Talent

1.  I am re-reading that book of letters between James Wright and Leslie Marmon Silko, even though (because?) it makes me cry every single time.

2.  I read in the Boog Festival today.  It was a day of much changing weather.  A highlight for me were the poems of my pal J. Hope Stein.  A low point was having to leave after five hours due to poetry over-satiation, not getting a chance to see some of the poets who followed me, and leaving my red folder of poems somewhere!

3.  Oh, also I went to brunch with my pal and her friend Ambrose after her reading and before mine, and we talked about how the world is apparently ending, or how New York is like The Plague or Death in Venice this summer, or how Gary Shteyngart wrote a novel last year that predicted some of our present state.  (I'm teaching the Shteyngart novel, so I contributed that part.  The best thing I ever learned from Gary Shteyngart was when I asked him a question after a reading of his, and he made some comment about how his iPhone makes him feel less human, and how we shouldn't cross streets in New York and look at our iPhones at the same time, or something.  It is true.  I almost got run over while crossing the street and looking at my iPhone at the same time.  I am not cut out to be a cyborg.)

4.  What's a poem again?  What's the difference between a poem and a story and a memory of something that happened to you when you were a kid and an email you write to a friend and a blog post?  Emily Dickinson is looking at me from my Kindle screensaver with this look on her face like, "What?"  (I'm reading the Shteyngart on Kindle but the Silko and Wright in actual book form.)    

5.  Go team.