in terms of books, she was doing fine

Books of 2026: SOPHIA PARNOK: The Life and Work of Russia's Sappho by Diana Lewis Burgin.

Absolutely squeaking over the finish line with April's Book of the Month Poetry Quest installment!

Parnok was a Russian poet, journalist, and translator who lived from 1885 to 1933 (which, yeah, overlaps with WWI and the Russian Revolution and also Stalin-era Soviet Union--what a time to be a poet). She was also Jewish and pretty openly a lesbian and chronically ill (Grave's disease), so she seemed like a fascinating person to read up on. Turns out: she's hugely relatable, writerly-speaking, and also hilarious, and pointed and brutal. So, yeah, fascinating!

This one winds up being the least poetry per poetry volume in my list. It's got English translations of a selection of Parnok's work (the only readily available, despite the 1994 copyright date??), but it's actually Mostly Biography, pieced together from letters and poems and other people's accounts. I'm pretty sure I picked Parnok out of a Wikipedia lineup of "female Russian writers" (also how I found Tsvetaeva and remembered about Akhmatova), because I've read some Russian authors, but almost entirely men.

Speaking of Wikipedia: The English language page for Sophia Parnok has 170 citations, and the Vast Majority of those are from Diana Lewis Burgin, so. Excellent Spark Notes version, if you're interested!

Parnok is such a writer mood, which absolutely tickled me--the number of quotes I scribbled in my notebook and flagged "girl, mood" was unreal. Even things like "she had to suffer through a shitty office job to support herself" were hugely heartening: Sure, she probably sunk a lot of time into said office job, but what she's remembered for is her art and her literary criticism and her voice, which I love.

It was also interesting to see snapshots of history and of lesbian culture in Russia in this time period--apparently this volume is one in a Whole Academic Series of such things ("The Cutting Edge: Lesbian Life and Literature"), if that's your speed. I found this one fairly approachable, although I was a little disappointed that so many of the quotations were incorporated into Burgin's prose instead of being Freestanding Poems (I was, after all, here for the poems)(to be clear: this is a me problem, not a NYU Press problem lol).

2. Hobby books are even more often written by people who don't have or are actively neglecting their partners/full-time jobs/pets/children/household maintenance.

3. Hobby books are often written by people with ADHD, and an hour in ADHD hyperspace is like 2-7 hours for everyone else, including other ADHD people who are not currently in the zone.

4. Hobby books are written by people who, when told by an editor to add in how long it will take, just make shit up

5. If you're doing something for the first time, you're going to take way, way longer to do it than someone who's had years of practice. Maybe it does only take an hour IF YOU'VE BEEN DOING IT FOR TEN YEARS. Think about how long it took you to make idk your first excel spreadsheet vs how long it takes now

To actually answer your question: proud. You should feel proud, because you made something, AND you did so while learning a brand-new skill! Go you!!