This is second in a series of notes on what I’m reading. These are not meant to be reviews; they are simply my initial thoughts and impressions.

The Compulsions of Silkworms and Bees by Julianna Baggott won the Lena-Miles Wever Todd Poetry Series sponsored by Pleiades Press. I have to be completely upfront and say that the promotional copy does not do this book justice. When I read the promotional copy — the promo material arrived before the book did — I thought that this was some kind of textbook that gave instructions through poems. That sounded like a recipe for disaster to me. I imagined Writing Poems in a poem form. As a result, I opened the book with trepidation and wondered what on earth I’d find inside.

What I found inside were several poems I wish I’d written myself.

Several of the poems are entitled after the questions we often hear (over and over) during the Q&A after readings such as “where do you get your ideas” or “do your children influence your writing.” My favorite of this series is “Do You Simultaneously Submit?” and Baggott writes:

“My grandfather sold Electroluxes in Morgantown
door-to-door under the constant rain of ash.”

and

“A family to feed, who would knock once and
sit on a single stoop through the bitter winter?”

In another group of poems, Poetry and the Novel are sisters and have a conversation in a short series of poems that rotate back and forth between them. Having heard that poets can’t write novels and that fiction writers can’t write poetry, it’s:

1. Nice to see that Julianna Baggott does both well.
2. Enjoyable to read this exchange between Poetry and the Novel. I am betting the exchange is a lot funnier than I first realized.

The novel says:

“It isn’t easy as you’d think
to take the reader’s hand, hang his hat
on the rack, take a seat.”

I tore through the book — trying to get it finished during a baby nap — and will have to go back and read a second time.