Culture Consumption: September 2025

Books

In How a Poem Moves, Adam Sol strives to eliminate the phrase, I just “don’t get poetry” from modern conversations, calling it an “an insult to your abilities as a reader, and to poetry itself.” In these efforts, he presents a series of essays, each one focused on a single poem, exploring how it uses language, line, and linguistic play to explore a specific emotion, moment, or experience. I love how accessible his essays are, offering up insights with clear, clean language that opens up an entry way into the text of each poem. I especially appreciate how he will often note his own feelings of uncertainty, places where he himself is not sure what the poet means in a specific instance and acknowledging that its okay to not understand every word, every line — that it’s okay for a poem to exist in obscurity.

If you’ve ever wanted to read more poetry, but were worried you wouldn’t “get it,” then Sol’s book is a great entry point to exploring the medium. Even as someone who has read poetry intently for decades now, I found myself reading the poems, then his analysis, then rereading the poem with a new perspective. This book has stoked the flames of my love for poetry.

Synchronicity by Tureeda Mikell is a powerful collection of poetry exploring the author’s connection to nature, faith, and magic. It also delves into the colonization and the oppression of organized religion, and the powerful of breaking free from limiting beliefs. These poems have a rhythmic, playful, an a classic feel.

Books Finished This Month:

1. How a Poem Moves: A Field Guide for Readers of Poetry by Adam Sol

2. The Oddly Pedestrian Life of Christopher Chaos #5, written by Tate Brombal and James Tynion IV and illustrated by Isaac Goodhart

3. Synchronicity: The Oracle of Sun Medicine by Tureeda Mikell

Total Books for the Year: 37

Still in Progress:

The Haunting of Room 904 by Erika T. Wurth, The Stand by Stephen King, Never Whistle at Night: An Indigenous Dark Fiction Anthology edited by Shane Hawk and Theodore C. Van Alst Jr., Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown, and Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu (translated by Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English)

Short Stories & Poetry

A selection of works I recently read in journals and online publications, with a few lines from the text shared here.

Weird ScifFi: "Mantis Wives" by Kij Johnson (Clarksworld) —

Poem: "Alive at the End of the World" by Saeed Jones (The Slowdown) —

Poem: “Self-Portrait as a God Who is Loved” by Akwaeke Emezi (Lithub) —

Poem: “When I Learn Catastrophically” by Martha Silano (The Missouri Review) — 

Poem: “Thanks” by W. S. Merwin (Poetry Foundation) — 

Poem: "Elegy for Bruce Lee" by W. Todd Kaneko (Poetry Foundation) —

Television

The Residence is a delightfully fun murder mystery. When a sudden death occurs at the White House, Cordelia Cupp (Uzo Aduba), the world’s greatest detective, is called in by the local police to investigate the possible murder. Cupp is a charmingly quirky detective, the White House is a fascinating setting for a closed-house mystery, and the cast of officers, politicians, staff, and guests are all interesting and funny. The show has a great pace, fantastic editing, and an excellent sense of humor. I loved it, and I’m disappointed there won’t be any more seasons.

In Mare of Easttown, a teen mom murdered in a small town — leading to information about other missing girls. Detective Mare Sheehan (Kate Winslet), a woman grieving the suicide of her son, is tasked with finding the murderer and finding the missing girls. As much as it’s a murder mystery, however, the series is about grief and the complexities of family and forgiveness and mistakes. Winslet is phenomenal as Mare, playing a women pushing forward and determined to find the truth, despite the heavy weight of her own grief.

I watched the first three seasons of Orphan Black ages ago — a show about clones struggling to maintain their own autonomy in the face of forces that would treat them as experiments and property — and loved it. Now, that it’s on Netflix, I’m watching it again with the intention of finishing the series. I’m up to season four, and I’m blown away all over again by how great this show is and how fantastic Tatiana Maslany is playing so many different characters and making them feel like distinct personalities. Sometimes I almost forget that they’re all played by the same actress.

Games

Bad End Theater (NomnomNami) presents a simple narrative. A hero is sent to rescue a maiden from the clutches of a demon overlord. But with this visual novel, the player is able to select which character they want to be — hero, maiden, minion, or overlord — and the choices you make as one character effects how things turn out when you switch over and play as one of the other characters. As the player continues, they are able to turn on or off certain personality traits, which impacts all of the possible outcomes. And all of those outcomes are inevitably bad — terrible deaths, failure, and isolation. At first, it might seem like that’s all there is, but the game actually builds to a sweet and satisfying ending. It was a delightful little game.

I’m continuing through Act 3 of Baldur’s Gate 3 (Larian Studios) this section alone is huge. I played over 100 hours just getting to Act 3, and I’m seriously wondering how long its going to take to get through this section. Some of the companion quests (which I’d like to focus on don’t have clear markers for completion (I just have to ask around and figure out where to go), and the boss fights are exceedingly difficult, it seems. Several times, I’ve had to replay the same fight over and over and over again, struggling to just get through it. I’m really hoping to be able to get through the rest of the game by the end of the next month — and I may have to leave out even more of the side quests in order to do so. Regardless, I’m still having fun, and I love these characters. (I just don’t have that much time to be spending on a single game.)

That's it for me! What are you reading? Watching? Loving right now?