Back from Ohuckiana

I'm back from Ohuckiana, where I spent a super week-and-a-half at my parents' house: weeding and mulching some of the old flower beds, Canasta with Mom & Sandy, fabric- and book-shopping with Mom, lots of quilt chatting but not much actual progress on our respective projects, though I did help "square up" Mom's blocks for the quilt she's piecing. . . Flew home yesterday, on my burfday, and fell asleep during the flight--woke as we descended through big blobby white clouds over the hills and farmland and past the two active/two dormant stacks of the Three Mile Island plant (practically next door to the Harrisburg Airport).

Lots of correspondence to catch up on, as well as lesson plans for my fall classes. . .

The garden! Four o'clocks are just starting to bloom; white and purple phlox are in full show; the first nicotiana sylvestris has started blooming (nowhere near the 3-4 feet tall that we expected, and I haven't gone out at evening to check the scent) (raining tonight); the morning glories are HUGE and threatening to sprawl into the laundry room; all my wee impatiens plantlets, set out from rooted cuttings last month, exploded into full bloom while I was away; the buddleia bushes have finished their first round of flowering and need deadheading; the rudbeckia and echinacea are completely loaded with blossoms; the cactus-flowered zinnias I started late from seed are sturdy but no flowers just yet. I picked about 30 tomatoes from Sasquatch--just the ripest, though tomorrow there'll be as many again to pick. And the crabapple tree, absolutely loaded this year, is sagging even more under the weight of so much fruit. (We'd noticed this before, of course, but after several days away, the progression is evident. May need to brace some limbs before this is all over.)

Glad to have rain tonight.

Thanks to D & S for the birthday wishes!

Fitting it all in

Oh, get your minds out of the gutter. I was just thinking that it's been almost a week since I went to Lock Haven, where they treated us exceptionally well: nice group dinner beforehand, *reserved* parking spaces on campus *next* to the venue (whoda thunkit?), and a good-sized audience: mostly students who seemed to have read at least some of the work ahead of time. Oh, and the check was nice, too. Thanks again to Marjorie, Jerry, and the LHU English Department. And it's never too late to buy a copy of the Common Wealth anthology: click here for more information and a "buy it" link.

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Randy is on a well-earned break, a road trip to visit an old friend from our Houston days (hello, Hadi!). I haven't gone out yet for junk food, so I may be handling this better than expected. We rarely--and I mean, rarely--spend a day apart, and I can think of only one occasion in recent years when Randy took a road trip (hi, Martin). I've been lucky enough to give a few readings or trek to AWP every other year. . . Anyway, I've a stack of papers to attend to, so the television stays off tonight. We've about two weeks left in the semester: I'm meeting with three or four students every day, there's a lot of West Branch business that needs my attention [final editorial decisions for "my" issue will be made on the 27th], and all the details of the June Seminar are being put into place. (Writing, you ask? Who has time to write? --I asked my students to write ghazals this week, and, unable to find three solid examples that didn't take too many liberties with the form, I ended up dashing off example #3. I called it "Spontaneous Ghazal." Does that count?) (Does this?)

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Today, in my intro cw class, we studied Thomas Rabbitt's "Meter Reader*." I'm introducing slant rhyme tomorrow and Thursday. They're writing quatrains for next week and sonnets after that. I almost wish we had an extra month.

*-see Behn & Twichell, The Practice of Poetry

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"Daily poem" for today's class: I read Jill Rosser's "Lover Release Agreement," from her second book, Misery Prefigured. She can work a mean sonnet:

Lover Release Agreement

Against his lip, whose service has been tendered

lavishly to me, I hold no lien.

Here's his heart, which finally has blundered

from my custody. Here's his spleen.

Hereafter let your hair and eyes and breasts

be venue for his daydreams and his nights.

Here are smart things I've said, and all the rest

you'll hear about. Here are all our fights.

Now, whereas I waive rights to his kiss,

the bed you've shared with him has rendered null

his privilege in mine. Know that, and this:

undying love was paid to me in full.

No matter how your pleasures with him shine,

you'll always be comparing them to mine.

Best comment in class today: the "Oh, SNAP!" someone uttered after hearing the poem.

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Off--

--to AWP in the morning. The past week has been a blur of preparations and extra conferencing with my students. I may post from Atlanta. If you're coming to AWP, stop by the West Branch table!

[photo: Bucknell, Night Series]