. In other words, man is ultimately self-determining. Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become in the next moment. . . . Every human being has the freedom to change at any instant.

He gives examples, including in his own experience, and throughout I marveled at his stoicism. Could I be so strong? So positive? I don't know, but surely such strength and positivity are imperative if one is to survive soul-deadening events—such as so many are experiencing right now, in my very own country, as they are being torn from their homes and deported to prisons far far away.

A key to all this is being able to get out of one's own mind, and orient toward others with love; to balance freedom with responsibility; to do one's best to be "decent"; to approach the world with "tragic optimism." By which he may have meant, as he put it at one point, "The meaning of your life is to help others find the meaning of theirs." 

I confess I did not finish the last few little essays. They were getting rather repetitive and didn't seem to add anything new. I did enjoy the ten-page afterword, by philosopher, lawyer, and psychoanalyst William Winslade, who gave us a short biography of Frankl, for context. He led a full and inspiring life. A worthy man indeed.

78. Milo

We're losing our boy. He's fifteen, and he's done. We took him to the vet today, and she gave us some appetite stimulant, but really . . . he's done. I'm not ready. He's our boy.

Whew. Anyway. I searched through the archives and found nine mentions of Milo. Here:

2016: Meeting Milo
2016: Teflon dog
2017: Sleeping Milo
2017: Milo!
2017: Milo! Again!
2023: Milo
2023: Milo!
2023: Milo's bindi dot
2025: Milo

And that's where we stand. I am taking pictures of Milo still, of course. It's hard to imagine him not being in our life, our lives. He's the best boy ever. 

Book Report: Logicomix

2. Apostolos Doxiadis and Christos H. Papadimitrou, Logicomix: An Epic Search for Truth, with art by Alecos Papadatos and Annie Di Donna (2009) (1/9/26)

I've had this book quite a long time, so when I began searching for an L book, it jumped out and said, me me me! I'm entertaining, and since I'm mostly drawings, I'll be quick! 

Well, yes: quick, but also weighty, because this book covers some confounding mathematical—or rather, logical—foundations. It begins on September 9, 1939, three days after Hitler invaded Poland and on the day Britain declared war on Germany, with a lecture the philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell gave on "the role of logic in human affairs." Though as he explains at the end, in the Q&A, in fact it's not a lecture so much as a story, "a story of a man who hoped to find a way of getting absolutely right answers." It includes meetings and conversations with major mathematical innovators, such as Gottlob Frege, the greatest logician since Aristotle, and Georg Cantor, the creator of the mathematical theory of infinity. He recounts the clash between Henri Poincaré and the German David Hilbert on the relative power of intuition vs. proof in mathematical thought. Wittgenstein and Gödel make appearances. It is also a story of madness, of conflict, of frustration, and ultimately, Russell said, of failure. And yet. 

It's a heady mix that I am ill-equipped to summarize here. The narrative also includes the very making of this book, in a wink at self-referentiality—the discussions the authors had as they walked around Athens hashing out the themes; and there's also a framing story involving Aeschylus's drama Oresteia, for a humanitarian twist. 

Doxiadis explains the project better than I can:

And here's a video about the making of the book:

It's a book I may pick up again—and slow down to really consider the philosophical components. I believe they're well explained. But this time, I just wanted to find out "what happened," and to admire the wonderful graphics. 

In this scene, Russell and a younger Wittgenstein compare takes on the world:

For me, for sure, Logicomix is better than reading Russell himself, who took 362 pages to prove that 1+1 = 2!

And if you want a real review of the book, I would send you to this one in the New York Times. 

77. Listening to podcasts while I walk Gen. Jim Moore Blvd. II

It poured rain this morning, but in the early afternoon the sun burst out—and so I had to go for a walk. As I do, I put in my earbuds, and headed down the street, up some stairs, and eventually onto the scrubland bordering straight-shot Gen. Jim Moore Blvd. I started by listening to Terry Gross talking with the actor Jeff Hiller, who's delightful in Somebody Somewhere, which was his first big role and earned him an Emmy. Then, just to stay current, I listened to the New York Times's Daily podcast, about the Venezuela incursion. And finally, it was on to Steve Levitt of Freakonomics, talking with linguist and philosopher Steven Pinker. 

I'd be hard-pressed to tell you just what I learned. I am so not good at listening. But I also enjoy listening. Go figure.

I took a few photos along the way.

A random pillow and... picture frame? along the sidewalk

A roadkill raccoon, not ten yards away from the pillow
(I apologize if this is too grisly for you, but... life is grisly)

One of the raccoon's paws (again I'm sorry, but I can't not look)

The Seaside cemetery (no raccoon graves here)

The view south from a small hill

Nearing home, and the eternal construction

Okay, I was being flip above. I did learn something today, while listening. About joy and hope, in the case of Jeff Hiller—he's such a delight. And the details of the Venezuela attack just hardened me even more (if that's possible) to the current "administration," with its utter lack of policy or plans, never mind interest in the American citizenry. What a travesty this country has become. But then Pinker reminded me that everything comes in waves and cycles, that change is constant, and what we need to continue to focus on is facts, and the scientific method, and not succumb to superstition and hearsay—because we now (as we did not a few centuries ago, before the Enlightenment) have that capacity, that understanding of the nature of things writ large. Obviously, not all of us have that capacity; but perhaps enough of us? We can only hope. 

Total steps for today: 14,320.