Sealey Challenge: Midterm Progress Report

This article will go live on August 14, almost halfway through the Sealey Challenge. If you have no idea what that is, check out my previous post where I explain it.

I took this challenge on as a way of deepening my familiarity with poetry through a sort of immersion. In doing so, I have already gotten better at articulating what I do and don't like about the poems I read.

Highlights

Choosing to read a poetry collection every day on relatively short notice has forced me to put some effort into sourcing them, especially since I can't afford to pay retail prices for 31 different books right now. If I'd planned this further in advance, I could have taken advantage of the deals that several independent publishers offer for this exact occasion. Indeed, I might do so next year. But this year that wasn't an option. Fortunately, between my local library and a couple of online sources, I've more or less gotten into a system that works.

Of the 14 collections I've read so far, I've given 2 of them 5-star ratings. One of them went to Alive at the End of the World by Saeed Jones, who it turns out grew up not too far from my hometown. He's made a name for himself both in poetry and nonfiction. This particular collection discusses being Black and queer in a world that feels like it's falling apart, especially for people with those identities. But it's not all misery all the time. There's a lot of humor in it, too.

The other 5-star rating went to Dor by Alina Stefanescu. I'll talk more in depth about this book later, as it intersects with my Romanian author challenge. While it's not the entire focus of the collection, the theme of longing comes up several times and has a special poignancy for Stefanescu as an immigrant to the US.

Lowlights

I thought I'd be cute and reactivate my Kindle Unlimited membership to find some poetry chapbooks (i.e., shorter books that I can read quickly) that don't require me to go the library. Let's just say I chose... poorly.

Because anyone can publish to Amazon, especially in ebook format, that means there isn't a ton of quality control in the space. I've come across one or two gems here, but I've also come across the lone 1-star review I've given (for the record, most of the reviews are for my own records and not posted publicly, including this one).

While it's true that art is subjective, I think to have a successful poem, you have to have at least one of two things: something interesting to say, or a really good grasp of the rhythm of language. If you can have both, great. But if you have neither, you're in trouble. A lot of the Amazon stuff kind of felt like diary entries with line breaks, which didn't do much for me.

Going Forward

No more chapbooks from Kindle Unlimited, that's for sure. But at least I can say why something doesn't work for me, so the experience isn't a complete waste.

I'm lucky to live in a city with one of the best library systems in the world, so this should motivate me to get up and take more advantage of it. I'll post a round-up of my challenge experience after the month is over.

Are you doing the Sealey Challenge? If so, what's your favorite read so far? Let's talk about it in the comments!

A whole poetry book every day for a month?

As wild as this might sound, it's an annual tradition known as The Sealey Challenge, named after Nicole Sealey, the poet who came up with the idea. It involves reading one book of poetry every single day during the month of August. The idea scares me a bit, which is how I know I have to do it.

Why take on this challenge?

You might think I'm taking on this challenge because I'm a poetry expert or superfan, but that's not the case. I actually have kind of a contentious relationship with contemporary poetry in particular. I struggle to identify what makes some poems more than diary entries with line breaks.

Yet, at its best, poetry has a certain spark that I don't feel any other form of literature has. It's often one of the highest compliments to a prose writer to say that passages of their writing are poetic. Improving my understanding of poetry can only help me as a writer, even if I never publish any poems myself. And what better way to improve my understanding of something than to immerse myself in it?

How will I make this challenge work?

The first thing to point out is that even regular book-length poetry collections by single authors are generally much quicker to read than a novel or short story collection with a similar page count. And if that feels like too much, many poets have published what's known as chapbooks (sometimes called pamphlets in the UK), which are even shorter. So the time commitment isn't as large as you might think.

Sidenote: I'm using a Google spreadsheet to track my reading, and it asked me to write a few words describing what I'm doing so it could create a template for me. What it created wasn't groundbreaking, but it did save me a fair amount of typing and formatting, so props to Google.

Working in my favor are a Scribd account and access to an excellent library system. If I'd had more time and money, I'd have loved to plan this out better and support indie authors and publishers more, but I work with what I have.

I'm not going to act like I have the whole month planned out, but I can at least announce the first collection I intend to read, which is Dor by Alina Stefanescu (a Romanian author!). She gave a fabulous presentation last year through The Writer's Center and is one of my favorite people to follow on Twitter, as long as that's still a thing.

Posting daily probably isn't feasible, but I'll include some highlights once or twice a week. Who knows? Maybe you'll notice a more poetic flair to my writing by September.

Who are some of your favorite living poets? Let's talk about it in the comments!