June approaches . . .

. . . and with it, the Bucknell Seminar for Younger Poets. This is the first time I haven't been on staff in five years. I can't explain how connected I feel to this program: it just clicks with my own communal bent, I guess. It's such a critical boost for young poets--the lucky few who get in. I'll be directing the seminar next summer: please urge your undergrad poet friend/students/acquaintances to apply this fall.

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Kudos to Tyler Mills, who won this year's Gulf Coast Poetry Prize! Tyler was one of my intro CW students a few summers ago--not that I can claim any credit for her serious talent--and has just finished up her first semester of grad school. (Talk about getting a critical boost!)

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I'm just about moved into my new office. No phone yet, and no computer. Apparently they can't just take the one off the desk in my old office (which was not being used). Nor can they give me either of the two in my *new* office (in the geology/psychology building), though they haven't taken them away yet either. Or the non-functioning telephone.

How am I posting this, you ask? --On my trusty laptop.

I had to stop working on my summer syllabus in order to move and unpack (and arrange alphabetically on the shelves) my books. Had to. Could not function without being able to spin around in my chair and see them there.

Oh, and I asked for Bob Taylor's plaster bust of Mark Twain. (I inherited Bob's old office last year) I don't know what I'm going to do with it, but I couldn't leave it for some visiting history professor.

Best of all, I also got Bob's old comfy green chair. Super place to read.

And I think there's room on the wall to hang a quilt.

It's only mine for a year, but for that year, it's mine.

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If you see Eduardo, pinch him. He owes me poem installments.

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Has anyone ever used Rita Dove's "Ten Minute Spill" exercise (from The Practice of Poetry)? I use it in the classroom, because it's a great way to kick-start the poetry-writing half of the semester. I've never tried to write my own poem from it--other than doing the exercise in class along with my students. But last year I ran across this poem by Jennifer Clarvoe, in her book Invisible Tender:

Thread of Song

How would you take a stitch in time?
And where is the boy who looks after the sheep?

The blackberry bleeds on your thumb, bleeds voice.
Come blow your horn. Where is the horn?

Come save the nine lives kittens lost
the the mother's voice, the cloud, the rain,

the rain in needles. Needles lost
under the haystack, fast asleep.

A stitch to keep. Keep time. Keep time.

--I'm convinced that this poem (such as it is) arose from the Rita Dove exercise, though JC doesn't credit her in the book. I would. Wouldn't you?