Shared Reading?

For anyone who'd like to join in, I have a six month plan to move through Carolyn Forché's anthology Against Forgetting. I know many of you are already familiar with this stuff, and many of you are busy! But I'm always salivating for more poetry conversation, and with this book especially it would be helpful to pair reading with discussion.

I'm also thinking of taking Anne Carson's Eros, the Bittersweet and C. D. Wright's Cooling Time with me to Japan... these are the kind of meaty books that would benefit from the focus the airplane and being surrounded by a foreign language provides. At least that's what I'm hoping, since I haven't made much progress with either on American soil! I also like the idea of reading them at the same time; both are prose-on-poetry. So anyone who might like to attack one/both of these over winter break and then chat it up is very welcome to join me.

Only a little bit is left of the semester now! Best of luck to all during this final push.

Happy Thanksgiving, ladies.

Mine is, of course, tomorrow, given the nature of the teaching profession + traveling, and mine, also, is the last poultry-laden one--at least for my plate. I'm transferring back to my vegetarian ways, which seems so very meek compared to the culinary appetites of the rest, but I have a mild dairy addiction and a love of wool and honey, which will keep me forever from crossing the boundaries to veganism.

Despite this, I cannot help but poke and prod at my little turkey-carcass, which is currently brining in the refrigerator I dis-assembled for holiday purposes. I'm feeling a bit accomplished, as if I could flex a little and a word or too might pop out of that tattoo.

I wanted to send a quick note of thanks for this Tuesday evening's Thai get-together. I hope we can find spaces of time to see each other more often; I'm becoming more energized and less frustrated with my over-exertion and am finally ready to put down the knitting needles (most of the time) and the cookbooks and thrust myself right back into academic life. Watch out, chapbook.

After the turkey, the editing. (And I brought along three manuscripts: Colleen's, Kevin's, Jasmin's plus any stray poems from us second years I neglected.) But mostly, the chapbook. I'm here, in Michigan: what better place to finish than in the place it began?

xo