Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Weekend Swelter


The view from Buzzard's Roost (3,000 ft.).

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So we got lucky this weekend. It was 75 on Friday and around 80 on Saturday. Shelley was in town for the weekend so we hiked up to Sharp Top just off the Blue Ridge Parkway. Couldn't have asked for a better day...

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Writers! Do you subscribe to literary magazines? Well, you should, especially if you submit to them, but even if you don't, you should take C. Dale's poll over at Avoiding the Muse.


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All this warm weather brought me back to a Carl Dennis poem I dig (cheap plug, he'll be reading at Hollins in April). Even though I don't think we're quite there yet:

INGRATITUDE

Spring, I remembered you all these months.
I spoke of the green yard under the snow
To my slumped visitors.
I sobered the giddy neighbors.
"You may think you're still happy,"
I whispered, "but recall the tea roses,
The lost leaves of the dogwood tree."

But now you have fallen upon us, Spring,
Without warning,
So much greener than I remembered.
Friends that I kept from forgetting
Laugh at me as they run outside
For falling so short in your praise.

--Carl Dennis
from Climbing Down (1976, Braziller Series of Poetry)

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Heading to North Carolina this weekend for a number of reasons, but mainly to see these guys play and to run in this thing. It'll be great to see some Elon/UNC-G friends, too. I'm excited as I can be for a weekend where I don't get to see Shelley.

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It turns out I'm one of those people:

1 comment:

Kathryn Stripling Byer said...

Hi Luke, thank you for your very fine review of my latest book, Coming to Rest. I'm going to put a section of it on my blog, comparing it with the ridiculous review in Cold Front a couple of years ago.Your is such an intelligent, sensitive reading of my book that I feel as if I ought to send you some spring flowers blooming in my yard here in Cullowhee.
Buzzard's Roost--hey, that's the ridge I look at every morning when I walk out the door. That's what the residential hillside overlooking WCU is called.
Like your blog, by the way. I hope your poem makes it into The Atlantic! Kathryn