Home Again, Home Again

Back in Roanoke, for a moment. Thought I'd take the time to blog over a grilled cheese sandwich. Also, a grilled cheese secret: sprinkle some italian seasoning on the butter-side of the bread before grilling and you'll transform your boring old grilled cheese into a fancy gourmet garlic grilled cheese. This means you can charge 50 cents more when selling them at festivals. Check the market.

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

Finished Anthony Doerr's About Grace. It's gorgeous. Hoping to read it again once I have time to be re-reading books. A sample:

"He began to dream of snow: ice glazing a parking meter; slush in the treads of Sandy's boots. There was the feeling of turning up blinds and seeing the whiteness of everything--snow on fence posts, snow limning branches--a banquet of light. He thought of his mother, and the way the mountains looked from the rooftop of his childhoood: shimmering, insubstantial as ghosts."

Moral of the story: find it, read it.

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

Trying to write with this month off I have. It's been proving difficult as Shelley and I are moving around a lot. And I do find it hard to write when I'm away from my desk--but I've been reading a lot: Junot Diaz's Drown, James Tate's and Rodney Jones' Selected, and Stephen Dunn's Different Hours. It's nice to be reading lots of poetry again. I'm psyched for this semester as the only class I'm taking apart from workshopping my thesis is a class on poetic sequence taught by visiting writer Kelly Cherry. So apart from teaching short fiction to my students, my head will be drowning in poetry this semester. Don't get me wrong, I love to teach stories, it will just be nice to immerse myself in poetry with the thesis deadline looming.

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

More interesting things to come once I discover them.