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joelrgarza.bsky.social
JoelRGarza
@joelrgarza.bsky.social
1.5K followers 600 following 400 posts
Pronounced /hō-ÉL/ 🤠 MiddleAgedMiddleChild.com
HS English teacher. Cofounder #THEBOOKCHAT. Indie publishing & lit in translation enthusiast. Trying a social-media-dry January. 🤠📚👊🏽
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joelrgarza.bsky.social
JoelRGarza @joelrgarza.bsky.social · Dec 1
Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order.

My explanation / gratitude for each & url to purchase is in the alt text 🤠🫶🏽

#Books
#BookSky 💙📚
#BookChallenge
#20BookChallenge

Day 1/20
Front cover of Yasunari Kawabata palm of the hand stories, which I discovered through an epigram in a William T. Vollmann novel. Kabata focuses on three kinds of characters that he says see the world more clearly than anyone else: children, young women, and dying men. Each story is about two pages long, and will have you meditating on its meaning for days (or in my case, decades) later. Start with Thank You or Umbrella. https://www.hpb.com/palm-of-the-hand-stories/M-3669506-T.html?srsltid=AfmBOopWw2EEU1IZP4MaC9iGBkTB5_swsNc5ke1VE6hfGRmL-WHrqGeK
joelrgarza.bsky.social
Too much doom scrolling for me, friends

I’m gonna try a social-media-dry January

See y’all on the other side 🤠🫶🏽
January 2, 2025 at 8:00 PM
joelrgarza.bsky.social
@robmclennan.bsky.social! The chapbook care package arrived today! Thanks for your generosity! Cannot WAIT to see what it inspires for my students! If you’re ever in TX, the first pitcher of margaritas is on me

THANKYOUTHANKYOUTHANKYOU! 🤠🫶🏽🫔
December 31, 2024 at 8:13 PM
Reposted by JoelRGarza
chiaradilello.bsky.social
I had way too much fun writing up 10 small press poetry books I enjoyed this year. Drumroll please! 🧵
necessarymess.wordpress.com/2024/12/30/r...
Recommended Reading 2024
Following Han VanderHart’s invitation to show our love for small presses, here in no particular order are ten (mostly) small press poetry books I enjoyed and spent time with this year. You&#8…
necessarymess.wordpress.com
December 30, 2024 at 4:32 PM
Reposted by JoelRGarza
cheatlines.co
"We are attempting to survive our time, so we may live into yours."
Statement by President Jimmy Carter included on the Voyager Golden Record: https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/voyager-spacecraft-statement-the-president
July 14, 2024 at 3:30 AM
Reposted by JoelRGarza
naemmanuele.bsky.social
I just got @sarahmzerwin.bsky.social’s STEP ASIDE: STRATEGIES FOR STUDENT-DRIVEN LEARNING WITH SECONDARY READERS AND WRITERS (#Routledge) in the mail, and I’m excited to dive in! The book is beautiful with colorful charts, student work, and sketches!
Cover of Step Aside: Strategies for Student-Driven Learning with Secondary Readers and Writers by Sarah M. Zerwin, foreward by Cris Tovani. The cover has an image of a road or street on it.
December 29, 2024 at 6:01 PM
Reposted by JoelRGarza
riverriverbooks.bsky.social
Corrie Williamson, January 2025
Filling the Birdfeeder on the Coldest Day of the Year with a line from William Stafford Here's one small thing I can help keep alive: chickadees flashing in the barred light between the big fir's old branches, which are bowed into shapelessness by wind, snow, time. The bohemian waxwings came for a day, found no berries, flocked as one into vanishment. Ravens ride the storms, black boats with slow black oars. In the middle of the day an ermine lithe as a snake leaps across the yard, leaving the full print of its form in the snow, divot and tail, divot and tail, then dives, disappears, until the head rises like a submarine's periscope. Individual flakes gleam bright as mica in the cold. I think of the mouse moving low in the layers, how the ermine finds him and tears him apart there in that invisible subnivean universe, how bright his unseen blood. What will I say when you ask me if what I have done is my life? The fox's faint tracks dent the fractal shards of sky. The chickadees shiver themselves alive. YOUR MOTHER'S BEAR GUN POEMS CORRIE WILLIAMSON Beat skull with colored flora Design by Alban Fischer
December 29, 2024 at 4:08 PM
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riverriverbooks.bsky.social
Preorders are now live for Joe Wilkins’ Pastoral, 1994 and Corrie Williamson’s Your Mother’s Bear Gun! 20% discount, and our limited edition broadside bundles coming soon 📚✨

riverriverbooks.org/store/
Gorgeous cover design by Alban Fischer featuring dramatic, green sky, Barbwire and lake or culvert reflecting a sky Stunning cover design by Alban Fischer featuring Bear skull with flowers coming out of it
December 1, 2024 at 3:18 PM
Reposted by JoelRGarza
chenchenwrites.bsky.social
literature in translation should be the biggest section of any bookstore tbh
December 29, 2024 at 3:29 PM
Reposted by JoelRGarza
susangbarber.bsky.social
#TeachLivingPoets
lithub.com/49-contempor...
50 Contemporary Poets on the Best Poems they Read in 2024
In the sea of endless year-end lists, poetry often seems to get sidelined, or forgotten—or maybe the critics and listmakers just aren’t reading enough poetry in the first place. Which made me…
lithub.com
December 27, 2024 at 3:48 PM
Reposted by JoelRGarza
humanitycritic.bsky.social
A shitty narrator can quickly take you out of the audiobook experience. But Percival Everett's "James" is narrated by Dominic Hoffman, and he does a masterful job. So masterful, that I'm tempted to purchase books on audible just off the strength of his involvement.
joelrgarza.bsky.social JoelRGarza @joelrgarza.bsky.social · Nov 27
Omg me too! Had the audiobook for so long that I forgot about it 🤠
Front cover of JAMES by PERCIVAL EVERETT
December 26, 2024 at 8:05 PM
Reposted by JoelRGarza
eringloriaryan.bsky.social
If the Depp-Heard fiasco didn't, the Blake Lively smear campaign should drive home an important media literacy lesson that I'm afraid many are missing: when it seems like everybody is suddenly talking about something, consider the possibility that the viral moment was engineered.
December 22, 2024 at 7:09 PM
Reposted by JoelRGarza
heymrsbond.com
Okay #poetrypeople

Sharing my favorite poems to teach and what I focus on. Please do the same! First, is “Fuck your Lecture on Craft, My People are Dying” by Noor Hindi. #EduSky

docs.google.com/presentation...
Fuck Your Lecture on Craft, My People Are Dying BY NOOR HINDI Colonizers write about flowers. I tell you about children throwing rocks at Israeli tanks seconds before becoming daisies. I want to be like those poets who care about the moon. Palestinians don't see the moon from jail cells and prisons. It's so beautiful, the moon. They're so beautiful, the flowers. I pick flowers for my dead father when I'm sad. He watches Al Jazeera all day. I wish Jessica would stop texting me Happy Ramadan. I know I'm American because when I walk into a room something dies. Metaphors about death are for poets who think ghosts care about sound. When I die, I promise to haunt you forever. One day, I'll write about the flowers like we own them.
December 22, 2024 at 2:17 PM
Reposted by JoelRGarza
susangbarber.bsky.social
Thank you, @themarginalian.org.web.brid.gy for this! www.themarginalian.org/2024/10/22/m...
18 Life-Learnings from 18 Years of The Marginalian
Somewhere along the way, you realize that no one will teach you how to live your own life — not your parents or your idols, not the philosophers or the poets, not your liberal arts education …
www.themarginalian.org
December 21, 2024 at 10:03 PM
Reposted by JoelRGarza
lyricalswordz.bsky.social
Teachers at work today
December 20, 2024 at 1:39 PM
joelrgarza.bsky.social
How do you make feedback human?

Best decision I’ve made in years: speaking, rather than writing, feedback as often as possible

Let Ss hear your encouragement, let Ss hear you say their name, let Ss hear how proud you are

I use Mote, but it could be any number of things 🎤📝
www.mote.com/record
Mote | Make Learning Accessible with Voice & Audio Tools
Mote's web audio recorder is the fast and easy way to record, save and share voice messages on the web with speech to text.
www.mote.com
December 19, 2024 at 4:27 PM
Reposted by JoelRGarza
jamellebouie.net
i recall a time when using a private email server was the single greatest scandal in american history. i guess today’s it’s just tuesday www.politico.com/news/2024/12...
Trump's transition is happening over private emails. Federal officials are nervous.
Agencies are weighing in-person requirement for sensitive data.
www.politico.com
December 19, 2024 at 4:21 PM
joelrgarza.bsky.social
English teachers, where you at? 🤔🫶🏽
chenchenwrites.bsky.social Chen Chen @chenchenwrites.bsky.social · Dec 17
what’s your favorite nerdy literary term that you just can’t help but say all the time?

i’m always like *~epistolary~*
December 18, 2024 at 12:15 AM
joelrgarza.bsky.social
@deepvellum.bsky.social, represent! 🤠🫶🏽
bookcritics.bsky.social National Book Critics Circle @bookcritics.bsky.social · Dec 17
We're excited to announce the longlist for the 2024 NBCC Award for Autobiography! Congratulations to all of the nominees. www.bookcritics.org/2024/12/17/2...
Covers of the books on the longlist for the NBCC Award for Autobiography.
December 17, 2024 at 4:21 PM
joelrgarza.bsky.social
Okay found one more reading goal for 2025: chapbooks 🤠🫶🏽

Subscribing now, Rob, be ready!
December 17, 2024 at 2:17 PM
Reposted by JoelRGarza
lyricalswordz.bsky.social
There have been more school shootings in the past four years than in the previous nine. There have been 709 school shootings since 2008. That's 709 times a school community was shattered, and children's lives were changed in irrevocable ways. Shame on this country and every adult in it.
A bar graph displaying the number of school shootings from 2008, in which there were 18, to 2024, in which there were 83.
December 16, 2024 at 10:13 PM
Reposted by JoelRGarza
jessycamathews.bsky.social
Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you.
One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order.
No explanations, no reviews, just covers.
#BookSky
#BookChallenge
#Books
Day 16/20
December 16, 2024 at 9:35 PM
Reposted by JoelRGarza
maudnewton.bsky.social
For my fellow ancestors-facing memoirists, I'm going to recommend some books I admire and often suggest to writers. First up: Leah Myers's (@n8vwordsmith.bsky.social) slender, poetic, wide-ranging THINNING BLOOD, which I reviewed for NYT last year.
Blending Native History and Myth Into Heartfelt Memoir (Gift Article)
In “Thinning Blood,” Leah Myers mixes genres to explore her tribal heritage.
www.nytimes.com
December 12, 2024 at 11:43 PM
Reposted by JoelRGarza
deepvellum.bsky.social
We could not be more thrilled to see that LITTLE SEED, the tender and wonderous memoir by Wei Tchou, is one of The New Yorker's Best Books of 2024!
December 11, 2024 at 9:35 PM
Reposted by JoelRGarza
jessycamathews.bsky.social
I had to take some time to process losing Nikki Giovanni. I adored her humor, wit, brilliant mind, and immeasurable talent with words. If you need a lesson for her, please take this. I give a gift because she was a gift to me. docs.google.com/document/u/0...?
Nikki Giovanni Playlist
The Nikki Giovanni Playlist Poet Nikki Giovanni was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, on June 7, 1943. Although she grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio, she and her sister returned t...
docs.google.com
December 10, 2024 at 11:45 PM
joelrgarza.bsky.social
Dude. DUDE. 😬🤣😱
December 10, 2024 at 2:20 PM