The Year of the Olive Oil by Charles North. Hanging Loose Press, 1989.

What a funny, witty book from a poet I don't know much about. I've had the book about a year. His baseball line-ups are hilarious. I also like the design of the book. For me that's so crucial with a book of poetry.

One of those perfect used bookstore moments: Jordan and I went to the Dusty Bookshelf in Lawrence on Monday morning. I found two copies of Kawabata's "Palm-of-the-Hand Stories" for $4 each. (North Point Press). We each bought one: Jordan needed it for his talk and I wanted one also. I also bought a book by Joe D'Amato.

In my sleep last night (or in half-awake state) I was writing a poem called "Snow Clone." For explanation of the term, see Agoraphilia. A snow cone is a formulaic phrase like "x is the new y," or "[name of poet] is like [name of poet] on [name of drug]." Anyway, my poem was divided into multiple sections, each of which was based on one of these "snow clones."

I can't remember any lines from it.

Back to work now after the Jordan Davis visit. It was great to finally meet him and to discover that he is exactly the same person as I believed him to be. There's no hidden jerkness there. And we cured him of his basketball foul anxiety. At his reading he read one of my favorite poems, "Rotten Floor."

Jordan just gave his talk on Kenneth Koch to a very select audience. He got to meet Ken Irby, which was nice. He took off on foot back to the hotel. I hope the audience at the reading is not quite as "select."

I left Jordan at the hotel so he can finish his paper for tomorrow. We went out to lunch with Stan Lombardo and Judy Roitman and then went to a sports bar to see Kansas lose in OT to Georgia Tech. The book a day project will be suspended until the Jordan Davis visit is over.

Life & Death (Creeley). 1998.


The taste of that specfic doughnut.

In other breaking news, Henry disagrees with Ron Silliman, Mike Snider comes out in favor of rhyme, and Jonathan trashes the New Formalism.

Ok. I have to go fix lunch for Julia and her friend. Bye Chicago AWP conventioneers. Nice talking to you.

Is the panel still going on then?

There's nothing like checking a blog every 10 second to see whether anyone's said anything about you. A weirdly inefficient mode of communication made possible by modern technology.

Anybody there? Hello...

I don't know what you've been talking about in the panel, but you can scroll down for my thoughts about blogging. A couple posts down. The conversations in blogging can be somehow out of synchronization. Like this one!

Equanimity - if not a poetics, then what?

Great. I'm still here. Reload my page please!