Picnic banquet after mass yesterday. Melons, cookies, spinach wraps, cider. When I turned the camera in his direction he cast me a look of mischief, held up his plate, and gave himself a halo. Ham. I had no idea. And I was afraid to bring out the camera.
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Finishing Thomas and Beulah today in the Intro to Lit class. I remembered this morning on waking that when I presented on the book during my qualifying exam, I was asked to talk about renunciation. The question stopped me cold. Not because there isn't plenty of it in the poems, but because much of it seems linked to an everyday common place desire for a better life--or a different one. The kind of wishing everyone feels. I would have known how to better respond to the question had longing been more explicity tied to questions about race or poverty, which is nearly too much what one expects of the poems. It's an easy response and a unsatisfying answer. I'm thinking today that where renunciation becomes most pressing is with the marriage. Everywhere, the tensions between what he, what she, perceives, needs, hopes, dreams, appreciates. Of course it's in the marriage. Which somehow makes me sad.
In the poetry workshop, we're reading Jordan Davis's poems in celebratory anticipation of the Million Poems Show coming to Knox on October the 13th. Featuring Karen Anderson, Jasper Bernes, and Karl Parker (whom we've already read in the last few weeks). Muscial guest, Franklin Bruno.
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