Reading Journal | Erica Mena

Dark Things Have Their Origin In Myself

February 25, 2016 by Erica Mena

[or notes on reading about the gothic] A few months I decided it was high time I stopped denying my ultra-goth aesthetic leanings and instead turn fully into exploring them. This was mostly thanks to the phenomenal collection of essays Dark Museum by Maria Negroni, translated by Michelle Gil-Montero and published by Action Books. I can’t recommend it highly enough. I realized that there is perhaps a way of approaching the gothic as a latinx that would allow me to circumvent the […]

Categories: Reading Journal • Tags: darkness, gothic, poetry

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4 Percent Universe by Richard Panek

March 23, 2014 by Erica Mena

I have an amateur’s interest in physics and astronomy. I once took a class (and still have the course book) called Physics for Poets. I’m ok but not brilliant at math, but love the abstract thinking, the scientific deduction and inference, of rigorous attempts to understand the world (at whatever scale). This is the kind of book that is written for someone like me – an understanding, or at least an ability to understand, some pretty complex theoretical concepts if […]

Categories: Reading Journal • Tags: 4 percent universe, astronomy, astrophysics, cosmology, dark energy, dark matter, darkness, non-fiction, physics, richard panek, science

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The Situationist and the City, ed. Tom McDonough

February 6, 2014 by Erica Mena

Got this among a number of S.I. books I’m referencing in putting together a syllabus called The Art of Wandering. What started as an interest solely in psychogeography has transformed, in large part thanks to this collection, into an interest in the relationship between art, politics, and everyday life. The city is the landscape that controls this relationship, and the stage on which this relationship plays out. This anthology took me a while to get through, and not because I […]

Categories: Reading Journal • Tags: psycheogeography, situationist international, unitary urbanism

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Singularities by Susan Howe

February 5, 2014 by Erica Mena

Since Susan Howe came to read last week, I’ve been thinking that I really must immediately read everything she’s ever written starting now go. Before hearing her read I’d read her major works: The Europe of Trusts (which I’m planning on re-reading because it was almost a decade ago I read it); My Emily Dickinson. Recently, you’ll remember perhaps, I read That This. So I went to my local friendly university library and got every book they had of hers. […]

Categories: Reading Journal • Tags: experimetal poetry, innovative poetry, poetry, reading journal, singularities, susan howe

Torture of Women by Nancy Spero

December 7, 2013 by Erica Mena

This astonishing, terrifying work by the incredible feminist artist Nancy Spero is reproduced stunningly by Siglio Press. The 14 panels are reproduced in full, then showing the details in their full legibility. It’s hard to get a sense of scale from a book, but even so, this work seems massive. Not just in size but in scope. The collage is sparse, encasing the fragments of testimony and witnessing, and of Spero’s imagery in swathes of visual silence. The kind of […]

Categories: Art, Reading Journal • Tags: collage, feminist art, luisa valenzuela, nancy spero, political art, symmetries, torture of women

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Don't Let Me Be Lonely by Claudia Rankine

December 3, 2013 by Erica Mena

Is it a prose poem? A lyric essay? A hybrid essay-poem? A hybrid poem-memoir? Yes. I’ve long contended that genre is mostly useful to define reading strategy (define? demand? encourage?). We read a poem differently than we do a memoir. Or an essay. And I’ve also suggested to my non-fiction writing friends that poetry and non-fiction have more in common than most realize. Except for those working between those forms: Susan Howe, Anna Joy Springer. Poetry lends a freedom that […]

Categories: Poetry, Reading Journal • Tags: claudia rankine, don't let me be lonely, lyric essay, poetry, political poetry, prose poetry, september 11

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That This by Susan Howe

October 13, 2013 by Erica Mena

This book has three sections, each remarkably different from one another, and yet connected by a recognizable poetic voice and interest. The first, “The Disappearance Approach” is about the unexpected death of her second husband. Add this to my saddest-reading-list-ever; it fits alongside Didion’s The Year Of Magical Thinking and Goldman’s Say Her Name. But these shortish prose-blocks are distinctly poetry, where the others are memoir. Of course, the lines are not quite so clear-cut between the two, but her frequent […]

Categories: Reading Journal • Tags: mourning, poetry, susan howe, that this

Vanity Presses, Self-Publishing & The Antigone Poems by Marie Slaight

August 26, 2013 by Erica Mena

I just received an advance review copy of The Antigone Poems by Marie Slaight, forthcoming in January from Altaire Productions & Publications. I wasn’t surprised that I hadn’t heard of the poet or the press, they are in Australia and it’s a sad reality that very few books published outside the US gain any real attention here. There are a handful of UK presses I know and love, because I lived there briefly, and I’ve worked hard to gain expertise in […]

Categories: Poetry, Publishing, Reading Journal, Reviews • Tags: altaire productions, marie slaight, poetry, self publishing, self-published, terrance hasker, the antigone poems, vanity press

The History of the Conquest of New Spain by Bernal Diaz del Castillo (ed. David Carrasco)

August 18, 2013 by Erica Mena

I just finished the 376 page abridgment of Bernal Diaz del Castillo’s “true” History of the Conquest of New Spain selected, edited and translated by David Carrasco. I stumbled across this book in a reference, an extended quote, from another book I was reading on the history of the feather (Feathers by Thor Hanson). A vivid description of the splendor of the aviaries in Tenochitlan, and their subsequent targeted destruction by burning by Cortés. Though I didn’t find either of […]

Categories: Reading Journal • Tags: bernal diaz del castillo, history, Latin America, mexico, reading journal

Saddest Reading List Ever

August 9, 2013 by Erica Mena

Maybe it’s because it’s pouring rain, or because something about the end of the summer always makes me sad. Maybe it’s because my husband is out of town for the weekend, and I tend toward the morose. Before he left this morning he came back from his morning run dripping wet, from the rain and sweat, but also with tears. He said (my emotionally stable, steady husband) he had made himself cry while running imagining what it would be like […]

Categories: Reading Journal

Erica Mena

Poet | Book Artist | Translator

Category Archives: Reading Journal

Dark Things Have Their Origin In Myself

4 Percent Universe by Richard Panek

The Situationist and the City, ed. Tom McDonough

Singularities by Susan Howe

Torture of Women by Nancy Spero

Don't Let Me Be Lonely by Claudia Rankine

That This by Susan Howe

Vanity Presses, Self-Publishing & The Antigone Poems by Marie Slaight

The History of the Conquest of New Spain by Bernal Diaz del Castillo (ed. David Carrasco)

Saddest Reading List Ever