Got back yesterday from three days in Oklahoma. I was invited to give a reading at Tulsa University by David Goldstein, who like me began this year as an assistant professor teaching both Renaissance lit and creative writing. Also like me, he did his grad work at Stanford, where we first met, though only briefly and seldom. Read more »

David Larsen gave me a copy of "Signs, Omens, and Semiological Regimes in Early Islamic Texts," a completed chapter from his dissertation. Which is fascinating reading, and, may I mention, won the 2004 Abduljawad Prize for Best Paper on an Islamic Subject, sponsored by the Al-Falah Program of the University of California’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies. Read more »

The National Poetry Foundation Poetry of the 1940s Conference at the University of Maine in Orono ran from Wednesday to Sunday of last week. Some reconstructed memories of the whole big blur: Read more »

This morning, went on a beautiful country drive with Ben and Carla to the nearby town of Unity to visit their U of Maine colleague, poet David Adams, who lives there in a small wooden house by the lake with his Siberian husky Kiska. Read more »

Brief but eventful weekend in Boston–my first time there. Read more »

This is in reponse to comments by David Hess and others in the comment box to my post on the Poetry & Politics event held here Saturday. I meant to mention this in my original post, as a few people remarked in similar ways prior to the event on this same issue. The two observations that have arisen repeatedly are 1. of course poetry is not enough, any more than any other single thing is ever enough, and 2. poetry is always in a time of crisis, as crisis is an ongoing condition. Read more »

Had a lovely time reading with Cassie on Friday night at David Hadbawnik’s apartment. I rode up to SF with Carra Stratton, her friend and fellow grad student Preema, and blogdom’s own Alli Warren, who has been a student in my Reading Poetry course this past quarter. Read more »