After Lorca by Jack Spicer. 1974.

Most days I'm ending up reading two books of poetry. I'm learning a lot, to say the least. I don't know that I'm reading a whole lot more poetry than I always did--the idea of reading whole books, however, has made the activity more purposeful and easier to track. I'm still reading a quarter or a third of other books as I go along.

I remember people in writing programs when I was younger; it seemed like they only read Norman Dubie and other fairly contemporary poets. Very little poetry of the past. I would feel the same about someone who read mostly poetry by those in their immediate social circle. It's true I haven't gone too far alfield myself in this little experiment I'm trying. I'll have to remedy that somehow.

Another thing: I don't have to worry about whether I like any particular book or not. Even reading a bad book teaches me something. With this attitude I've found surprisingly few duds.