13 April 2025

A Manifesto Forming

Reader,

I've offered ideas of writing back, talking out, projecting our thinking into the world. Behind all of that, of course, is some broader thinking on what reading is probably for. I'm not talking about the rather pedantic reasons so often given by "employment literacy" advocates or the worthy but solitary self-enrichment activities of most of us.

What's been forming for some time (and I mean years or decades) involves some scary words when attached to reading, but I don't think they can be so easily detached: ethics, politics, and manifesto. See? I told you the ideas were scary.

Try it this way: respecting the artist/writer means engaging that work as thoughtfully as possible, stretching to meet that message engagement to their own creative level. I can see no better word than "ethic" to encompass such behavior. And the talking it through with others? Besides that dialogics by their nature are healthy practice in thinking, spreading the practice of critical thinking means engaging others to question and challenge themselves, an engagement with goals, vision, or intention that we all might share in common: a manifesto. Finally, what we choose to discuss--what we have read, therefore--is necessarily a political choice, one that defines what narratives should exist in our personal and public spaces.

There is more to be said of all this, but what I have been assembling is a kind of Readers Manifesto, a crystallizing statement of what I--and I hope others--might be about; a statement that might openly invite re-interpretation and expansion, which encompasses a variety of practices, from our reading to what we do with it. Here is the outline:

• Act of Reading: Elements of it involved the private act of reading itself: engaging the text thoughtfully, entering into an equally participatory dialogue with that writer.
• Act of Engagement: Other parts suggest the community aspect: discussing with open-mind and heart, accepting dialogue as essential, challenging ourselves in listening, even writing back (as I have been discussing in Literary Nomads).
• Act of Education: Still others call for us to spread the practice of this critical thinking, an acceptance of goals, vision, or intention to build communities who share an understanding of "reading," discernment, or "doing one's own research," of sharing ideas. It's a resistance to a growing practice of "dis"-reading.
• Act of Civics: Finally, there is the outward expectation that texts may be made available for community to read--texts of wide and open discourse, which contest and affirm community dialogue--and that we work collectively to bring readers to these texts (literacy-building) while we bring the texts to readers (institution-building and rights to reading/education).

All of these, it seems to me, are essential components to building better communities, and that ceding of any can only be a surrender to quality of life and governance by misreading (or mal-reading, or dis-reading).

I invite you to be a part of this process, of drafting and expanding and revising this outline and what follows from it, an initial goal being only a statement any of us might use for our own purposes, and one which shall surely guide Waywords Studio going forward.

And spread this invite around to anyone who might be interested!

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Literary Nomads gets a surprise

On my search for some carpe diem insights, into some more practical advice rooted, perhaps, in Epicurean ideals--I find that I have been myself romanticizing history a bit, a failure I should have recognized going in. So why didn't I recognize that even Horace would not write lucidly about anything?

But that's what we do, isn't it? When our contemporary lives get complicated, even overwhelming, when the questions get hard, we look to thinkers and writers wiser than ourselves, those who have gone before, for succor. And whether or not they had the answers we seek, we are fully prepared to simplify them, to scrape them free of the human debris we'd rather not witness: we mythologize them.

But surely the imaginative creator of the "carpe diem" phrase would single it out for uncompromised articulation, one that later writers like Andrew Marvell would acquire and twist! Not exactly: Because the Classical Age is unsurprisingly as full of the fallible, political, carnal, and absurd human animal as every other age.

My more recent episode of Literary Nomads comes to this conclusion in an anti-climactic semi-close reading of Horace's Odes, Book 1 Ode 11.

Here's the most recent episode! (And next week I swing from one of the most canonical of writers to one of the least . . . !)

Up ahead:

• 5.12 (4/18): Reading Star Trek & Sulu's Time
• 5.13 (4/25): Carpe All Over the Place
• 5.14 (5/2): Seizing Saul Bellow's Day
• 5.15 (5/9): Writing Back 2: A World Without Irony

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Would love a question from you for the podcast, too!

A Poetic Rough Draft

Speaking of getting on the podcast, here is a PDF of my draft "To His Bold Master," a poetic response to "To His Coy Mistress." I think there's enough here to warrant more work, but I'm seeking feedback! Offer a comment and I'll discuss it in a future episode! And thank you!

"To His Bold Master" draft PDF for comments

End April with

some great poetry, good books, and support of independent book sellers!

Lots of days to watch for coming up: But this seems like a good moment to tell you why all my links for book recommendations send you to Bookshop or other small online sellers: I am working to completely divest myself from Amazon and other corporate retailers that don't support democratic principles or human and environmental rights. (Not an easy task, I know, but neither is setting any principle as aspiration; yet still we stive. . . )

*Dracula Daily is an emailing of the Stoker novel in small pieces, each a letter or diary entry delivered on the day of the novel's events, so you end up reading Dracula in "real time" from May to November: it's a different experience of narrative tension! Sign up for the free subscription: https://draculadaily.substack.com/​

Some Recommendations

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A Village Life by Louise Gluck, 2009 Poetry, memoir, rural, pastorale At once provincially claustrophobic and expansive in vision, Gluck's speakers relate small moments in a small rural town--often nostalgic, often routine--and discover in them ideas tragic, ironically profound, or even life-encompassing. “There should be more time like this, to sit and dream. It’s as his cousin says: Living—living takes you away from sitting.” Buy it here

Early Recommendation from My Reading: Rifqa (2021) by Mohammed El-Kurd

It's a terrible and necessary time to recommend writers from Palestine, and I've read several in the past year. The reading is not easy, not remotely comfortable, fraught with uncertainty and complicity, of challenges to look--at and away.

And this discomfort, too is what El-Kurd addresses in his book which predates the most recent crisis, catastrophe. We owe ourselves the discomfort of facing it.

"All My Telling" by Patrick Gillespie

Carpenter/Poet Patrick Gillespie has kept a website, PoemShape, of his verse, musings, linguistics, and insights into poetic structure for many years. He's currently working on a fantasy novel rich in verse. Worth a visit or seven.

Here, look here, my words fall stem

by breaking stem each saying this

and this and this is what I am!

Before the closing of the year

I think that I can almost here

the earth recalling every stone

to earth . . .

Tell some stories, talk some poetry, write back.

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Steve

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What's (Still!) Ahead?

• Long-form fiction
• Preview: Unwoven Teachers Guide
• Reflection: Muses or Misconceptions
• A role for "escapist" literature
• Navigating the pedagogy of democracy

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