In the Ring

The trip back to San Francisco yesterday was fairly quick. Just shy of 4 hours. I wish we could have stayed there another day or two. But back to clinic today. And a business meeting tonight after work. But my mind is rested. I actually do feel rejuvenated. For years I have listened to people talk about going up to Tahoe. Some camp. Some stay at lodges, rent houses, etc. All have said it energized them. I have to toss my hat into that ring. That Lake really is incredible.


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Frieda Hughes selects a poem by Yehuda Amichai.


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As of this morning, still no word from Simmons! Um, do you not want your prize for winning the caption contest? Email me, please. My email can be found at my website.


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Does anyone know how long it takes to drive from NYC to Saratoga Springs? Can you take a train?


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Clue: Breakfast Club


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From the North Shore

The traffic between San Francisco and Lake Tahoe yesterday was pretty awful. It took us almost 6 hours to make the drive up, despite the fact at times one can do it in under 4 hours. That said, when we got here the front desk guy gave us a complimentary upgrade to a larger room with a view of the mountains and the lake. The Lodge is quite rustic and beautiful. And then we went down and gazed at the Lake reflecting the moonlight. And all was good.


***************************


Jacob is off swimming in the Lake. I am thinking about swimming in the pool. This says a lot about both of us, doesn't it?


***************************


I decided to leave Sandover at home. I am reading trashy magazines instead. Who knew People magazine was such mind-numbing fun!


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I drank a Hurricane this morning around 11:00 AM. I mean, I know it is afternoon somewhere. Right?


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Clue: Lick it up, Veronica!


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Victor #19

Jacob has selected the winner. And it is none other than Simmons Buntin for:



"To protect the innocent, the identity of the horse has been concealed."


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Once again, no one this year has had a repeat win. Simmons should email me to collect his $25 Amazon Gift Certificate! He gets bragging rights and a monetary prize. Congrats, Simmons.


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And the Runner-up this time is Ross White, for:

"Which stallion would you prefer?"


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It is definitely going to be a real brawl when we reach the End of the Year Caption Contest Showdown.


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Umbrella

Before you all start thinking I am going all hetero here, note that this is Rihanna, singer of the incredible dance song, "Umbrella." I think it is hilarious that Totes now has a line of umbrellas named for her.


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Well, I may be a physician, and I may be a poet, but I don't necessarily believe in Poetry Therapy. Something about it rubs me the wrong way. There is something manipulative about the core idea in it. I cannot explain that well right now. But I will find the right words for it soon enough.


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Jacob swears he will name the Caption Contest winner later this morning. So check back.


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Umbrella, ella, ella, eh, eh, eh


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Driving Jacob's car to work today so we can leave straight from work to drive up to Tahoe. Nine hours from now seems so far away.


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Clue: I did it! I looked left...


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Teacher, Teacher

Um, I am kind of in shock here, but Ron Silliman occasionally reads this blog! I am both flattered and freaked out. I mean I read his blog, but so does practically everyone who checks out po-blogs. I never imagined him reading mine. Freaky...


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Is it Friday yet? Gag! It is still Thursday.


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And to folks who emailed me defending their abilities to teach, stop being defensive. I am not saying you suck as a teacher. I didn't even call anyone out here. I was just addressing a phenomena among poets: the notion that the only way to have a good life as a poet is to teach. I do not believe this. In fact, I think it is bullshit and a product of people going through MFA programs being told this is what they should aspire to. And who tells folks this, poets and writers teaching in MFA Programs. Well, I will be blunt here. I think they say that to students to validate their own existence. Poetry was written for millennia by people who did not teach creative writing. I don't see how the language has changed so as to require a teaching post to now write poems. If that offends you, then so be it. My point is be a teacher because you love it and want to do it and not because you think that is what you need to do to write poems.


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Clue: Pharmacopoeia


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Indictment

The Napa Valley Writer's Conference Schedule of Events are in one of the local papers. I love their readings. I think all readings should include wine tastings and gorgeous surroundings.


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WTF!! I think BOA has lost its mind!


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We are coming down to the wire, folks. If you haven't entered the Caption Contest, you might want to do so soon.


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I am like a small kid here; I am so keyed up about going up to Tahoe. It sounds weird, but I am excited to do nothing, to just chill out.


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I used to think anyone could be a teacher, but I am starting to realize that although anyone can teach a class, very few people are probably good teachers, good mentors. When I think back, many of the people I have had as teachers did little more for me than verbalize what I could have learned from a book. But the good teachers, the ones who understand the role of teacher, well, they changed me. I actually grew as a person because of their teaching. I am not sure why I am rambling on about this. But I am thinking a lot about teachers lately. And I am also wondering why so many people I know want to teach when most of them are probably not cut out for it and will never be really good teachers/mentors. Come to think of it, one could seriously call into question my own teaching. Don't you worry. I like to indict myself along with others. I do it any chance I get!


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I might re-read Merrill's The Changing Light at Sandover over the weekend. Or, I might just jet ski a lot. We'll see.


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Why am I always re-reading books? I think it might be a kind of neurosis...


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Clue: Gashlycrumb Tinies


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Juliet's Corner

I don't regularly write blurbs. I usually don't know what to say. But I finished reading a friend's book manuscript this morning and was thrilled to write a blurb for her book. Yes, I know most blurbs are hokey, but the book was dark and intriguing; it made me want to re-read it twice and made me want to stand up for it. So I did. It is only the second book I have ever blurbed. I still don't really know what blurbs do for a book, but I am happy to have my name, my vote of confidence attached to this one. One errand for the day done. Many more to go.


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My friend Ron has decided there should be a website called Done.com, a kind of tracking site for errands. It could send emails out like: "Burn down ancient redwood forest: DONE!" "Buy sweatshirt for boyfriend: DONE!"


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Keith Ekiss's beautiful poem in sections, "Landscape with Saguaros," is up today at Poetry Daily. Check it out, if you have a chance.


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Dear God! What is going on? Poetry journals discussed in the Wall Street Journal! Have we entered an alternate universe?


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Frank O'Hara died 41 years ago today. Hard to believe that. I still feel as if he is alive. And I still hate goddamned dune buggies! Here is a poem of his I love to teach and think about:

A STEP AWAY FROM THEM


It's my lunch hour, so I go
for a walk among the hum-colored
cabs. First, down the sidewalk
where laborers feed their dirty
glistening torsos sandwiches
and Coca-Cola, with yellow helmets
on. They protect them from falling
bricks, I guess. Then onto the
avenue where skirts are flipping
above heels and blow up over
grates. The sun is hot, but the
cabs stir up the air. I look
at bargains in wristwatches. There
are cats playing in sawdust.
 
                                   On
to Times Square, where the sign
blows smoke over my head, and higher
the waterfall pours lightly. A
Negro stands in a doorway with a
toothpick, languorously agitating.
A blonde chorus girl clicks: he
smiles and rubs his chin. Everything
suddenly honks: it is 12:40 of
a Thursday.

            Neon in daylight is a
great pleasure, as Edwin Denby would
write, as are light bulbs in daylight.
I stop for a cheeseburger at JULIET'S
CORNER. Giulietta Masina, wife of
Federico Fellini, e bell' attrice.

And chocolate malted. A lady in
foxes on such a day puts her poodle
in a cab.
            There are several Puerto
Ricans on the avenue today, which
makes it beautiful and warm. First
Bunny died, then John Latouche,
then Jackson Pollock. But is the
earth as full of life was full, of them?
And one has eaten and one walks,
past the magazines with nudes
and the posters for BULLFIGHT and
the Manhatten Storage Warehouse,
which they'll soon tear down. I
used to think they had the Armory
Show there.

             A glass of papaya juice
and back to work. My heart is in my
pocket, it is Poems by Pierre Reverdy. 


--Frank O'Hara

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Clue: Model T


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In And Of Itself

The Sociological Analysis continues. I both agree and disagree with much of this. But that is me, the child of Jesuit thinking. I almost never fully agree or disagree with anything. My own intellectual failing, that...


****************************


On a different note, the Caption Contest continues below. Have you entered yet? Well. What are you waiting for?


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I did it. I found us a place to stay in Tahoe this weekend, a place on the shore of the Lake near Incline Village. It is sad, but I am so excited to get away to a quiet place, a beautiful place, a rejuvenating place. I am so excited I start laughing at myself. We'll drive up on Friday and come back on Monday.


****************************


You know, public speaking--in and of itself--is NOT Poetry! It can be Poetry, but it is not by default Poetry. I am sick of seeing articles in newspapers expounding about "poetry" that is merely someone standing up in a park reciting a speech! Aaaaggghhhhhh!!!!! I don't know why this annoys me, but it does.


****************************


Got an annoying email from Amazon this morning telling me Cate Marvin's book could not be shipped to me until September. What is up with that? Others claim to have already read it!


****************************


Clue: Let me hurt you... Please?


****************************

Caption Contest #19

Aw yeah! It is definitely that time again. For some, you have been waiting patiently. For others, you hoped it would never happen again. But alas, it is time for the caption contest once more. For those who are new here, the winner gets bragging rights and may or may not win a surprise monetary prize (already decided by us here at The Muse before posting this). Captions should be left in the comment section below, and the winner will be selected by our resident judge, Jacob. Jacob's decisions are final.

Winners of the Caption Contest this year so far are:

#12 : Justin Evans

#13 : Anne Haines

#14 : ADT

#15: Joseph Massey

#16 : Eddie Dixon

#17 : John Gallaher

#18 : R.J. Gibson


Will YOUR name be added to this list? Will you show us how it's done? Give us your captions, and tune in to see what happens.


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****************************


Let the Games begin...


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Land's End

After brunch with our friend, Ron, we walked a trail out along the edge of the Golden Gate, the bridge itself shrouded in fog in the distance. I showed them the trail that descends the cliff side there to a bluff overlooking the Gate with its treacherous currents. It was really weird for me because my long poem, "Triptych...," is primarily set there. Everywhere I looked today, as we went down the steps cut into the cliff side under the canopy of trees, I saw lines of my poem. When we made it to the bluff, someone had made one of those meditation labyrinth things out of rocks. We walked through it, which took quite some time, the rows bending back on each other, the false ends that then continued on. When we finally made it back to Land's End, I was pretty sure we had burned off 1/3rd of the calories we had consumed at brunch.


Oh, and here is one more view of the labyrinth, this time taken with a 32-second exposure:




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I found an old letter of mine from 1992. It made me die laughing. So much angst and anxiety. Hilarious. I was so worried about going to medical school. I was just so afraid of everything really.


****************************


Still trying to work out a way for Jacob and I to steal away to a friend's cabin on Lake Tahoe some weekend.


****************************


Clue: Ramazani


****************************

The Queen is Alive

I have soooooo been waiting for this:



I have already ordered my copy. Dying to read it!


****************************


James Longenbach reviews four first books of poetry in, of all places, the New York Times (registration may be required)


****************************


The Best Poetry Venues in NYC? Well, if you say so...


****************************


I have caught back up on sleep, I think. 10 hours last night and 10 the night before. And ever since Friday morning driving to work, I have had something brewing in my head. It might be a poem, but I don't know for sure yet. It might just be notes. But I saw a sign that puzzled me, and then thought about something not really related but kind of related. And I have a line that I think may be the third line of the poem. But I have no last line yet, which is why I don't know yet if this is a poem at all. I need that last line in order to get started. But I am mulling, and I am brooding. At least I am even having these thoughts.


****************************


Jacob is sitting quietly in his studio reading Harry Potter. He is like a big kid. He is completely engrossed.


****************************


I think today is a brunch overlooking the Pacific kind of day.


****************************


Even in Death, Hemmingway knows how to stir up trouble.


****************************


Clue: pearl necklace!


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A New Virgin in Town

For all of you out there who live in the Bay Area, Virgin America is here! They begin flying this Fall, and you can already book trips via their website. VA will blow JetBlue and Southwest out of the sky. For now, they have flights from SFO to JFK, IAD, LAX, and Vegas, baby! No more wretched Vegas trips on US Air/America West for me!


****************************


I am re-reading some of the Odas. I had forgotten how much I liked them.


****************************


This anthology sounds interesting, though with a title like Seminal, it makes me wonder.


****************************


Someone recently told me that the contemporary rights movement has propelled gay poets and that, prior to 1970, there were practically no "famous gay poets." Um, what about Auden, Merrill, Bishop, O'Hara, Meredith, Ashbery, Lorca, Hughes, etc.? I think gay poets have always been around. Maybe they weren't culturally or politically visible the way they are today, but it isn't as if they didn't exist before 1970!


****************************


Clue: Steam


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Dear Witness

James Hoch's beautiful elegy for Agha Shahid Ali is up at Poetry Daily today. A beautiful poem. It seems like yesterday I read that poem for the first time in a stack of submissions on a Saturday afternoon. I loved how subtle it was, the way Shahid, which means Witness, is both present and absent in the poem. The poem is included in his new book, Miscreants.


****************************


This is one of the more odd news articles I have seen on a poet; this time, the subject in Campbell McGrath.


****************************


I basically can't stand earnest stands against earnestness.


****************************


The conversation about aesthetics over at Josh Corey's continues to fascinate.


****************************


Clue: Pater Pater, Das Chelator


****************************

Blessed

Even in CA, we have people raising money for hate. Well, I hope the "financially blessed" homos stop these idiots.


***************************


For some, the best time of their lives is college. For some, grad school. For others... you get the picture. It is almost never the same for any two people. I realized last night that the best years of my life have been the last five years. I had fun at various points in my life, but none of those time periods rank against the last five years of my life.


***************************


Akhmatova on the big screen? Well, I'll be...


***************************


Max Blumenthal examines College Republicans, who strangely support War but only if they don't have to fight it personally. You know, they all seem to have medical problems.



Untitled from huffpost and Vimeo.


***************************


Clue: Auto Shut Off


***************************

Erasures

Joan Houlihan reviews Nathaniel Bellows' Why Speak? (from Contemporary Poetry Review)


***************************


Finally caught up on some sleep last night. Came home from Harry Potter and slept 10.5 hours, the longest I have slept in months, probably the most I have slept this entire year!


***************************


It is strange, but for the first time, all three of my closest friends are out of the country: London, Poland, Portugal. It is a good thing I haven't been writing any poems, because they are all away. Email just isn't the same as chit-chatting on the phone.


***************************


I was recently told by a young poet-colleague that I was "behind" in my writing and publishing. When I looked surprised, she went on to say that by now I should have three books out. I said nothing. Not because I had nothing to say, but because I just couldn't bother. It seemed so bizarre. But I have to keep reminding myself that many who think this way are in tenure-track positions teaching; they have to publish or risk perishing. But I am not a tenure-track teacher. And I cannot imagine banging out poems and books. I just remain thankful that I am not in such a position. I can be as selective (read: lazy) as I want when it comes to poems.


***************************


Meeting up with an old college housemate today for drinks. Always a weird feeling to go meet up with someone you haven't seen in 16 years.


***************************


Today, I am reading A. Van Jordan's new book, Quantum Lyrics. Wonderful poems so far. That said, leave it to Norton to have shoddy copy editing. They misspelled England, as in New England Review.


***************************


Clue: Pop!


***************************

At the Bit

The Bread Loaf website has been updated for this summer. If you are curious, here is the listing of Fellows and Tuition Scholars for this coming conference.


****************************


Full day yesterday. Full day today. But off tomorrow. And possibly Harry Potter tonight. Jacob is chomping at the bit for the movie and the last book.


****************************


Has anyone seen the new Harry Potter movie? Is it good?


****************************


Clue: Seduce you later...


****************************

After Ecstasy

If I didn't have a two and a half layover in Atlanta yesterday, I would have missed my flight to SF. The flight from Asheville was late and we sat on the tarmac for 30 mins in Atlanta because there was no available gate for us. It was as if the Atlanta airport folk had no idea we were coming. Anyway, I drove away from Warren Wilson at noon and was home 11 and a half hours later.


****************************


Off to the hospital shortly. Even had clinic images in part of a dream I had last night.


****************************


I am, unfortunately, still tired. I went to WW tired, and I cannot say I have come home any less so. But it was worth it. 10 days surrounded by Literature. And it was a good group this summer, a very congenial group. And the students were sharp, and they were excited about their work. All in all, a good residency.


****************************


Zbigniew Herbert is in the news.


****************************


The NER website was updated a little while back, but I forgot to mention it here. Check it out when you have a chance.


****************************


Clue: After ecstasy, the laundry...


****************************

Savoir-faire

Ready to head home. Graduation this afternoon. Flight home tomorrow. And a new semester starts tomorrow.


***************************


LEAP BEFORE YOU LOOK


The sense of danger must not disappear:
The way is certainly both short and steep,
However gradual it looks from here;
Look if you like, but you will have to leap.

Tough-minded men get mushy in their sleep
And break the by-laws any fool can keep;
It is not the convention but the fear
That has a tendency to disappear.

The worried efforts of the busy heap,
The dirt, the imprecision, and the beer
Produce a few smart wisecracks every year;
Laugh if you can, but you will have to leap.

The clothes that are considered right to wear
Will not be either sensible or cheap,
So long as we consent to live like sheep
And never mention those who disappear.

Much can be said for social savoir-faire,
But to rejoice when no one else is there
Is even harder than it is to weep;
No one is watching, but you have to leap.

A solitude ten thousand fathoms deep
Sustains the bed on which we lie, my dear;
Although I love you, you will have to leap;
Our dream of safety has to disappear.


--W.H. Auden



****************************


I had forgotten that Auden poem until I saw it in a handout David Baker passed out for his lecture.


****************************


Clue: Yoda


****************************

Dreck

The residency is starting to wind down. My brain is jam-packed with stuff. I have great students for the upcoming semester. I am tired and missing home.


***************************


My class on O'Hara's Lunch Poems has been wonderful. And I love it when the students start figuring out the complexities of the poems, that the appearance of simplicity does not always mean a poem is simple or "easy."


***************************


The woods out behind the house are dark this morning, the sky overcast (which only seems to make the green of the leaves more brisk, more noticeable). There are things one sees and things one notices. Still trying to decide how to define such moments of vision.


***************************


Well, I’m not sure that people should bother to read most poetry. A lot of what gets written in any age is complete dreck—perhaps now more than ever, since so many of the people writing poetry don’t read it (as a recent report from the National Endowment for the Arts showed). The real thing is extremely rare: As Randell Jarrell famously put it, “A good poet is someone who manages, in a lifetime of standing out in thunderstorms, to be struck by lightning five or six times.”


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Clue: Restless


***************************

Security Blanket

The past couple of days have vanished into ether. So much. Teaching at WW is like a feast, and it is hard not to be a glutton. Whenever I am here, I fantasize about writing essays. But I know it is a fantasy, a perverse kind of daydream really. Last night, sitting on a swing on a porch, the light from a lamp combined with the wind to provide me a strange show of shadows on the walkway. Some jazz being played nearby, a sax, made me feel, quite suddenly, like a character in a poem by Don Justice. I am not sure what came first, the feeling of happiness buried within sadness or the realization the "scene" was so much like one of Justice's poems. Which conjured the other? Difficult to say.


***************************


I find myself listening to Jacob's "Rhapsody for Cello and Orchestra" over and over here. It has become my security blanket, my stand-in for his voice. When I listen to it, I can hear his voice. It calms me down. I am a hyper man. I was a hyper child. No one who knows me would be surprised by this. I require someone to keep me in check, require someone to restrict my fiery mind.


***************************


Wildness and terror. This is what has obsessed me, what has me obsessed. I don't mean TERROR. I mean terror, as in the terrible, as in the tremors of doubt and fear that is able to consume our ability to be rational.


***************************


Clue: Humility is not the same as being "humble"!


***************************

The Accident

We got our assigned students last night. And I have done well. The torment begins. Oh, not for me, but for them!


***************************


Ah, Paul Celan. I need to re-read Celan.


***************************


Okay, okay. I am not going to do the 8 meme, but I will give you one thing you may not know about me.

1. In the weeks before I left home to go to college, a drunk driver ran through a red light and straight into the side of my car. The car spun around and hit something. I remember nothing else about it. I can barely remember it happening. When I woke up, it was two days later. Apparently, my seat belt broke and I went through the window glass. In my fall, I fractured my second cervical vertebra. I broke my neck. But here is why I believe in miracles. Despite wearing a halo for a very long time, I lived. Every doctor that saw me would look at me wide-eyed and, finally, when I asked, admitted that for all intents and purposes, I should be dead.

The only remnant of this I live with is pain off and on in my neck, an atrophied neck muscle (which is why some have noticed that my head often times leans to the right, esp. while walking around). The xrays of my neck after the accident were amazing. So, I believe in miracles. I believe in the human ability to help (someone helped me by calling 911). I believe in God. Intellectually, I believe in very little. But my heart... well, my heart believes different things.


***************************


Thank God for Alavert.


***************************


Clue: Brimstone


***************************

Surprise Tune

I listened again to Debussy's "Clair de Lune" this morning, as I was getting dressed. It so surprised me the way it came on after David Gray on my iTunes. But it captivated me in seconds. It has to be one of the most beautiful pieces of music I have ever heard. And again, I cannot believe I lived for so long without hearing it. And again, I must thank a certain man with whom I share my life for introducing me to Debussy.

The woods behind the house I am living in (a dorm, really) are still, not even a leaf falling or a bird wrestling up a stray note. And Debussy is playing. And all seems quiet. Not motionless. No, not that. The space in which motion begins. And I am struck by the fact that despite my fatigue at times, despite the angry fits I throw, despite the fact I often feel lost, that I am strangely happy. Not the happiness of the suburbs in 1954, but a happiness in the mind, a stillness, a readiness for motion.

I have lived a life of juggling for so long that I worry now I cannot not juggle. And this is as it should be, I suppose. This is as it should be.

The Clock

I felt decadent last night going to bed at 1:00 AM, and when I woke up this morning and saw 8:15 AM on the clock, I felt as if I had overslept. But then it hit me. 8:15 AM here is 5:15 AM at home, the exact same time I have to get up to go to work! The body's internal clock amazes me.


***************************


Well, this answers the question I had.


***************************


The flight from Cincinati to Asheville yesterday, in a storm, was the scariest flight I have ever been on. Talk about roller coaster of death.


***************************


Clue: Janus


***************************

Happy Fourth!

Happy Fourth of July! I won't be seeing a sight like this tonight, but maybe there will be fireworks above Black Mountain...

Ready to Go

I did manage to get myself out of clinic by noon today. Laundry done. Clothes packed. Flight tomorrow morning around 8 AM. Will post here as much as I can, but if the last two summers are any indication, it will be sporadic at best.

Not a Coincidence

I was supposed to be off from clinic today to get my stuff done before leaving tomorrow morning for WW. But yesterday devolved into another in a series of crazy days I have been having for the past two weeks. So, I am going in today for what has to be no more than a half day. I have to get some things finalized in clinic before I leave. For the most part, I love being a doctor. But there are some times when the pull between medicine and having a life is palpable and almost painful. I am better now than I used to be. I used to let Medicine completely run (or should I say ruin) my life. The temptation is great. You know you are doing good in your work, so it becomes easier to justify why it consumes every waking hour of your life. But in the end, this is not generosity, but a whole new level of meanness for the others in your life. Trust me. It is not a coincidence that such a high number of doctors get divorced. Practically every one I know in medicine has been divorced, myself included.


***************************


No, I am not playing the 8 meme. All you need to do to find out things about me is read this blog. It isn't as if I am private and secretive here. I suspect I probably share more here than I should!


***************************


Jeffrey McDaniel is leaving Harriet.


***************************


Is anyone surprised by this? I'm not.


***************************


Clue: Ohio


***************************

Two

PW has reviews of these two books I am anxiously awaiting:


Fragment of the Head of a Queen
Cate Marvin. Sarabande (Consortium, dist.), $13.95 (112p) ISBN 978-1-932511-51-2

From the blood-soaked cover image of a Snow White–like figure to the final poem (“You Cut Open”), there is both violence and humor in the 42 lyrics of Marvin's second book. In her often amped-up sonics (“standing neck-deep in a pit, whisky-pitched, ether-lit”), her formal skill and her penchant for anger-filled poems on the love/hate of self and beloved, Marvin (World's Tallest Disaster) suggests a postmodern Plath. But the smirk on the speaker's face—she is both deadly serious and deadly funny—points these poems past melodrama. “Dear less-than-a-man,” writes Marvin, “I think with my blood.” Often the humor comes when the absurdity of the actual world is mixed with that of the speaker's world (“my unsubsidized loan heart”). Marvin also manages a more intimate voice: “I would be the worm to your rain soaked side/ walk.” Such tenderness is welcome among so much grief, but so is the ambivalence of Marvin's elegy detailing a lover's autopsy. Readers who can believe “all love/ should be loud enough to scare off the neighbors” will swoon for this work. (Aug.)


Quantum Lyrics
A. Van Jordan. Norton $23.95 (128p) ISBN 978-0-393-06499-5

The principles of physics, the lives of physicists (especially Albert Einstein) and the dilemmas of classic comic book heroes provide Van Jordan (M-A-C-N-O-L-I-A) with the structure and occasions for his often delightful, always clear and occasionally profound third volume. The second and longest of its three sections follows Einstein's biography from early adulthood and first marriage (to the mathematician Mileva Maric, the mother of his children) through infidelities, emigration, fame, travels in America and Einstein's latter-day campaigns against nuclear weapons and racial injustice. Terms from physics make easy (at times, too easy) metaphors for more human concerns: “promise me/ you'll never cease being/ the elegant equation,” Einstein asks Maric; decades afterwards, Paul Robeson muses, during his meeting with the great thinker, “My voice/ is as dangerous as any atom splitting/ open.” The best poems here leave famous thinkers and performers behind—the set of short poems about the superhero called the Atom, for example, who maintained a secret identity as a lovelorn physicist and whose powers let him shrink down to nuclear size: “It was as if no one had seen me// until I mastered the science// of shrinking my body.” (July)

Woo-Hoo!

Well, it is done! I just closed up the reading for the year for NER. I know a few more poems may filter up to me from the readers, but it cannot be more than a few poems that may show up. My desk is clear! I can leave for Warren Wilson without worrying that when I come back I still have submissions to read. Woo-hoo! And did I find poems to accept? Yes! Mark you, some of them I had been holding on to for a final read. But all in all a good morning.


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Well, Poetry Idol has come to close. I really wanted Maurice Manning's poem "Where Sadness Comes From" to win. But just like with American Idol, the one I want to win never wins! Check out the results here.


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We had a great dinner last night in Larkspur at a place called Picco. All the food was good, and I didn't even mind that it was all tapas-y with plates to share. This usually drives me nuts, but it worked well last night.


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It is sunny outside, so I think we may have to fire up the grill.


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Clue: Vitriol


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