“I once fucked Jesse Helms and it was the worst sex I’ve ever had.” Perry Farrell muttered that line into the microphone on stage midway through a show at the University of North Carolina’s Memorial Hall on Tuesday, November 13, 1990.

Like the best memories, poems situate us in the secret moments of our lives before unfolding with surprise. Like the best love songs, poems force us to reconsider our internal geographies.

Her work gets passed on by word of mouth. Cultish fandom ensues. Certainly, getting into Chelsey Minnis is something of an indoctrination.

When it came out in October 2018, the violist Kim Kashkashian’s recording of Bach’s Cello Suites seemed to be the best record I had heard that year. It has improved with time. It seems to be the best record I’ve heard in my life.