Margaret Lee

What I’m Reading: July 2026

ReadingAugust 27, 20262KViews 3Likes 0Comments

Language as Theory “The linguistic code is a theory of the world.” -Jonathan Culler, Literary Theory: A Very Short Introduction, 2d ed., Oxford, 2011, 60. I keep thinking about that sentence. Literary theory has long snagged my interest. I was newly married when Jacques Derrida’s work on deconstruction became available in the U.S. in…

A Stream of Remembering: A Review

Book ReviewJuly 29, 20263KViews 3Likes 0Comments

IS IS ENOUGH: POEMS, Lauren Camp, TRP: The University Press of SHSU, Sam Houston State University, 1901 University Ave., Evans Complex, Suite #152, Huntsville, TX 77340, 2026, 74 pages, $21.95 (paperback), https://texasreviewpress.org. In the middle, there’s a party and a car wreck. Blood-blossoms adorn a father’s head. A remembered childhood trauma following a family celebration…

What I’m Reading: June 2026

ReadingJuly 23, 20262KViews 3Likes 0Comments

Writing a Life Two biographies occupy my reading this month, beginning with the Flyer Book Club’s June selection, Oklahoma Tough: My Father, King of the Tulsa Bootleggers (University of Oklahoma 2003) by Ron Padgett. He blends his memories of his father, Wayne Padgett, with oral narratives of family members and friends. Wayne Padgett lived from…

What I’m Reading: May 2026

ReadingJune 19, 20263KViews 3Likes 0Comments

These United States Can we talk about pet peeves? I have three right now: the first is blog posts that air pet peeves, so I plead guilty as I enter troubled territory. More troubled, though, is the territory inhabited by folks represented in my reading this month: The Ground Breaking (Dutton 2022) by Scott…

Into the Hush: A Review

Book ReviewMay 22, 20262KViews 3Likes 0Comments

INTO THE HUSH, Arthur Sze, 2025, Copper Canyon Press. PO Box 271, Fort Worden State Park, Port Townsend, WA 98368, https://www.coppercanyonpress.org, 88 pages, $23.00 (paperback). ISBN-10: 1556597142 ISBN-13: 978-1556597145 When I purchased my signed copy of Into the Hush at Collected Works Bookstore and Coffeehouse in downtown Santa Fé, I never expected a horror story.…

What I’m Reading: April 2026

ReadingMay 15, 20262KViews 3Likes 2Comments

Murder Most Foul If it weren’t for the Tulsa Flyer I wouldn’t be reading murder mysteries. The April selection of the Flyer Book Club is Blood Sisters, by Vanessa Lillie (Berkley 2023). It’s not a pretty story. The tale traces the fictional journey of Syd Walker, a forensic archaeologist from Picher, Oklahoma and a citizen…

Food, With Reservations

Thought ProvokingApril 29, 20262KViews 4Likes 0Comments

A surprising fact emerges from the Tulsa World on April 13, 2026, one in which every word emigrates from some distant place then finally, sunburned and muscles aching, lands with other immigrant words in a single assertion, blinking neon: Cherokees are feeding hungry children in Oklahoma with money from the federal government. If this sentence…

From the Boundary of Life and Death

Book ReviewApril 25, 20262KViews 3Likes 0Comments

NO ONE KNOWS US THERE: POEMS. Jessica Bebenek Book*hug Press 401 Richmond St. West, Suite 251, Toronto, ON, M5V 3A8, Canada, 2025, 76 pages, $20.00 (paperback), Here is what happened: I took a walk. So begins the debut poetry collection of Canadian artist, bookmaker, and poet, Jessica Bebenek. In fact, there were four…

What I’m Reading: March 2026

ReadingMarch 20, 20262KViews 3Likes 2Comments

Memoir isn’t my favorite literary genre, so I’m surprised that I have read two memoirs in the past few weeks. One is a current bestseller, and the other is becoming a classic, if anything can achieve such status in less than 15 years. I’m speaking of Arundhati Roy’s Mother Mary Comes to Me (Scribner 2025) and Joy Harjo’s…

What I’m Reading: February 2026

ReadingMarch 2, 20262KViews 3Likes 0Comments

Women wrote the four books I read last month: The Correspondent by Virginia Evans, Mother Mary Comes to Me by Arundati Roy, No One Knows Us Here: Poems by Jessica Bebenek, and Escape from Capitalism by Clara Mattei. So far in February, I have read only male authors. It feels like a different world. Two…

What I’m Reading: January 2026

ReadingFebruary 25, 20262KViews 3Likes 0Comments

I am visiting the central Oregon coast, in an old house at the mouth of a river bay where forty degree temperatures, frilled waves, shifting clouds and tidal rhythms govern the days—an ideal environment for reading. My selections exhibit no special logic. They range across literary fiction, nonfiction, biography, memoir, and scholarly studies. I read…

Innovative Women Poets: A Response

ResponseFebruary 10, 20262KViews 3Likes 0Comments

Frost, Elisabeth A., and Cynthia Hogue, eds. 2006. Innovative Women Poets: An Anthology of Contemporary Poetry and Interviews. University Of Iowa. There should be a word for that moment when, in the middle of some task, you suddenly look up and freeze in your tracks. Like when you’re driving to a medical appointment and you…

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