Our host, Levi Fuller, is the only one of these musicians I’d met before I started this project. And so I had some extra knowledge I could put toward the selection: I already knew he’s a great reader, and I already knew some of the stuff he’s read. That gave me some freedom to get adventurous.
I have some regrets about these choices. (I would have regrets about these choices no matter what; five books can’t possibly represent all the things I’d want to do and all the voices I’d want to be heard with this experiment. For instance, I regret the lack of international authors, and that most of the books are contemporary. I regret not squeezing Hunter S. Thompson in there, somewhere, just to be a dick. But I’m happy with the choices, by and large.) My main regret is that almost all the books were novels. I know that novels will be easier for the songwriters to respond to, but I thought a book of poetry would make a fine laboratory experiment inside this experiment. And so I know Levi is a big fan of experimentation, and so I assigned him one of the best books of poetry to be published in the last few years: Maggie Nelson’s Bluets.
If I can be tacky enough to quote myself, from a column about the greatness of local publisher Wave Books: “It was Wave that published Maggie Nelson’s Bluets, which is one of those rare poetry books that everyone in the world should read.” That’s all I’m going to say about that.
Thanks for these great assignments, Paul. I just finished Bluets for the first time last night, and went right back and started it again. This will, indeed, be a tough one, but I’m excited to get to work.
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