Heading south on the titular state highway tomorrow morning. Looking forward to: reading at Elon, seeing folks I truly enjoy seeing, camping, practicing banjo, reading sonnets [specifically Ted Berrigan's book "The Sonnets" (borrowed from T.J. Anderson) and David Slavitt's book "The Seven Deadly Sins and Other Poems" (borrowed from Kelly Cherry)]. Insert more obnoxious name dropping here. Should be a good weekend, if you live in the area--come on out to Elon at 4:15, the Isabella Cannon Room in the Center for the Arts (on Williamson Ave. across from "The Oaks")
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Heard some good news today from a certain prestigious southern writers' conference, which I'll be attending this summer with a scholarship. I understand I'm not exactly hiding anything here, but yeah, I'm thrilled.
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Revising, revising, revising. I'm trying to separate the wheat from the chaff in After the Ark, my thesis/manuscript. I forget who, but someone in the latest Poets & Writers suggested that you should be happy with a stranger opening to any poem in the collection and reading just that poem--something I'm working towards but still miles from. It's strange looking at some of these very old poems. They feel so "talk-y" to me, not so much detached from sound-play, but certainly less interested in it, more centered on narratives. I'm reconsidering the epigraph that currently opens the collection as it may draw an inadvertent and inappropriate comparison between me and Moses. Hazard of the trade, I say.
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Killer first line of the moment:
"At the end, Rigoletto weeps for his daughter who sings"
from David Slavitt's "A Consolation for Rigoletto"
(The Seven Deadly Sins and Other Poems, LSU Press, 2009)
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Sunshine on its way, I know, I heard it in the wings.
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