Ms. Magazine has been counting down the 100 best feminist non-fiction books. The complete compilation—based on reader nominations and voting—reveals a clear favorite: bell hooks has a total of seven books, including three in the top ten and the number one pick.

“Of course that stuff isn’t strictly autobiographical. Some of it comes from daydreams, long showers, running, and the desire to write funny gags. A lot of times I will sit in a chair and stare at the wall. I let my mind go blank and whatever pops in first, I’ll try to explore and see if something comes of it. Usually I can get some nice nuggets that way; by just trusting my impulses or whatever it is.”

The Comics Journal interviews Jesse Moynihan.  The article also includes interview extras, including a comic made in conjunction with Dash Shaw (originally posted in The Believer).

I left Cassandra at the Wedding tearily hopeful and good and chastised.

I say left, but mean emerged from, because Cassandra is as much a spell or an ocean as it is a book, with an inexorable pull and terrible consequences. …more

I am smitten with Milton Kessler’s “Comma of God.” It’s a poem of great texture: a prayer, a chant, an adroit benediction. Perhaps most of all, it’s a testament to a fully lived life; an edifice of gratitude for having survived the business of going about one’s business with humility and strength. From the sheer joy of a Lester Young note to the furnace of Dresden, the images of Comma of God accrue with purpose, passion, & persuasion. Whoever reads this poem will be touched and moved by a potent presence that is intimate without being private, Walt Whitman proud.

Joey Nicoletti

The last poem I loved is “Strongly Scented Sonnet” by Rhoda Janzen. It’s vivid and perverse, a bit disgusting, yet the most palpably romantic poem I have ever read. A woman, for her lover, tucks an apple into “the nest / of hair beneath her arm, a scent like cheese / extruding musky fragrances when pressed.” The language stabs: “the apple crabbed and freaked,” but the theme (and form) are utterly classic. Her lover “amorously kept it by his bed, / inhaling it—supurb!” The lusty physicality may not be pretty, it may not be love, but it makes me laugh and nod in recognition: there’s no accounting for lust, my friend, and nothing that so soundly slaps together the nasty with the desirable. Has a poem ever said it so well?

Amy Letter

Editors Note: In honor of National Poetry Month, The Rumpus has asked writers to provide us with poems they love, and the reasons why. We’re also including links to these poems in their entirety. We’ll be doing this all month.

Steve Scafidi: “For the Eighth Annual Celebration of St. Cecilia, the Patron Saint of Music, Purcellville, Virginia, November 1999″

I’m a sucker for syntax, and no one does the run-on quite like Steve Scafidi. In “For the Eighth Annual Celebration of St. Cecilia, the Patron Saint of Music, Purcellville, Virginia, November 1999,” form enacts meaning: in one sentence, each phrase rushes into the next joining sounds and stanzas to make a “music so great / no passage of time could ever kill it.” Like the best poems, “For the Eighth Annual Celebration…” dissolves boundaries of time and geography; it is both present – in and of its celebratory moment – and outside of real time, relying on quick temporal shifts to transport its reader from Purcellville to “ancient cities of / Cleveland or Sacramento,” as well as an imagined future in a Nigerian fishing boat. With its musical integrity and unabashed expression of joy, I can think of no better poem to open National Poetry Month than Scafidi’s energized and energizing ode.