Caki Wilkinson is a southern poet who writes with grace and wit about hope and tenderness and the suburbs. Her poetry made me love poetry which has been probably the best thing to happen to me as a writer, so I am beyond, beyond thrilled (my fingernails are cartwheeling across my keyboard!) to share her thoughtful notes on what she’s been reading lately.
I believe one of the first of your poems I read was Nostos and I was completely struck by the way you so deftly capture both tenderness and humor in your writing. I was also delighted to (finally!) find Bojangles turned into poetry, as anyone who grew up eating Bo Berry biscuits would probably agree. I’d love to hear how the south has or hasn’t influenced you as both, or either, a reader and a writer.
Thank you! “Nostos” is one of the poems from The Survival Expo that matters most to me. I’ve spent a lot of my life in Tennessee, living all over the state, and I wrote The Survival Expo after moving back here, to Memphis, which is the city I’ve lived in the longest and the one that feels like home to me. Memphis is a complicated and wonderful place. There’s an underdog vibe here, but it’s a city people take immense pride in, and a city where people will just talk to you—about anything and everything. Getting that sort of open view into different people’s lives is endlessly interesting to be, and then there’s just the strangeness of the south in general, the mix of big feelings, the pride in sometimes ludicrous traditions. All of this is good for me as a writer.
What poem or book of poetry do you find yourself returning to most often?
The poems I return to usually change every couple of years, but one that has stayed in my rotation for a long time now is Mary Ruefle’s poem “Woodtangle” from her book Trances of the Blast. [I pasted it below!]
There are also some poetry collections I reread often, falling in love with something new every time. To name a few: Terrance Hayes’s Wind in a Box, Josh Bell’s No Planets Strike, Gwendolyn Brooks’s Annie Allen, and Bruce Smith’s Devotions.
Are you dog-earing or bookmarking your books?
I tend to bookmark. I make notes on blank index cards that end up marking various pages, but also, when I have them, I will use the little Post-It flags with absolutely reckless abandon.
Who are some of your favorite writers from Tennessee?
Two of my very favorite Tennessee writers happen to be married, and two of my best friends: Kevin Wilson, who writes the kind of charming weirdo fiction that I want to spend all day reading, and Leigh Anne Couch, a fantastic poet and also the editor of new literary magazine, Swing. Another of my favorite poets and people is Karyna McGlynn, born in Texas and formerly of Memphis, though she left Tennessee for Michigan a year ago. Her last book, 50 Things Kate Bush Taught Me About the Multiverse, is incredible. I also recently read and loved two debut collections by southern poets: Karisma Price’s I’m Always So Serious, and K. Iver’s Short Film Starring My Beloved’s Red Bronco. I’ve been recommending both to everyone lately.
What’s your desert island book? (the book you reread every year, would never let anyone borrow, etc)
This is terrible, but other than poetry and the books I teach, I’m not a huge rereader; I always am drawn to stuff I haven’t read yet. I mentioned some of my go-to poetry collections earlier, but I know those well enough that I might not need them on a desert island. As for books as objects, though, I do have a 1943 copy of Moby-Dick that I got for free at The Book Thing of Baltimore nearly 20 years ago and am pretty attached to. First of all, I love Moby-Dick and have only read it twice, so I feel like there’s a lot more to take in. Second, this particular edition is giant and includes illustrations. But best of all, the first 150 pages are full of underlining and notes by a previous owner in red colored pencil (very tidy, grandmotherly penmanship), and this person is just not having it. After some initial enthusiasm, 70 pages in the marginalia have devolved to things like “dreadful pun” and, a few pages later, “another miserable pun.” The last straw was apparently the “Cetology” chapter, the end of which our disgruntled reader underlined: “For small erections may be finished by their first architects; grand ones, true ones, ever leave the copestone to posterity. God keep me from ever completing anything. This whole book is but a draught—nay, but the draught of a draught. Oh, Time, Strength, Cash, and Patience!” (There are no more markings on the remaining 450+ pages.)
What’s your favorite bookstore, and what book are you most looking forward to purchasing next time you visit?
My local bookstore in Memphis is Novel, and it’s great. I also love the iconic Square Books just down the road from me in Oxford, MS, and I try to stop by whenever I’m in town. The book I’m most looking forward to picking up is Chris Bachelder and Jennifer Habel’s Dayswork. It’s a collaborative novel about, sort of, a woman who becomes obsessed with Herman Melville—but also so many other things: art, ambition, isolation, marriage. You can probably tell I’ve already read it, but I’m going to pick up copies for two people I love for Christmas this year.
And what are you reading right now?
I teach at Rhodes College and it’s the end of the semester, so I’ve mostly been reading student poems and essays, but once my grades are submitted I can’t wait to finish Mad Seasons by Karra Porter, about the first women’s professional basketball league, and to start the new translation (by Douglas J. Weatherford) of Juan Rulfo’s Pedro Páramo, a novel I’ve wanted to read for a long time now.
Thank you, Caki!!
Caki Wilkinson is the author of three poetry collections: The Survival Expo (2021), The Wynona Stone Poems (2015), and Circles Where the Head Should Be (2011). She is the recipient of a Ruth Lilly Fellowship, the Vassar Miller Prize, the Lexi Rudnitsky Editor’s Choice Award from Persea Books, and a Tennessee Arts Commission Fellowship. Poems from The Survival Expo appeared in The New Yorker, The Nation, Kenyon Review, Yale Review and other magazines. She lives in Memphis and is an associate professor of English at Rhodes College.
Woodtangle
Mary Ruefle
I remember the king passed massive amounts
of inarticulate feeling into law.
I envied all the beautiful things.
Sometimes I called my own name.
I have cursed myself why do I have
so many strange questions. I tried to cram myself
with the gentler things so as to release
some suppressed inclination. My name is
Woodtangle. I remember my mother
when she wore yellow was beautiful
like a finch and then she died. I remember
thinking my father was mean but knowing he
was kind. I remember thinking my father was
kind but knowing he was mean. I remember thinking
all things are made of themselves examples of the
same thing. And Everyman the next day would follow.
I remember thinking the world ended a long time ago
but no one noticed. I remember every dinner
at Vespaio with Tomaz and the Saturday night
the antique cars paraded by for an hour
and I couldn’t breathe for the fumes and I was happy.
I remember thinking the sexual significance of
everything seemed absurd because we are made of
time and air (who cares) and then I remembered
the day the king passed massive amounts of inarticulate
feeling into law he threw a cherry bomb into the crowd
and I thought it was fruit and I ate it.
Trances of the Blast (2013)
Thank you for reading! Just a heads up that there will be no missed connection next week. Instead I’ll be posting a year in review—everything I’ve read and loved over the past 12 months. This will not be a gift guide because I find gift guides generally boring (sorry), but I will link to the books and you should please feel free to do with the information what you will if you have a reader in your life. Happy holidays!
x Stuart