Week Three: Update and Check-In #MARM2024

Has anyone else read “Ariadne Sends a Message,” an Atwood poem from Paper Boat: New and Selected Poems 1961-2023 shared on Lithub last month?

See how easy it is to participate in MARM? Just one click and a few verses. (And, if you’re playing Bingo, those “lion skins”—poor lions—can be included as the FURRED square. It looks like I might complete the top row!)

Y’all have been busy MARMing, making the most of this November. (You can see what I was reading in the Old-Babes-colour-coordinated schedule box. #fancy)

• Brona was inspired to read “The Dead Interview” which fits beautifully with her George Orwell Project.
• WhisperingGums also chose a story from the same collection, available online: “Widows”.
• And Kaggsy finished the third part of the essay collection Writing with Intent.

(I know several of you have been making selections and resetting intentions, and juggling busy reading schedules, so if I’ve missed someone, please add your link in a comment section, so other Atwood readers can enjoy reading your contribution.)

MARM 2024 PLANS

Launch (November 1)
Dancing Girls, “Training” (November 5)
Old Babes in the Wood, “My Evil Mother” (November 7)
Week Two: Update and Check-In (November 10)
Dancing Girls, “Lives of the Poets” (November 12)
Old Babes in the Wood, “The Dead Interview” (November 14)
Week Three: Update and Check-In (November 18)
Margaret Atwood’s 84^th Birthday (November 18)
Dancing Girls, “Dancing Girls” (November 19)
Old Babes in the Wood, “Impatient Griselda” (November 21)
Week Four: Update and Check-In (November 24)
Dancing Girls, “Giving Birth” (November 26)
Old Babes in the Wood, “Bad Teeth” (November 28)
Wrap-Up (November 30)

I read another essay from Burning Questions myself: “What Art Under Trump?” from 2017.

“It’s probably fair to say, however, that…” #45’s (and, now 47’s) “interest in the arts, gauged on a scale from 1 to 100, is somewhere between zero and negative 10—lower than any president in the past fifty years. Some of those presidents didn’t give a hoot about the arts, but at least they found it politic to pretend.”

Atwood suggests that this might work in favour of artists and writers; they might be overlooked in a McCarthy-era-style persecution. But she also comments on how some will participate (willingly or otherwise), will roll over to authoritarian pressures and supply and propagate the narrative.

But there will be resistance, she reminds us. Artists and writers will join protest movements: “It will be their moral duty—or so they will be told—to lend their voices to the cause. (Artists are always being lectured on their moral duty, a fate other professionals—dentists for example—generally avoid.)”

It was really interesting to read this essay at this juncture. Every question she has posed remains relevant. Perhaps even more so today than when the essay was originally written.

We are heading into Week Three, which is really just halfway (although it does include a birthday, which makes the second half of the month seem even more important!)

And I find myself wondering if I will actually get to the other MARM reading I planned. This feels like one of those times when simply staying in motion feels like an accomplishment.

And, you? What has your reading been like this week? Have you been reading to find stillness? Or have you been reading to galvanize yourself into action?