CURATED ARTS COMPENDIUM, A.K.A. THE Stuff to Do THURSDAY SUBSCRIBE

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): Piscean author and activist W. E. B. Dubois advised us to always be willing to give up what we are. Why? Because that’s how we transform into a deeper and stronger version of ourselves. I think you would benefit from using his strategy. My reading of the astrological omens tells me that you are primed to add through subtraction, to gain power by shedding what has become outworn and irrelevant. Suggested step one: Identify dispiriting self-images you can jettison. Step two: Visualize a familiar burden you could live without. Step three: Drop an activity that bores you. Step four: Stop doing something that wastes your time.

ARIES (March 21-April 19): In 1993, I began work on my memoirish novel The Televisionary Oracle. It took me seven years to finish. The early part of the process was tough. I generated a lot of material I didn’t like. Then one day, I discovered an approach that liberated me: I wrote about aspects of my character and behavior that needed improvement. Suddenly everything clicked, and my fruitless adventure transformed into a fluidic joy. Soon I was writing about other themes and experiences. But dealing with self-correction was a key catalyst. Are there any such qualities in yourself you might benefit from tackling, Aries? If so, I recommend you try my approach.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Two Taurus readers complained that my horoscopes contain too much poetry and flair to be useful. In response, I’m offering you a prosaic message. It’s all true, though in a way that’s more like a typical horoscope. (I wonder if this approach will spur your emotional intelligence and your soul’s lust for life, which are crucial areas of growth for you these days.) Anyway, here’s the oracle: Take a risk and extend feelers to interesting people outside your usual sphere. But don’t let your social adventures distract you from your ambitions, which also need your wise attention. Your complex task: Mix work and play; synergize business and pleasure.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): Astrologer Jessica Shepherd advises us to sidle up to the Infinite Source of Life and say, “Show me what you’ve got.” When we do, we often get lucky. That’s because the Infinite Source of Life delights in bringing us captivating paradoxes. Yes and no may both be true in enchanting ways. Independence and interdependence can interweave to provide us with brisk teachings. If we dare to experiment with organized wildness and aggressive receptivity, our awareness will expand, and our heart will open. What about it, Gemini? Are you interested in the charming power that comes from engaging with cosmic contradictions? Now’s a favorable time to do so. Go ahead and say, “Show me what you’ve got” to the Infinite Source of Life.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): “Only a lunatic would dance when sober,” declared the ancient Roman philosopher Cicero. As a musician who loves to dance, I reject that limiting idea— especially for you. In the upcoming weeks, I hope you will do a lot of dancing-while-sober. Singing-while-sober, too. Maybe some crying-for-joy-while-sober, as well as freewheeling-your-way-through-unpredictable-conversations-while-sober and cavorting-and-reveling-while-sober. My point is that there is no need for you to be intoxicated as you engage in revelry. Even further: It will be better for your soul’s long-term health if you are lucid and clear headed as you celebrate this liberating phase of extra joy and pleasure.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Poet Mary Oliver wondered whether the soul is solid and unbreakable, like an iron bar. Or is it tender and fragile, like a moth in an owl’s beak? She fantasized that maybe it’s shaped like an iceberg or a hummingbird’s eye. I am poetically inclined to imagine the soul as a silver diadem bedecked with emeralds, roses and live butterflies. What about you, Leo? How do you experience your soul? The coming weeks will be a ripe time to home in on this treasured part of you. Feel it, consult with it, feed it. Ask it to surprise you!

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): According to the color consultant company Pantone, Viva Magenta is 2023’s color of the year. According to me, Viva Magenta is the lucky hue and power pigment for you Virgos during the next 10 months. Designer Amber Guyton says that Viva Magenta “is a rich shade of red that is both daring and warm.” She adds that its “purple undertone gives it a warmth that sets it apart from mere red and makes it more versatile.” For your purposes, Virgo, Viva Magenta is earthy and exciting; nurturing and inspiring; soothing yet arousing. The coming weeks will be a good time to get the hang of incorporating its spirit into your life.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): If you are not working to forge a gritty solution, you may be reinforcing a cozy predicament. If you’re not expanding your imagination to conjure up fresh perspectives, you could be contributing to some ignorance or repression. If you’re not pushing to expose dodgy secrets and secret agendas, you might be supporting the whitewash. Know what I’m saying, Libra? Here’s a further twist. If you’re not peeved about the times you have wielded your anger unproductively, you may not use it brilliantly in the near future. And I really hope you will use it brilliantly.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): Storyteller Martin Shaw believes that logic and factual information are not enough to sustain us. To nourish our depths, we need the mysterious stories provided by myths and fairy tales. He also says that conventional hero sagas starring big, strong, violent men are outmoded. Going forward, we require wily, lyrical tales imbued with the spirit of the Greek word metis, meaning “divine cunning in service to wisdom.” That’s what I wish for you now, Scorpio. I hope you will tap into it abundantly. As you do, your creative struggles will lead to personal liberations. For inspiration, read myths and fairy tales.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): Many astrologers don’t give enough encouragement to you Sagittarians on the subject of home. I will compensate for that. I believe it’s a perfect time to prioritize your feelings of belonging and your sense of security. I urge you to focus energy on creating serenity and stability for yourself. Honor the buildings and lands you rely on. Give extra appreciation to the people you regard as your family and tribe. Offer blessings to the community that supports you.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): If you are like 95 percent of the population, you weren’t given all the love and care you needed as a child. You may have made adaptations to partly compensate for this lack, but you are still running a deficit. That’s the bad news, Capricorn. The good news is that the coming weeks will be a favorable time to overcome at least some of the hurt and sadness caused by your original deprivation. Life will offer you experiences that make you feel more at home in the world and at peace with your destiny and in love with your body. Please help life help you! Make yourself receptive to kindness and charity and generosity.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): The philosopher Aldous Huxley was ambitious and driven. Author of almost 50 books, he was a passionate pacifist and explorer of consciousness. He was a visionary who expressed both dystopian and utopian perspectives. Later in his life, though, his views softened. “Do not burn yourselves out,” he advised readers. “Be as I am: a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic. Save the other half of yourselves for pleasure and adventure. It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it.” Now I’m offering you Huxley’s counsel, Aquarius. As much as I love your zealous idealism and majestic quests, I hope that in the coming weeks, you will recharge yourself with creature comforts.

Fragmentary Visions

GRINNELL COLLEGE’S KELEKIAN

BYrN D. PaUL The Great Vehicle BYRNDPAUL.BANDCAMP.COM

Byrn D. Paul is one of those musicians on a wavelength entirely their own.

He plays guitar, cello, violin, oud, koto, pedal steel guitar and modular synthesizer on The Great Vehicle On previous releases he positively shreds on the guitar, but this latest album is not about virtuosity. Technical skill is a requirement for this kind of music, and it’s as much a product of Paul’s digital audio production mojo as it is his fingers on strings.

His lyrics are also ambitious, exploring a syncretic, multi-modal mysticism. He’s concerned with Life, the Universe and Everything. I still laugh at Beavis & Butthead So for this album I’ll take Ludwig Wittgenstein’s advice: It’s something whereof I cannot speak so I’ll remain silent.

Philosophizing aside, there are many great musical ideas here, elegantly performed, recorded and produced. Paul is a guitarist primarily and there’s plenty of texture and rhythm from his guitar. None of the songs are verse/chorus/verse pop songs. The closest contemporary analog to what he’s doing is Joanna Newsom. They both write intricately structured, sophisticated pieces that take you to unexpected places.

“Sophia Samsara” closes the album but is a good place to start examination. Beginning with the sound of flowing water, church bells and spoken word poetry: “I never saw the bushes stir to admit the sacred guardian fawn / Foltchain, in her snow-white pelt.” The vocals are subtly pitch-shifted and processed to sound portentous. But following that, you’re surprised by an almost conventional song, a lullaby of sorts. Though, I’m not sure a child would be comforted by the lyrics “Rejecting vice and nihilism / Embracing bliss beyond distinction.”

“Blue (III) Birds” is constructed in layers, including electric piano, inchoate rumbling found sound and the koto. Without being too on the nose, recordings of bird song enter during the song’s outro, which is awash with varied musical timbres including violin, cello, guitar and what I think is the wind rustling leaves. This is 21st century music, a digitally assembled bricolage.

Alongside the lyrics in the extensive booklet included with the album is discussion of specific guitars, effect pedals and VST instruments used in production. The technical detail is presented as earnestly important as the mystical lyrics and poems. It’s a bold, wonky move.

You don’t often hear an album so lush and deeply worked from an Iowa musician. Paul harkens back to the 1960s psychedelic explosion of Pink Floyd, The Moody Blues and Yes, but his music could only be created in this digital future.

Throughout The Great Vehicle, Paul saddles his lyrics with a lot of sincere ruminations on discovering the sacred and mysterious truths of life. Yet the music itself is also lovingly independent of his philosophical intent.

My alternate title for the album could be Never Mind the Gnosticism, Here’s Bryn D Paul. One can let the lyrics wash over them and focus on the pleasures of melody, harmony and auditory texture.

—Kent Williams

JaD FaIr aND SaMUEL LOcKE WarD

Happy Hearts

JADFAIR1.BANDCAMP.COM

Cross-country collaborations with punk-rock legends are nothing new for Sam Locke Ward. His glorious work with Mike Watt (Minutemen, fIREHOSE, etc) under the SLW cc Watt moniker has been covered in this publication before. At the same time those albums were unleashed on an unsuspecting public, Ward made contact with Half Japanese founder Jad Fair, whose plans for 2021 centered on putting out one hundred (!!!) albums in a year’s time. Fair’s own pedigree is impressive, having worked with Daniel Johnston, Thurston Moore, Richard Hell, Moe Tucker, Teenage Fanclub and John Zorn among many distinguished others. The two began a “pen-pal” project, sending tracks back and forth between Iowa City and Austin, Texas at the slightly less grueling pace of one complete song per week.

Kill Rock Stars has just released the result: a dizzy, woozy, sugar-sweet collection of love songs fittingly named Happy Hearts. With 17 songs filling a 40-minute runtime, Happy Hearts fits neatly onto two sides of translucent yellow vinyl, and it feels positively “normal” after the maximum minimalism of Ward’s last album, the 9-minute, 40 song masterpiece Bubblegum Necropolis. Brevity is still key here, but the bouncy optimism could hardly be further from that album’s rage, tension and musical chaos.

Ward’s 2021 and 2022 releases felt like a means of venting the desperation and anger stirred up in Iowa during and before the plague years; the American nightmare set to music. Fair has a different vision: the glory of love. Their press release sums it up perfectly: “Happy Hearts is a very positive album,” says Fair. “It’s good to stay positive.”

The album is a rather askew take on that ancient touchstone of popular song, twisted at times in its unabashed moon-in-June bubbliness. Fair’s lyrics could have been scrawled in a notebook by a lovestruck middle-schooler. Some memorable lines: “A little bird whispers ‘She’s the one,’ go to her, it’s time for love”; “Cupid got me, and got me good, his arrow shot me right where it should … thank you Cupid, thank you pal!”; and a personal favorite: “It’s as easy as eating cherry pie or falling off a log; three wishes from a magic fish, or a magic frog.”

This is the intoxication stage of love set to music; the state of being too zonked on hormones to drive, awash in pastel colors and soft synthesizers. It’s the soundtrack to making reckless decisions, like matching neck tattoos or moving to Indiana, all for that darling one. The effect is so overthe-top that one wonders where the bit starts, or ends; the tone is somewhere between the stoned innocence of “Don’t Laugh, I Love You” by Ween and the deep satire of “Our Wedding” by Crass, or nightclub music in a David Lynch movie. It almost feels like there’s something wrong with it.

Ward’s music evokes everything from Sunday morning televangelist programs to ‘80s homecoming dances to wine-bar acoustics to straight-up punk rock. Used with extreme restraint, his familiar punk-styled vocals are all the more hilarious in their light application. The music becomes more ominous and at times even atonal by the album’s end, but the mood of celebration remains: celebration of living and laughing and loving and sweet, sweet junk food. More collaborations have been promised; they are awaited with great interest.

—Loren Thacher

relapsed deeply into my pain towards myself. I was tired of this cycle. I was angry at how I was being treated. I was angry at being dismissed by close ones around me. It finally clicked in my brain that I deserved so much better from others but most importantly myself.

I started reading self-help books such as Body Positive Power by Megan Jayne Crabbe and The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf. I started surrounding my social media with diverse body types, disabilities, cultures, ethnicities and more. I let myself cry all the tears I needed to. So in the summer of 2022, June 14, when I was told I am “stronger than you think” by a, now, friend, I was stunned. That statement hasn’t left my mind since that day.

June 14 is my brother’s birthday and this would have been his 39th birthday. My brother passed away suddenly when I was 14 years old. I compare our strengths a lot. He had severe cerebral palsy and I had undiagnosed (at the time) autism. He could not walk the last five years of his life and I was contemplating my own. He was the one to pass away when I tried to.

I have felt deeply in my life. Sometimes I am told I am “too emotional.” Now I am told I am “strong.” Looking back, I am only “strong” because I had to be and I have to be. I have no other option for myself but to continue my life and heal. I do not have any other choice. On my dark days, I am still considered “strong” when I feel the weakest.

Strong people are not strong by choice. We have gone through trials and tribulations. We have cried and felt fearful for most of our life. Even as I heal, I am still fearful of life to this day. I may stand straight, shoulders back and chin up, but this is the only way of survival I know.

Remember this when you look at your heroes or people you wish to become one day, they did not become a strong figure in life because of choice. Behind every strong individual is a battle of a journey.

GrEG WhEELEr aND

ThE POLY MaLL cOPS

Manic Fever

HIGHDIVERECORDS.BANDCAMP.COM

MCF: Greg Wheeler and the Poly Mall Cops, Gabe’s, Iowa City, Saturday, April 8, 7:30 p.m., included with pass ($55-110)

You didn’t realize you were waiting for this moment. But I promise you, you were.

Later this month, on March 24, just a couple weeks ahead of their appearance at Iowa City’s Mission Creek Festival, Des Moines punkers

Greg Wheeler and the Poly Mall Cops will drop their debut fulllength, Manic Fever. If, like a good Iowan music nerd, you’ve been following Greg Wheeler’s career since his time with Cedar Rapids band The Wheelers, then you’ll be absolutely ready for the wild, frenetic beauty of this aptly named album.

The 12-track release includes all three songs from their 2017 7-inch split and nine additional tunes to give you a crick in your neck as you jump and thrash along. Track four, “DGASAY,” one of those carried forward from their earlier release, is a classic punk vibe, channeling the ’70s obsession with sped-up surfer rock tonality. It’s the most polished track on the album, the one begging to be released as a single.

The following track, “Nothing,” is one of the album’s standouts, delightfully subtle following the fiery vehemence of “DGASAY.” It’s a track to get lost in, balancing seemingly straightforward lyrics—“There’s nothing much left to do / Except completely obliterate you / And there’s nothing left to say /

I want your face to go away”—with a wistful melodic structure, especially on the chorus, that reveals the lyrics to be pure bravado.

The title track is another that grabs your ears, 1:42 of quick addictive vocals and swirling instrumentation that make clear just how much fun they had composing these pieces. “Slowly Erasing You,” another 2017 re-up, is next, one more track that dances around and puts the lie to its lyrics. Then “Waste Away” takes control of the narrative, with lyrics that feel more poignant and true (“Don’t let go, I’ll float away”) couched in driven, drum-forward desperation that demands attention. This trio of songs in the album’s third quarter encapsulates the themes and philosophies of the whole; the three are worth looping on their own a few times through.

Closer “Fast Forward” is the perfect capper, all garage grunge grit and grime locked in conversation with the listener, begging for the emotional turmoil of the album to be over. I’m generally a fan of albums that bear repeating, that can be listened to over and over. But this is a deeply satisfying conclusion that hints at the possibility that the attempts at closure teased throughout might finally be realized.

Manic Fever is simultaneously nostalgic and contemporary, peak 2007 but without feeling retro. If I said, “goth pop-punk,” you, dear reader, would likely respond, “Oh, you mean emo?” But no. I do not mean emo. The Poly Mall Cops are more Joy Division than My Chemical Romance. And there’s a ’90s fuzz overlay that gives the album a very Love Among Freaks, Clerks soundtrack kind of vibe, along with just the right amount of raucous drums, reminiscent of classic, Brett Reed-era Rancid.

In other words, it’s like a decadent meal from the punk rock buffet. You think you have a grasp on their style, then they throw a wild card at you— and make it work every time. They deliver pop punk filtered through the miasma of pandemic times.

—Genevieve Trainor know they will have support from constituents if they are willing to participate in a serious discussion about reform.”

McNally realizes that Iowa City isn’t a culturally conservative part of the state, but it is one that gives him a chance to meet other young people from across Iowa.

“Because it’s a college town, you get people from all over,” he said. “What I’m hoping to do is connect with people, especially from rural parts of the state, who are then willing to take the conversation back to their hometowns. The site has a lot of good resources to help them with that, including how to contact their legislators.”

To Knott, the site’s most important feature is its online petition.

“The campaign isn’t going to get on [lawmakers’] radar until we can demonstrate we have political strength,” he said. “There’s a difference between a petition where a person signs their name, and polls where you can remain anonymous.”

Knott acknowledges that even getting a serious debate on reform is an uphill struggle, and if debate leads to anything, it will still face an opponent in Gov. Reynolds. But he still thinks change, if only incremental change, is possible.

“If you’re going to get into politics you’ve got to have a bit of optimism about the possibility of change,” Knott said. “Or you’ll just never get anything done.”

July 7-8 • Downtown Des Moines, Iowa

Cautious Clay · Blu DeTiger · Thumpasaurus · William Elliott Whitmore

Invasives

Emily Kingery’s Invasives opens in a garden and closes in a garden, repeatedly returning to Eden and tearing it down with one consistent throughline: that which is invasive.

The opening poem, “Musk Thistle,” weaves together two concepts such that they are inextricable. It talks about pulling weeds and ponders the difference between a weed and any other plant, relating that imagery to the way we accidentally sow figurative and digital seeds in our own lives.

Our speaker lingers in her childhood, hands us Barbies and woodchips, and pulls us through basements and playgrounds, laying groundwork for ways our desires hold us captive. Kingery repeatedly gives visceral illustrations of how lovers leave deep-rooted, impossible traumas in their wake. She makes us fall in love with bad men, asking, “Who argues / with men who undress you / the way summer does / to spring,” in the poem “April.”

She reminds us of young love, unrequited love, the pain of trying to exist in spaces not made for you. This collection hit closer to home than I could have anticipated and in darker corners than I’d like to admit. I think that’s an accurate picture of Invasives: a pretty package with ornate scaffolding built around our hauntings.

It’s probably true that not everyone has had experiences like those outlined in Invasives: abusive lovers, the allure of toxins, the belief that belief alone can save us. But

Kingery’s felicity is unparalleled— she pries universals out of snapshots from slumber parties and crushing on Indiana Jones and the specific boredom that means the end of coming of age. We are not all from the small town in which our narrator learns how to want and how not to love, but we do all learn these things.

Reading the poem “Toxicity” (the title and refrain derived from the System of a Down song), I understand how the unrequited can be romantic. Kingery’s language is potent, her scenes developed and raw. The book itself is invasive. Where you might expect to feel voyeuristic, instead you wear the narrator’s skin, her story coiling inside you.

What really gives these poems power is their bald-faced realism. The language is often flowery, but the images depicted here are disaster photography. They are high-contrast black-and-whites of crime scenes and personal tragedy, the best of which combine soft, natural

TaYLOr BraDLEY

There’s No Place Like House

Much is absent in Taylor Bradley’s latest book.

That observation is not an assessment of the component parts of the book—which catalogs segments of Bradley’s life from 2018 to 2020— rather, “absence” is the aching touchstone of this well-built text.

Published in late 2022 by Bradley, a 2013 University of Iowa graduate, There’s No Place Like House is a memoir, presented be looking for narrative grounding. Thankfully, Bradley writes with a deft hand and is quick to define these vacuums after the first essay. The most important absences are noted in the beginning and often take the spotlight in multiple essays. In particular “One-Inch Planet,” “Mary Poppins for Damaged Men” and “The Breakup” etch wretched failings with a surprisingly sympathetic hand. elements with the grit of drugs or basement parties. As in “Tricks,” “I have read enough / to know I am half-gone already. I have cut enough flesh / that when the crosscut saw is flourished in the garden for the final trick, my body will disappear on its own.”

Bradley’s time in the book is mostly focused in Los Angeles, while dipping in and out of London, New Orleans and Grand Junction, Colorado, among other places. As the essays continue, a somewhat recurrent cast of characters begin to take shape. An 80-yearold neighbor, an aging mother, a semi-estranged father and a handful of friends reappear throughout, but—keeping with the conceit of the book—none feel like permanent players, even when their presence (or lack thereof) is powerfully felt.

Dozens of photos illustrate settings, objects and people throughout the book. Many of these images lack distinguishable human faces, and when distinct faces do appear, it’s often in old, smiling family photos that add texture to Bradley’s already nuanced prose. Regardless of subject, these images tend to extrapolate on the text, rather than merely represent it.

There are poems in here about happy things, beautiful moments of confidence and change, and the collection even gives opportunity to the reader to choose their own adventure with the way the book ends. Invasives is a fever-dream journey through trauma, but you get through it.

—Sarah Elgatian

as a series of photographs and essays. These narratives extend from 2018, in the immediate aftermath of a failed, decade-old, romantic relationship, to mid-2020 when COVID swallowed the globe.

Prior to this, Bradley has published poetry collections and written plays, at least one of which was part of the UI’s 10-Minute Play Festival in 2012.

Throughout There’s No Place Like House, Bradley establishes a slew of lackings, observing things as “not-my TV” and “not-my Grandpa” and the house of an “almost mother-in-law.”

Defining things in the negative risks losing a reader when they may

The book’s title alludes to a line repeated in The Wizard of Oz by Dorothy Gale, played by Judy Garland. When Dorothy is spirited away to the land of Oz, she’s followed by her house but not its content. She has to get back to Kansas, back to her home.

At the start of this book, the narrator prepares to leave a house that is not her own. But unlike Dorothy, she is not beckoned “back to Kansas.” That is a place she intentionally fled. Without that clear and guiding star, our protagonist’s path is more tumultuous than any yellow brick road.

—Isaac Hamlet

SEaN aDaMS

The Thing In The Snow

WILLIAM MORROW

The Thing In The Snow is set in a remote location “where the snow never melts.” Given my fiery hatred of Iowa winters, this was already enough to catapult me into a headspace of inexplicable tension that kept me turning the pages of Sean Adams’ latest novel.

Our narrator, Hart, is a supervisor tasked with making sure the Northern Institute, formerly a research facility, remains a place where “research cannot possibly occur.” The abandoned state of the Institute makes the presence of Gilroy, the last remaining researcher at the facility, even more curious. Hart is in charge of two subordinates: Gibbs, who Hart suspects is secretly plotting to take his job, and Cline, who he describes as “easily distracted and unintelligent.”

The staff doesn’t know their coordinates, they don’t know what research used to be conducted there, they don’t know the exact temperature in the facility. And they don’t know what the ominous black shape near the eastern wing of the building is, the titular “thing in the snow.”

In accordance to the wishes of Hart’s superior, Kay, the team strives for “efficiency,” spending their days carrying out their assignments: opening and closing doors to make sure they are functioning properly, using golf balls to check if table surfaces are level, sitting and shifting around on chairs to make sure they are sturdy enough, etcetera.

Hart regards this busywork with the utmost seriousness, obeying orders and filling out endless forms.

Despite managerial aspirations, Hart is seemingly at a professional dead end. It’s bad enough that our narrator is insecure about his leadership status, but like his team, he is left in the dark about practically everything.

Seeing the title, my mind flashed with images from John Carpenter’s 1982 film The Thing, a story centering on a team of researchers in Antarctica pitted against an unfathomable threat. A notable influence on that film is the work of horror scribe H.P. Lovecraft, who penned his own tale of an Arctic expedition team in his 1936 novella At The Mountains of Madness.

Thinking I had ventured across this frozen terrain before, I discover Adams once again subverts all expectations save one: delivering a superb novel in another year seemingly destined for the dumpster fire (a lesson I should have learned from reviewing the author’s debut novel The Heap in 2020.)

Here, Adams lures readers into a

Tara a. BYNUM

Reading Pleasures: Everyday Black Living in Early America

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS PRESS

Book Matters: Tara Bynum, Prairie Lights, Iowa City, Wednesday, March 22 at 7 p.m., Free and fears stalk our thoughts; the uncertainty of the future is often a hovering cloud. It’s a remarkable phenomenon that these early Black Americans found and expressed those pleasures. It “bears proof,” Bynum writes, “of the taking care of or the tending to an inward self.” world as claustrophobic as a snow globe, then shakes things up with a flurry of satirical commentary on the surreal and absurd nature of workplace culture. I am reminded of the space truckers in another Carpenter film, Dark Star (1974), and the cubicle dwellers in Mike Judge’s Office Space (1999). However, such comparisons last only briefly, as Adams gifts readers a uniquely hilarious yet frightening vision with The Thing In The Snow

Scholar Tara A. Bynum, an assistant professor in the University of Iowa Departments of English and African American Studies, is exploring interiority—and exemplifying it.

The existence of these examples, and Bynum’s choice to present them in this way, is reminiscent of current trends toward defiant joy: from the ideas of Black boy joy and Black girl magic to the insistent refrain that “trans joy is resistance,” historically marginalized communities in the U.S. and across the world have been advocating for the power of expressive pleasure instead of taking pleasure in expressions of power.

(Reviewer’s Note: Special thanks to Beaverdale Books in Des Moines for lending an emergency copy of the book to Little Village for review.)

—Mike Kuhlenbeck

In her recently published monograph Reading Pleasures: Everyday Black Living in Early America, Bynum leverages her research in pre-1800 Black literary history for a deep dive into the lives and writings of a selection of early Black intellectuals. Beginning with Phillis Wheatley and moving on to names perhaps not well-known outside of academia, she examines the ways in which each pours their interiority onto the page, how they hope, how they dream and how they love. And as she does so, she sinks into the subject matter, revealing her own pleasures at every turn.

The pleasures in question, she advises in the introduction, are not sexual or even necessarily physical. “I’m describing what looks like those quotidian and simple pleasures that make life easier,” she writes. And, quoting James Baldwin, invokes a definition of “sensual” that embodies the ability to “respect and rejoice in the force of life, of life itself, and to be present in all that one does, from the effort of loving to the breaking of bread.”

This is no easy task, of course, even in the modern day. Anxieties

Writing about pamphleteer David Walker, Bynum is direct in discussing his obvious anger, but argues that it’s “well-intentioned and purposefully excessive.” And it is utilized in pursuit of happiness: “namely,” she writes, “a world where his brethren are no longer enslaved.”

What is most beautiful about these chapters is the way that Bynum maintains a delightful voice, a first-person perspective that centers her own pleasure in the researching and writing of this book. Her curiosity permeates each page. “I still wonder sometimes,” she writes, “what Phillis Wheatley thought about as she brushed her teeth.” It’s a tongue-in-cheek moment—Bynum acknowledges self-effacingly that she’s aware toothbrushes weren’t around in Wheatley’s time—but it gets at the heart of her questioning. There’s a lot that these explorations of interiority can reveal, but we can never know how the authors truly see themselves.

Through these intertwined readings, Bynum searches for throughlines and truths, finding relevance in the writers’ shared Christian faith and tracing that influence. But mostly, she models for the reader what it is to read with curiosity and how to allow the interiority of others to inform our own, resulting in a communal experience.

—Genevieve Trainor

Syphilis in Iowa increased by more than 167% from 2019 to 2022.

Syphilis is a sexually transmissible infection (STI) that can cause long-term health problems. It’s serious, and cases are on the rise in Iowa. Not everyone who has syphilis has symptoms, so people often don’t realize they have it. That’s why it’s important for you to get tested regularly for STIs, including syphilis, if you’re sexually active.

Across

1. Top often paired with a cardigan, casually

5. “When was your last ___ smear?”

8. Opposite of fiction

12. Somewhat

13. One of many around the house for vinegar

14. Note for an oud?

15. Some memoirs

17. Corolla competitor

18. Character set?

19. Kiwi, for one

21. Virtual date annoyance

22. Wicked relative?

24. Briefly offline?

25. TV shopping station whose letters stand for three attributes

26. Moses’s Obi-Wan Kenobi co-star

28. Done for

30. Monarchy with no permanent rivers: Abbr.

31. Judges

33. Character in a Strange

Planet comic

36. Montero rapper Lil ___ X

37. 2021 WNBA champs

39. Sponcon, e.g.

40. Rattles off

42. What a vest covers

44. Muscle that can be bounced, for short

45. Unsupervised

47. Rate zero stars, e.g.

51. Wheelchair basketball player and TV host Adepitan

64. Guinness offering

65. Card game with reverses

66. Just that time

67. Schlep

68. Ku or Kane, e.g.

69. Celebratory cheers

Down

1. Cows and bulls

2. Didn’t have time to cook, perhaps

3. Spanish port with ferries to Tangier

4. Fluffy rice cake

5. Throb

6. Query in many a ’90s chat room: Abbr.

7. 100 centavos

8. Stormtrooper shipped with Poe

9. Browses an estate sale, say

10. Travel company?

11. EDM subgenre

14. “Live with it”

16. The first one ever began handing out cash in a New York bank in 1969

17. Company that aptly anagrams to “a rest” announcements?

36. Compliment to a photographer or a tennis ace

38. Poet Harvey who contributed to Marvel’s World of Wakanda

40. Paved the way for

41. Didn’t release immediately

43. Tree that drops its cones during forest fires

44. Most scared at the haunted house, perhaps

46. Shaq’s alma mater

48. Like many a telenovela star

49. Free will

50. Doesn’t stay in one’s lane, say

52. Stonewall Inn demonstration

54. Ref. that added “burner phone” in 2022

57. Mötley ___ (band with a rare double gratuitous umlaut)

58. Self-satisfied

60. Gabriella’s boyfriend in High School Musical

63. Wahoo, at a sushi bar

52. Shares, as someone else’s post: Abbr.

53. “Without further ___ ...”

55. It’s shared by John Oliver and John Cena

56. Thick and delicious, as frosting

59. More soaked

61. Silkwood writer Nora 62. Item of color-changing jewelry found four times in this grid

20. Prefix with normative

23. Control tops?

27. Subjects of California’s Silenced

No More act: Abbr.

29. Invite along for

32. Second part of “i.e.”

34. “The Ketchup

Song” group ___ Ketchup

35. Wedding