This Journal

8.31.99 - Tuesday

The jog: a real obstacle course tonight. First there are these big vinyl tarps laid down to protect the track from cleat damage during the game last Friday. The one on the far side has been blown up by the wind, creating a real mountain to climb, so I have to pull it off one of the lanes. Then there's the leftover mudlumps from bleacher construction and the automatic water canon for the field blasting onto the track at regular intervals. Then there are the other runners, two tall lumpy guys in white shirts and shorts who kind of float all over the place and give me a rare superior feeling by starting after and finishing before me. But when I'm done I get to walk into a bright salmon sunset, thinking of Mark Doty's poetry for some reason, so I find these lines:

...if we forge
terms for it, then isn't it

contained in us,
a little,
the brightness?

Somewhere he, or one of his readers, suggests that the absolute function of existence is "to shine". Being envisioned in its million tiny brilliancies.

I've had the freshmen classes trying to sort out their sense of what makes a good poem by ranking the eight animal poems we've read so far and explaining their ranks. It has been an awkward process. They move through the steps of the assignment like obedient or unruly pups; some eager to please, some eager to play. One group says that a good poem "should not be too sad". Another says it should be "explosive".

I got a shiny new window in my classroom. It opens and everything. People are bending over backwards to fix stuff up and help me out. I'm getting lots of commiseration for the odd room, but I really do like it well enough. I just wish I didn't have to have such long long rows of students. The overhead is awesome when I use the big tall back wall as a screen. IMAX-Huge Notes. I picked up a couple of big files cabinets from the library. They'd like me to take a couple more, but I can't.

I've been listening a lot to: Cecilia Bartoli's album with James Levine, "An Italian Songbook"; the first disc of Bob Dylan's "Biograph"; REM's "Monster" (wish I could make out some of those lyrics); Ben Webster sax magic that makes me wish I'd been born just a little sooner; Escovedo's "Bourbonitis Blues" (still, has really grown on me...even the slow songs).

The end of August, which was a pretty good month.