“It seems to me that writing and reading are pretty much the same activity, maybe the inhale and the exhale of the same breath. Which is to say that, for me, I don’t do one without the other. Reading a book that enthralls me gets my mind gabbing, which makes my writing fingers itchy. If the poems start coming, I’m desperate to read, to stay immersed in a world of words. This means I consider myself equally productive when reading or writing, which takes some of the pressure off. It also means that if I’m stalled and looking to get going, the problem is fairly easy to diagnose: I’m probably not reading the right book. Of course, the pandemic has pretty much short-circuited any semblance of focus, so I honestly haven’t written a word in months. I also haven’t read anything of substance. Things suddenly got busy after I finished reading Mac’s Problem (New Directions, 2019) by Enrique Vila-Matas, translated from the Spanish by Margaret Jull Costa and Sophie Hughes, in February and I haven’t been able to climb back aboard the quiet boat where I can read and write. Welcome to the club of everybody, Craig. Being mesmerized by art makes me want to answer with art. I wish us all a bit more of that kind of concentration in the coming days and weeks and months.”
—Craig Morgan Teicher, author of Welcome to Sonnetville, New Jersey (BOA Editions, 2021)
Photo credit: Sarah Tew