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READ TO ME with Becky Karush

May 27, 2020

This week I'm reading MASKED BLESSINGS by RUBEENA IANIGRO. This sensuous poem charts an evolution from passion to ecstasy, to rage to little hip checks of jokes (via a clock!) to a spiritual evolution on the narrator's terms. What?!? How does all that happen in one poem? Come hear Rubeena wield power on the page — and...


May 20, 2020

Today on READ TO ME I read and love TONI MORRISON WAS THE GREATEST AMERICAN WRITER by Damon Young. He wrote it just after her death in August 2019. It's 700 words — and it goes from song lyrics to an ecology of black art to Toni Morrison as American literature itself to the central relationship of Toni Morrison and...


May 13, 2020

Today on READ TO ME we pull up a chair for Food Can Hurt by Rene Denfeld, a new essay published in the new online magazine WE FOUND TIME from Zibby Owens. Reading to you from the backyard shed, I love up commas and clauses, grains of salt and the authority of the body, and arcs to meaning that build and build. Lucky...


May 6, 2020

Today on READ TO ME, we cook dinner with the greatest heroine in children's literature. Heck, all of literature! Ramona Quimby, Age 8 by Beverly Cleary.


I wonder if Beverly Cleary chased after Ramona, like a mom gasping after a fast toddler. Or I wonder if writing Ramona was like coming to a buffet table always full....