yestreen Erin invited me to join him on the green for I presume the last weekly town concert for the summer. I was tired and said no but thought it s nice to be invited, by a stepson, so I mustered myself and hopped on my bike. which is indeed NOT what I did: no one hops on a bike without some manner of excruciation. there have been concerts all summer, and we have witnessed several. the concerts tend towards generic classic rock, competent work by old farts. I mean, one group consisted of doctors and lawyers. I do not mean to disparage, it is just that you realize that a Richard Thompson, or whoever, simply goes beyond, that the engine can be amazing, and not just fun. when I got close to the green I recognized "Magical Mystery Tour", done in straightforwardly Beatles style. hotcha, I like that song. I hurriedly locked my bike and hustled to the music. the band was a foursome, 2 older guys and 2 younger. I think I understood from the start that they were a Beatles cover band. that they played MMT confirmed that. the bass player was a grey beard and played, like Paul, a Hofner bass. the mix was heavy to the bass, but at least he was good. as was/is Paul, his bass lines were awfully tasteful and pretty. they zipped thru the Beatles catalogue competently. the sound system declined thru the night. vocals were not a patch on the original, but then the Beatles were largely a studio band, there's not a lot of extant examples of Beatles live. I was happy to hear the tunes, altho "The Ballad of John and Yoko", a mailed in song (by John et al.) if ever, just annoyed me. the Beatles hit Ed Sullivan and the American consciousness when I was 11. they flipped my world around. it has occurred to me that I can sing, words and lyrics, a very large percentage of the Beatles' catalogue, without having studied much, and without listening to much of it the past 25 years or more. the Beatles were a mega something. you think of Elvis having a similar cultural completion, and Sinatra. I think Mariah Carey may have more #1s than anyone, or some such stat. granted I am not paying attention but all that comes to mind with MC is those looping high notes. who/what is the Beatles of the 90s or the 00s? or is that a deprecated concept now? could Nirvana be said to be the Beatles of the 90s, that is, unavoidably influential? is Radiohead, for the current 15 minutes? maybe the media divergence has made such a unifying force impossible. The Beatles were a cultural imperative then, when I was 11. that concept may hold little or no water now. I certainly do not intend to present the Beatles as some necessity. Erin noted the song "Ticket to Ride", which has been taken by the homeschool coop as the theme song for graduation. which maybe is akin to taking "Born in the USA" as a paean to Republican virtues, but anyway. Howl was the culminating or coalescing thing for that time but god knows no poem will have such influence now.

Books!

Beth and I got around to unpacking books into the built in bookcase in the living room. we moved a few weeks ago, but had not gotten around to freeing our books from their boxes. we are talking only some of our books, we still have much to do getting the rest out, and in fact all will not be freed. we no longer have any in storage now, at least. the point I am working on here is just the deliciousness of unpacking and organizing the books. Beth and I have catholic taste in books, we cover a lot of genres. I had not seen some of these books in a while. I mean, oo, War and Peace: I've been reading about Napoleon lately so rereading W&P is tempting. several Wittgenstein books, I would like to spend some time. an older edition of Mrs Browning's Poetry, and a newer edition of Robert's collected works. The Letters of Henry Roots, they are riotous and will be left out for ready appreciation. a nice illustrated edition of Walden, must be time to read that again. Tristram Shandy, to be read by the fireside, with a dollop of tawny port. the 2 volumes of Olson's Muthologos, which have always been energizing works for me, his conversations and lectures. what about collections of stories by Ray Bradbury? Locus Tides by Mary Rising Higgins, which Beth and I published. Beth knew and was touched by Mary, remembered her untimely death. Eileen's brick, a delight to pick up and wander in. Emily Dickinson's Collected, tho I have not yet found my copy of Howe's remedy to the overarching harvardness involved in that collection, that is: My Emily Dickinson. oh, and My Angie Dickinson (Michael Magee). does this list bring forth any visceral tingle to yourself? Carl Sauer's review of 16th century North America. Simone Weil's discussion of the Iliad. Fitzgerald's translation of the Iliad. 3 different translations of the Tibetan Book of the Dead, each one vigourous and worthwhile. Newton's Principia. 3 books by Carl Sagan. Don Quixote by Kathy Acker, which I have not read yet. I list here books that I am eager to read/reread. 5 of the 17 Aubrey books by Patrick O'Brian that I own. which Beth has just recently begun working her way thru. woohoo. Drafts 1-38 by Rachel Blau Duplessis. I never read Don Quixote by Cervantes either, but the books sits patiently. all books do. maybe 20 dictionaries of various sorts, including Oxford's dictionary of Scottish, a mine of weird looking words of great vigour. says the Sasenach. a wonderful batch of field guides, including mushrooms, the atmosphere, as well as birds, fish, and flowers. I could go on. most of my poetry books are still packed away. poetry as a limitation, as defined by the Poetics list, is a fade, deflated tire. the poetry books are at topshelf, stand on a chair height. to be stepped up to. the spectrum, its light of inclusion, is a poetry. our library, that is, is a poetics.

little known poetry hermit Eileen Tabios has published a new book. she knows that publishing old books sniffs poorly. look here for particulars. some while ago, Eileen asked if she could use blog comments that I made regarding her work. I said yes, because she asked, and because any writer wants the words in front of eyes. I had to say, tho, and did, that my comments seemed pretty Bramhallcentric. her reply was that that was fine, that the use that I (or anyone) could make of her work was of interest to her and, with hope, to others. and it is. I have not read The Blind Chatelaine's Keys but I have read some of the commentary contributed by others, and look forward to the usage that she makes. this kinda brings me to recommend Goodreads, a Facebook for readers, where people share their reading interests. especially cool seeing what other writers are reading. Jeff Harrison, great under-known poet, opened the door of this to me. the connections that we make seem magical, but they are imperatives sprung from the source.

I should have had Jim Andrew's Vispo site in my links long ago. his work is seriously playful, and he is one of the most eloquent thinkers on the subject of visual... well, I was going to say visual poetry, but Jim's work inflects more particularly towards the internet whereas visual poetry conjures the work of, say, Geof Huth, who is indeed an eloquent champion of that vocabulary. if you want to get caught up in terminology. I like this integration of theory into the artistic act. Grenier has this same integration. his visual work extends from his poetry, his poetry from his theoretical work. totally ambient.

Stephen Vincent thoughtfully comments on my thoughts on Grenier's gallery show below, rare visitant to my comments box. my comments were not aimed at Grenier, and certainly were not grudging. I will not say that I was the only one who appreciated the hallway of poems that Grenier created at Franconia, but what I still take as a liberating effort on his part did not garner much attention at the school. but at least he is getting his turn in the limelight, and getting paid. and Grenier looks good in the pictures, just as lean and wiry as I remember him 36 years ago. Grenier's influence is large tho mostly indirect: the people he influenced influenced the many. When Silliman bio'd Grenier for In the American Tree, he neglected to mention Franconia College, where Grenier produced at least some of Sentences, at least one issue of This (in which my 1st publication), and so on. how could Mr Detail miss that? Grenier has a thereness in contemporary poetry that is treated like the most glorious of footnotes. the art world delivers on spiked glamour, with the Warhol Clock ticking. Grenier's minimalist scribbles garner chardonnay attention but his minimalist poems are given asterisks in some regulated scheme of things. if my story's correct, Grenier went from Tufts (alma pater: my father went there) to Franconia, possibly not the sweetest of career moves (the FC student population was 1/2 the size of my high school graduating class). had he hung around Harvard or MIT he would have been locked in. no I do not begrudge the art world attention he now commands, I just wish poetry were seen as just as important.

Robert Grenier en gallerie (scusi the phony French, tho it seems a propos). 6 years before Sentences was published, Grenier pinned the cards thereof onto the corkboard lining a wall at Franconia College. I had next to zero concept of the dynamics of art, the conceptual part, but walking down the hall struck me as a wonder. felt like a gallery, tho its demonstrativeness was warm and unassuming. this picture looks like NYC: synthesized, glisky, opulently reverent. this is not a grudge speaking. I am interested in Grenier's visual work but the seminal formation apparent in the presentation at Franconia has more gusto for me than the chardonnay in the plastic cup stance of the gallery crowd. I remember seeing him pinning the poems up, it had a guerrilla vibe to it, tho it was not like graffiti, just that he was making unusual use of the space. galleries strike me as bemusedly tolerant rather than engaged, and Grenier would be regarded as the latest screwball, soon to be replaced. I learned so much from him. I find myself not wanting to see him in this flashy scene. I saw much of the seminal experience of LANGUAGE poetry, the stuff that Kent Johnson et al. have missed, by way of Grenier's lessons, curiosity and openness. Grenier as just the next artist in a gallery is kinda depressing. I did not expect to get to this point when I began this post.

I am smart enough to join the chorus: Galatea Resurrects is THE thing that is out there. that and the podcast You Look Nice Today. dynamoed by Eileen Tabios, and writ large by everyone, this is an effort to get work involved with readers. the weight is on the side of the look here part of the equation, and less on the branding. the editorial instinct has to do with what engagement the reader discovered. I have written a few reviews for GR and would do more if time allowed. I like the feeling of offering something not definitive but inviting. not reviews but invitations for consideration. not Perloff and Bloom setting up walls but welcoming resonances from the poems. the ratio of review to works extant is so minuscule nowadays that it is simply quantum fresh air to read the light on all this stuff. huzza!

poets write poems, I guess. writers write. it took me a while to admit with confidence that I was a writer. that producing whatever shitload of work, crappy as it might have been, was not confirmation enough. I think Dickinson had 4 poems published while alive, as you know, and Rossetti pumped Blake to life, did he not. I kept keyboard and pen busy for several years before I accepted that I was a writer, and not just that I wrote poems: I was a poet. well, anyway, I no longer recall the point of this preamble. I wanted to speak about Microsoft One Note, which prolly aint the most poetic of possibilities, you might think. what is this unsulliable poetry of which you speak??? je ne said pas. and so. the program came bundled with the rest of MS Office that I scarfed at 91% discount, legal, as recounted here in May. SO One Note. it is not so much a program that I mench here, but a method. it is like note cards, bits of data collected, manipulated, and used. I am only now getting the hang. One Note gives you fields upon which you can write anywhere. discrete units can be combined, or you can draw lines between to connect the thinking process. collect urls, notes, ramblings. organize later. One Note gives you options for putting things together. a good study aid for the computer age. cut and paste cogent passages to your heart's content. I am not selling One Note so much as tickling the possibility. poetry is not just a dose of fly agaric and a bit of transcription. methodology is part of the plum. the learning aggregate enters in, the dashed off, the unthought-thru expression. I am trying to use this program practically, collecting bits that will add up. I see in One Note the excitement of the barely formed. you doodle out what comes to mind and see what that thing is. this is exciting to me. I have always loved notebooks, what people dash off without the effort of formality. if Silliman's School of Quietude deserves any whammo of critique, it would be how foreign incompleteness would be to the work. that is, a drive to make poems start and finish with narrative imperative, this is SOQ. what is most exciting about Olson is his incompletions. poems as notes, or glances. isn't this wonderful? Cinvat Bridge, aer, a mole to get at Tyre. I love this sense of narrative that leaps with the mind. One Note is a tool for very rational building of logical form, and I am trying to use that. but it makes me think, also, of a poetics of incomplete lines. the mind jumps, jumps. not just the press to disjunct, LANGUAGE POETICS 101, but an affirming sort of processual movement. George Oppen comes to mind, just now. Susan Howe collecting and collating. we can learn from the tools we use.

Carl Annarummo writes real purty about Walden Book:

Walden Book is an open door in an era of locked doors and drawn shades. It is a wildly lucid testament, not a eulogy, to the beauty that is Massachusetts' natural world. The poems in Walden Book are as inviting and intimate as a westward drive on route 2 from 128. There will be no poo-pooing of the modern world here - just the history of a place with all of its lights turned off. At least to me, Walden Book assures us that we can have simultaneous submissions of neon lettering and white pines. Picture Thoreau sharing a bill with the Modern Lovers.

5x8 chapbook printed on quality linen paper with hand-stamped envelope. Printed in an edition of 75. The covers are from a book of old Massachusetts coastal maps. Each chapbook has a different cover.

sure, it is a blurb that he writes, but as the author, I would be happy if one took such impressions from Walden Book. or any other impression, really. I invite you.

I just received copies of Walden Book, which is a chapbook of my work, published by Greying Ghost. Carl Annarummo did the work, and the web site is ici. Carl hath not yet gotten ordering info for it up yet, so buy something else from him. he did a lovely job with the design, and I happen to like what I wrote. support these precious examples of DIY, scaled to the person. poetry is intimate.

someone on Poetics posted thoughts about the new Boston Poet Laureate. great, except that the old Poet Laureate never left office. I mean, I saw a need last year, and filled the vacuum. if this Sam Cornish guy thinks he can usurp me from the position, he has another think coming. I am here to stay.

internet fast: just to mench: I wrote "Worcester as an Average" quickly, a rapid evocation of something that had built up. I immediately posted it to Wryting, as is my wont. Halvard Johnson wrote within 20 minutes of my beginning to type the poem, asking to publish it. (this is not a common occurrence for me, but anyway). think of Dickinson, Clare, Blake able to dash so boldly into sight. it does not mean that the public would be ready, as training for Dickinson, and Blake, seems to have been needed, but the process would not have been left to a possibly entrenched editorial concern. think of possibility.

Hamilton Stone Review, edited by Halvard Johnson. A poem of mine, concerned with Worcester, Mass, sits prose-like to be viewed. other poems by other marvellers. a poem is a collection of word-like conveyances that produces the sensation of word-like conveyance.

What part of QQumNglla @#$"p][snodja[] quag snem fwibble don't you understand???

I just wanted to recommend a podcast that I've been listening to. it is called You Look Nice Today. it is not easy to describe, tho I will flail away for a few sentences. I can declare that it is hilarious. I do not think that you get a good idea of the podcast from the web site. it consists of 3 guys, connected by Skype, I presume. they converse. really they riff, do bits, in a dry, low key way. I think what they do is chatter amongst themselves for 2-3 hours then boil it down to about 30 minutes. I'll just say that it is a jumble of arch humour, sarcasm, whimsy, bad taste, and too much education. I might suggest that it is a little like Seinfeld, because they are plangently dedicated to the small and under-inflected. I cannot even quote any felicities, tho I can point to a slobby impersonation of Bill Cosby. I am, right now, a fan, however long that will last.

I was surprised to learn of a rippling buzz about the Sex and the City movie. I am not paying attention, admittedly, I mean, I really watch no more than 2 hours of tv a week, if that. which I do not say with any superiourity. I would love to swell with the best and worst that tv can deliver, but my time just does not afford it. I have seen several episodes of SITC, found it agreeable enough. I was unaware that it had such an audience that would clamour, if not clamber, the full monty of a Hollywood release. it rides a different camel than the latest Indiana Jones movie. both are resumptions after hiatus, but powered differently. IJ is Lucas' sluggish response to the original movie. he had this franchise but both IJ and Star Wars had to wait for Lucas to fulfill his micromanaging imperatives. isn't that the case? the 3rd episode was a dissertation on the art of phlegmatic perfunctoriness. this 4th is, without my seeing it, a visionary extenuation of that perfunctoriness. I do not know why SITC dawdled into the current flower that it is but I do not think it was entirely canny in its arrival a ce moment. what ev, it caught the Hillary flush. which is to say that it can be read, in the wide media, as a feminist document, just as Hillary's candidacy can. the feminism in both is both real and invented. the real is just the inescapable politicized fact of women perceived, media-wise. the 4 SITC leads are made heroic monstrances, but you cannot carry that far. they are 4 well-etched but not extraordinary people. Hillary is a politically-charged ion. the feminism in both cases is personal. there is a degree to which you can see the Democratic race as sexism vs racism, which will die 1st. that's intellectually lazy but we take what we're fed. Hillary, like Bill, brings a lot of savvy, an eager necessity, and sleaze. maybe those qualities are more effective than Barack's charm. I really do not know how to play that one. SITC never struck me as fully loaded, so its sweep of the nation is a surprise. I hate how racism and sexism are mediated in the public debate, ulteriour gamesmanship. SITC and the Democratic primary race both take hold of the public imagination in a sloppy popcorn way. I mean the way the audience finds its voice as audience thru the ventriloquism of media pundits. the wisdom almost says that stupid Southerners favour Hillary while over-educated Northerners favour Barack. check the tattoo on your forehead to see which one you are. does race beat sex, then? not in SITC, I warrant. the candidates shrivel to a minor detail, and who cares what finally happens

we ate out for dinner yestreen. as we went out, we could see commotion across the street on the green. why, it was the Prom Walk! which I had never heard of prior to seeing a sign for it a few days ago. I suppose it is a town tradition but it never crossed my path before. I didn't look carefully at the proceedings. a red carpet was set up on the green, and a flowered archway. I gather couples would strut their prom stuff under the arch. which, methinks, would hardly take the 3 hours that the sign indicated. it was weird to see gown dresses and shorts intermingled. guys in hoodies, etc. I suppose the casually dressed were family and underclass kids. our neighbour remarked, about last year, on seeing a group of boys dressed in white tuxes wearing white baseball caps turned to the side. what ev. this sort of thing is and was meaningless to me, tho I don't sneer at these who do it. well, maybe I do. it seemed laboured and hoky. but I do get the need to do it. an assertion of the specific time and place. okay so we went in search of a restaurant, having a vague idea of one. which we found, at exactly 5:00. didn't look overly open, but lights were on. inside it looked tonier than we were looking for, dressed as we were and not wanting to pay a lot. but we were swept in with much hospitality, and that was a good sign. indeed we were about the only customers. menu prices were on the high side but, lo, the early bird specials were reasonable, so we stayed. a list of dishes at $14.95, including soup and dessert. in my previous life, in the wine business, I had opportunity to eat at several of Boston's most lala restaurants at the time. which I did not pay for, because I would not pay 100 dollars (in the 90s) for dinner (the company supplied the wine). I can remember, as an example, being served 1 1/2 bay scallops, AND three string beans. other dishes were served, but you get the idea. nouvelle cuisine. when I got home, I had something to eat. that's art at its most superficial and pointless. there are aspects of art that are simply stemware. the wine taster lifts the glass to the lips but does not taste the glass but the wine therein. it is not the genre that is of interest, but the thing inside it, the specific event. ANYWAY, we three muddled thru the decision process. I chose chicken marsala. Beth had something with mussels and Erin lasagna. my dish was delicately rendered. the marsala was subtly evoked. I don't mind a crunching use of such flavourings but the fragrant dollop was skillful. Beth was very happy with the mussels. I have little interest in seafood, tho will eat it, so I didn't sample her fare. Erin's lasagna was meatless. I find lasagna oppressive. even when I was running 80+ carb-demanding miles a week, I was not wild about lasagna. the waitress, Debbie, asked if Erin wanted marinara or creamy basil. had I been confronted with that choice, I might have gone with the lasagna. the creamy basil was lovely, delicate. Erin had raspberry iced tea, which was pleasant if too sweet for me. he finished it quick so Debbie brought a carafe, and later a 2nd (Erin has a mighty thirst). Beth and I shared a bottle of Monkey Bay sauvignon blanc, fresh, crisp, and grassy. product of New Zealand. I have yet to have a sauvignon blanc from NZ that could not stand next to the Sancerre and Pouilly-Fume of France, which are also made with the grape. I hate the mark up that restaurants use. 200%-500%, and it is not like they did not order the wine last tuesdays so have no holding costs. I have had, btw, the white wines from Chateau Margeaux and Chateaux Haut-Brion, as well as Chateau d'Yquem's dry wine. those are off the board, if you want to sell your children to try them. I never took wine that seriously but I will cop to the aesthetic of such wines. which does not of itself place me in the hell of bourgeoisie. lusting for them would. I did not mench the soup course, minestrone for all three, which was fresh and clean. for dessert, Erin and Beth had chocolate mousse. I had cannoli. both were wonderful. our server seemed to be closer to management. she brought a new hire to our table to show the ropes. she was certainly more than what's yours?. I do not like lusting after subservience, but a sociable awareness aint bad. the decor of the place showed effort. on the wall outside, there was a rendering of a tomato can label. which was nice. a faux marble pillar was too amateurish. in the room where we sat, there was a rogue's gallery of paintings. one I know was a knock off of one by John Singer Sargent, the proud European lady. the others were knocks offs too, likely, but I could not say of who. not good knocks offs. as Beth said, they were like Addams Family. the walls were painted a grim burgundy, on a swirled plaster. it was reasonably ridiculous and distracting. the 2 other rooms were much more ordinary, wood and windows. it was a fine dinner for all three of us. I bring it up because food is an accepted aesthetic. we all can critique food, just as we all can critique movies. poetry is seen too arcane to speak to. which is silly because the process is no different. in a poem, words are nodes of interest. the reader takes them in their configuration. the reader need not accept the cultural emphasis (that Shakespeare is the bee's knees, for instance) nor any other outside force. the whole event is in the poem, there. just as the dinner is on the plate, not in a review of the restaurant. you will notice, when you look at your copy of Days Poem, that I dedicate it to Beth and Erin. this is locus, nexus. wine is not efflorescence for me, but from the aesthetic consideration of it I developed a sense of critical and aesthetic standpoint, and of critical process. the important thing was Beth, Erin, and I dining together, not that the service was A1, tho it was. poetry is not arcane, it is made of words, and we use words all the time. poetry uses words in ultimate emphasis, let us say, tho I do not really think it is ultimate. those kids trooping under the archway were in a heightened context. relevance comes, tho, thru a cogitation of the symbolism. I do not think the Prom Walk invites that cogitation. the satisfactions of dinner are more than sensory. the writing of today does sound ALL ALIKE. a centripetal force exists that can throw one free of the mundane manacles of sensation to a deeper thought. this is the real aesthetic, hard fought for. it is the brimming awareness that counts. hello.

back from Erin's Graduation. Beth's mother and I left early, Erin and Beth are still partying. this is graduation from the homeschool cooperative to which we have belonged for, whoa, 5 years. Erin in fact did not attend the cooperative this year. meant to do the Shakespeare play (performance of which earnestly reported here a few weeks ago), but his class schedule at the community college proved impervious to such additions. so Erin and 6 other fellow travelers were honoured for moving on. schooling options, especially for someone who might be deemed different (like that's a prob, but that's the point), were not enlightened in Alaska and Idaho when Beth and Erin lived there, so homeschooling was a natural, well, the 1st word that comes to mind is resignation, as in being resigned to how formalized and closed thinking public school can be. the idea of the cooperative is to pool resources. over the years it has become more school-like, but it has been a good experience for Erin. he did Shakespeare, Mock Trial, various classes. Beth and I taught there, as well. this past year, he did quite well in college. academics weren't the question, schedules and tests and such, the structured stuff, were. yet he done well. a few weeks ago he was invited to dinner at the school, because he had participated in a number of school events and so was honoured for being an Emerging Leader. Beth had to work that evening so he and I went. I tried, twice, to write of it here, but couldn't get the words right, my pride. I mean, I could not portray my sense of his accomplishment, knowing as I do but you do not what it took for him to be where he is. every child is special needs. IQ tests and SATs are tools for understanding (flawed, at that), they are not character studies. having been in the wine business, where way too many people think those 100 point scales for reviewing wines are guarantees for enjoyment, I know that people are easily confused. as if you could taste a number. so... each graduate had "7 minutes" (not all 7 minutes are alike) to do something. a couple performed music, a couple stood and riffed. one, a loudly outgoing girl, did a hilarious PowerPoint performance about her life, all 18 horse-infused years, churning her personality-plus into an implacable career path. Erin perspicaciously put his suit coat on (no tie) when he was called. he had prepared nothing, which several others admitted to. he rapidly bailed and called us to the microphone. Beth gave a neat encapsulation of the homeschooling experience that she and Erin had. two issues exist with homeschooling. dealing with the bureaucracy, which, depending on where you live, can be criminally retrogressive, and dealing with the academics, how to get it taught, particularly that which you don't know. it is a heroic effort. Beth did that. she did it without a lot of resources initially. Beth turned to me when she finished, but Beth had said it all and I did not want to invade her glory (glory it is). and we went back to our seats. but Erin stayed at the mike to make a joke that I cannot replicate, alluding to gaming, referencing graduation, which had the effect, I am not kidding, of one of Carl Yastrzemski's mind-blowing exploits during the Red Sox's 67 season. that is, an up against it moment, and somehow... the poetics of this is situation. this is the locus from which I write. not in the sense of biography, tho that is there, but the influencing forces. critics revel in the association of facts of an artist. what could be juicier than the suicide of father that Berryman witnessed (if I have my facts right, which I need not). Erin is part of my poetics. it was interesting at the graduation because each graduate used their 7 minutes differently. one boy played a tape of a piece that he composed. Beth and I both assumed that he was a musician in the rock band sense but indeed was he composed was orchestral, strings and woodwinds, sight read by a high school orchestra. I thought there were points where the development stalled, but it was a delicious piece nathless. 7 or 8 individuals were presented. compared with the uniforms marching to the stage at other graduations, which is such an appalling image when considered. I could launch a rumination/screed on homeschooling but I will let it go. Beth knew all along, and I agree, that Erin would have been a target in the definition rich environment of public school. you know, lord of the flies: big kid = oaf, innocent = stupid, unhip = lost. poetry, you readers who are poets must know, is a strain of language, and I mean the complexity of the word strain. I do not dismiss public schools. I did not shine in public school but I got thru, perplexingly ordinary because I can conform. not meld, but I flowed along. Erin cannot conform or meld. he is always so obviously so. which seems like an affront to many people. he writes with knowing ease. at his age I wrote with blind vigour, an exacting idea of juvenelia. he is taking a drawing course this summer, suddenly declared an interest, and in his 1st class drew something or other. excellent composition, and a very good feel for shape and the gradation of shade. tho he hates using charcoal. I don't want to make Erin's case, that is his job. I am just keenly aware of Erin's, um, Kampf. the world does not respect uniqueness, unless it has to. okay, we'll accept this Emily Dickinson character, eventually... poetry, friends, is a primal idiosyncrasy. we accept it for its exceptions. we also tiresomely, accept poetry as a function of conformity: poets as Byronic heroes, poems as heighte4ned confessions, etc. these simplifications place stones in the passway. Erin's is not a simple story, but no one's story is simple. homeschooling, when it is not defending the comfy chair called Intelligent Design, deigns to keep a few doors open, instead of forcing definitions to enclose. it is a courage to attempt the task, but courage is a central quality to Beth. with homeschooling, inevitably, you reach a point of wondering, did I do the right thing?. as if paying that much attention in one's child's education could possibly be wrong. as I said, it was not the academics that we worried about with Erin at Com Coll, but navigating the social construct. at that community college function, I felt pride seeing Erin making headway with that large mystery of social nexus. he could never politicize that, turning it into a condition of definitions. he just was not equipped with those distinctions. but he could be, will be, a poet of an expanding universe. he learned early, within the instrumentation of his life. poetry was a little bit hip when I was 16, I mean I could contrive a vision of poetry being a winnowing of sensitivity types. which it is. the odes to dead pets fall away. yet poetry, at base, is an effort to make words mean what they mean. they are what they are, and continue so, responses to the world lived now.

Jack Kimball points to a poem by Stephen Ellis. intertwine and alleviation. Stephen's poem is like, why aren't you reading it? Jack is like, this is a sensation. act of sensing. do you see how the energy is shared? poets as poets.