November 2003 Archives

A lot to be thankful for today. My wife. Comfort. Good health. Friends. Clark who posted his first blog! I'm thankful I ran the Chesterfield Turkey Trot this morning, finishing 21st in my age group and 680 overall. I'm thankful I like food because right now the house smells wonderful. We made a pecan pie last night and at this moment Jessie is making a key lime pie, using freshly squeezed lime juice. I'm thankful Georgia Tech beat UConn last night, once again proving a point that I'm always trying to make with Jack Spitzer, my brother in law, that the ACC is all that matters in college basketball.

I'm thankful I run, not just physically in races, but through life, at times finishing well, over times struggling, then those times doubting I'll ever finish. I like those times of doubt. They stretch the soul, enabling all the good finishes.

Want to thank Richard for the keys to this door. I'm new to weblogs in concept as well as practice. Look forward to joining the conversation. Have been away from the centers of poetry for a long, long time, but have been watching from a distance. Am sure there are protocols and table manners I will violate or fumble, blogly speaking, but am equally sure someone will educate me. Look forward to the correspondence.

Just when I thought I'd never come across a really good poetry blog, I hit upon Cahiers de Corey - poetry, language, thought, the poetry blog of Joshua Corey, a PhD student at Cornell. What I like about it is that he rambles a lot, and by doing so he comes across some inisghts about poetry. This, for example:

"The poem may be said to reside in disrupted, dilated, circulatory spaces, and it is the means by which one notates this provisional location that evokes and demonstrates agency?the ear by which the prosody by which to calibrate the liberative potential of writing, storehouse of the human."

Now that sentence rattles in the brain, but in it you sense something profound and you come away from it with the feeling you've learned a bit about poetics. I think too often we want to rationalize what we've read, locate the logic, westnernize it. What I like so far in Corey's blog is the whimsy, the wit, the language you simply accept.

I missed survivor tonight because an old friend was here in St. Louis and we all went out for dinner, then came back to the house for a drink. It's great seeing old friends and not worrying that they will disturb routines. Old friends can instead bring back old routines. Nonetheless, I still wanted to know who was voted out of Survivor, and now I'm sad to read Rupert was voted out. The news isn't on the CBS site, yet. I found the news instead on a rambling Survivor stie, which I trust is accurate. I guess I'll learn the details tomorrow morning at work.