you were made for poetry

i just binged something ugly. three books. on top of the four on saturday. on top of the four i ordered last month. on top of the fact i now want Tao Lin's back catalogue, because now i am sitting with Shoplifting, it's digging a bigger hole/whole in me, and i want more. not because i could ever, or would ever, want to write like that. but simply because i don't. and i like that distance.


two volumes of poetry. Anne Carson, and Carol Ann Duffy. and a penguin classic. i feel i should have read more of them. i've read a significant number, but really, not that many. it needs work.



Magazines I Like

lip - a canberra based teen magazine for girls, with lots of feminism and no bullshit thinking for them. it's about travel, and history, books, logic, fashion. it's not a simple, dumb magazine, but a wonderful, rich, and interesting magazine that talks to girls, and WOMEN, on their level.

frankie - australian magazine with beautiful layout, occasionally wonderful but consistently quite good and funny articles, and interesting drawings. and craft. lots of stunning craft. there is one regular writer who is painfully fatist, and it makes me angry though. i think i might write and tell them that.

bitch - a feminist view of pop culture. that really says it all. i subscribed for years, and recently, when the dollar was up, re-subscribed. now i need to go and fill in the back issues i am missing. it's a glorious magazine to read, and re-read.

the lifted brow - more a journal than a magazine, it is a collection of literary fiction, non-fiction, poetry, journalism and comics, based out of brisbane and melbourne, with a CD of fantastic music you should listen to.

this year, i am subscribing to mcsweenies, i think, and picking up a few back issues.


Reading Teen Novels in Borders

this is one of my hobbies. i go in for a few hours, curl up on their comfortable couches and read teen novels. i read one today, "Outside In" which was a wonderful novella about a group of teenagers. it was humble and undramatic, which is something i enjoy in teen novels, and the writing rarely overbalanced into melodrama. the movement between the characters is what made it strong. i feel glad i looked at that cover and picked it up. it was a good random choice.