April 23, 2014

Poetry reading at the Glass House last night. I made my writing students go because it seemed the right thing to do, but I wonder what they could have learned from it. Part of it was “this bad poem is good because it’s about a lifestyle currently above criticism.” Part of it was better than that, but still in the nature of vivid chit chat about the poet’s family. Like slam poetry, purely self-referential and purely annotation. It was nice being in the greenhouse. Cats thumping on the wooden stairs. I meet with some guy today at Riverside Cemetery to talk about Zebulon Vance. I’m going to try not to say, “I wrote a pretty good play about it, but you wouldn’t know it from the production.” Dream last night about trying to find an American Express store so I could get a return ticket from some place I’d flown to, then trying to get them to wait on me once I was there. Too crabby and too early to have anything much to say.

Bloodroots bursting through at the new house. Jack-in-the-pulpits pushing the soil aside. Good good good. But the old house is a sea of peonies. I can hardly stand to look.