Oink

"I must here imagine myself an English department chairman, who has to deal with these troublesome creatures, and say that a poet is hubris through and through in the same manner that an unruly pig is solid pork." --Jim Harrison, in the New York Times

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I said I'd do it, and I did. Two big "get this out before the deadline" pushes went into the mail today. I deserve chocolate.

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Summer planning season is upon us, at least for us workshop-aholics (ahem, no comment intended on my own social proclivities when in my favorite queer resort town)! The Fine Arts Work Center in lovely Provincetown has posted their schedule of summer workshops, and of course there are at least six I would love to take. Oh winning lottery ticket, wherefore art thou? Seriously, if you're looking for a glorious summer workshop, this is the best program I have found. Not cheap. Definitely not cheap. But if you can swing it, it's pretty splendid.

The Indiana University Writers' Conference here in Bloomington posted their 2007 information today as well. This summer's faculty: Heather McHugh, Khaled Mattawa, Lee Martin, Matthew Klam, Adam Langer, Nicholas Dawidoff, Catherine Bowman, and Crystal Wilkinson. I'll try to make at least some of the evening readings, though I won't be "conferencing" here this time around.

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In today's mail: Collin Kelley's chapbook, Slow To Burn. I gave it a quick read over dinner at Qdoba, before going back to work for my 6-9 pm shift on the reference desk. It made me think about how, in a way, each of our lives is made up of all the people we've known over the years. If each person who has mattered to us is a speck on the map, connecting those dots gives you a self-portrait of sorts. I'll go back and give these poems a more careful read later. It's a beautifully printed little chapbook, too.

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Sad news today about Barbaro. For a while there, I really thought he'd make it. Farewell, brave beautiful animal.