o ... karen is full of mountains and god and really goofy spelling workarounds ... this tiny Appilation town ... maybe it's appalaichan? but she's actually in switzerland ... so she probably meant ALP-elation ... right?

precious puppy moments ... It's probably safe to say that Erik and I have crossed a line from which there is no returning, don't you think?

The Thomas Merton Foundation : Poetry of the Sacred ... a certain kind of poem ... or any kind of poem ... or ...

The Thomas Merton Foundation

just successfully drove off the impulse to send something ... today's thing from fyp ... to The Duplications ... where i'm finding myself pleased to read what's posted ... mr. mayhew's good poems ... not mr. keillor's ... but i remind myself that fyp exists to keep me from submission(s) ... not that i can't be submissive ... but that i wouldn't want to hear 'o this is not what i meant ... not what i meant at all' ...

... jmayhew writes I like lean and mordant poems more than slack and verbose ones. Don't try too hard to be jazzy and New York school. I don't like poems that I think I could have done better, or that I want to second-guess. and i appreciate this knowing what he likes ... and doubt my things are lean and mordant ... but don't seem to me so slack or jazzy ... as for NYS ... i just couldn't say ... could i ... but jm's clear prescription puts one in position to write in that direction ... writing to someone's taste ... why not ... 'if yr gonna pay (so to speak) me, i might as well try to please you" ... but what if i wasn't even trying ...

and i walked around the school at sundown ... it was warm and quiet ... i forget how trees and air and grass and sky do not participate in our frantic ... quiet even with traffic off yonder and dogs and general mechanical noise ... quiet in me ... strangely enough

Kentucky's forest products industry, despite being the number one agricultural program in the state, is the Rodney Dangerfield of the agriculture world.

There is, in fact, a growing conviction in the theater world that 'Doubt' is making the strongest claim in years for a status that routinely eludes the serious American play: as mainstream entertainment ... hmmmm ... maybe i should read it again with my old glasses ...

picked up the new glasses this morning ... troublesome in their slightly new configuration ... the placer of new glasses on nose said 'wear them for a week - just a week - and if they give you a headache call and we'll test the prescription' ... but i don't even want a headache ... or need one

picked up doubt by john patrick shanley and read it in forty minutes with my new glasses ... and got a slight headache ... a slight pulitzer prize winning headache ... i was disappointed ... is that all it takes to turn the right heads to earn... a slight pulitzer

and picked up the best american poetry 2005 edited by the paul muldoon whose work i've never sought ... but i'm willing to cut him and just about everybody ... even you ... some slack ... and am happy to see new names i know ... rachel loden, shanna compton, susan wheeler and such ... and even old samuel hazo (i remember an old prof at marquette praising my citation of samuel hazo in a paper i wrote on berryman ... got me thinking that hazo was not so cool if this old prof approved ... now here he goes ... a year younger than ashbery ... still chugging away)

picked up the fagles translation of sophocles' theban plays ... cuz i've always enjoyed fagles ... a good ear

Diarrhea in cats

sophomores are writing their first in-class essay ... it's very quiet in here but i can hear the gears turning spinning ... grinding ... i've read three from the previous period and they're not too horrible .... just seeing what we've got to work with ... among those three i found the classic "This poem has a lot of symbolism in it" ... period ... no further explanation ... but i also see them quoting accurately to support an idea ... and jumping right in to attack the question without the introductory niceties they learn via The Five-Paragraph Essay (in fact, they seemed to breathe easier after i told them i didn't realy want to see any 5-paragraph essays) ... i fear i'm positioned to unteach that particular device ... it must serve a purpose on some lower level ... but it is so restrictive ... actually seems to obstruct/prevent successful thought on these ap-style prompts.

KATRINA TIMELINE ... via growing nation

Department of Classics : University of Vermont : The Ambrose Collection

parents night is done ... it was okay ... good, in fact ... at times even ... fun

but i'm a tired old coot with a low grade cold ... sniff ...

parents ... back to school ... night

now ...

a long day

what people is it?

do you want some reservations?

when will the sentences arrive?

sorry. we're all out of appearance.

no. really. sorry. i couldn't think of anything.

no. really. the things i could think of were not ... virtuous. enough.

The Eternal feminine, Frithjof Schuon

Reading the Song of Songs as a Classic

The play of poetic language (which is, for Heidegger, the essence of language itself) reveals the play of presence and absence that is being itself.The play of poetic language (which is, for Heidegger, the essence of language itself) reveals the play of presence and absence that is being itself.