"School poetry teaching too limited"

So Ofsted, the UK's education inspector, says, and once you read this article in The Guardian, you'll see why.

Landis Everson, 1926-2007

A Berkeley poet whose work I've much admired and enjoyed. Here is the Los Angeles Times obituary, and The Academy of American Poets has a short poem of his online.

Prague reading, 5 November, belated photos

Top: My reading at The Globe Cafe (there were more people to both the left and right, but the picture's cut them out).

Bottom: I was interviewed afterwards for a student literary magazine at Charles University, by the lovely Liz Skrbkova.

Both photos were taken by Michaela Sladeckova.

Current Issues

Though I myself am ill (it's been a bad autumn for that), the magazine appearances continue in a healthy stream. An "ars poetica," "Postmarked," will appear in the 19 November issue of The New Republic, and currently I have poems in The Liberal, Poetry Review, and Shearsman.

Women in the UK Avant Garde Poetry Community

In the new issue of Jacket, there's a fascinating forum on "Post-Marginal Positions: Women and the UK Experimental/Avant-Garde Poetry Community." Highly recommended.

A postcard from one of my nieces

(Picture: Constitution Trail, which runs through Bloomington and Normal, Illinois)


Dear Aunt Carrie, you are nice and you are always funny I like it when you came on Christmas This this post card has a trial on it and I walked on it p.s my mom had her baby. Love, Kaylee

In this week's TLS

appears my poem, "David Smith, 'Wagon II' (1964)." I saw the Smith exhibition at Tate Modern twice; I found the trajectory of his work and numerous individual pieces fascinating.

Irish Poetry Night, 11 November (or, A Great Excuse to Change the Subject)

I am happy to announce two more confirmed readers for the Irish Poetry Night. Along with me, Karen Hoy, and Donald Gibson, David Hale and Susan Mackervoy will be reading. Don't let the unfamiliarity of the names influence you: neither of these poets seems to know the strength of their work, so they have yet to even submit (see, I'm worked up, a split infinitive) to journals fully deserving of them. Both also read very well, as I can attest to from personal experience.

That's 11 November, 7 p.m., at The George on Woolley Street in Bradford on Avon. Come one, come all! It's always a jubilant night!

The folks

are recovering nicely, I understand (no thanks to me). Last night, two days after his biopsy and apparently high on morphine, Dad phoned Mom and thought he was calling from an insurance company office in downtown Bloomington. She says he was like that a lot in the weeks just after his coma. It sounds funny here, and I laughed when Mom told me the story, but I remember seeing Dad in April, when his thinking was starting to clear but he was still very confused, and in person it's distressing, disarming.

Uncollected Poems: 1992

History of Western Civilization, Part I: Final Exam

for Elliott Kai-Kee

In 399 B.C. Socrates drank hemlock
What significance does this have for you?
Because, like Petrarca, you pursue the sanctity
of your soul through a modified form of dialectics,
the questions more or less exacting on different days
dependent on an infinite number of variables
(i.e., lust, humidity, familial concerns)
Because you burn without consequence

In Alberti's On the Family, why were you humbled
and somewhat despondent when reading his discourse on idleness
and his claim that it is the fountain of all sin
when you are uniquely compelled to cultivate enlightenment
and how does this relate to the question on Socrates,
in particular to the aim of dialectics,
and your faceted identity as a student

In conclusion, write an essay on your identification
with Diogenes, with references to the wine cask
he slept in, his matted hair, and rapturous diatribes
Consider Hector's speech to Andromache in Homer
and her plea for mercy; and do not begin
without pondering the "covenant of the heart"
Jeremiah prophesies in the Old Testament
and its importance in the interpretation of your goals
Find your elusive desire in precise terms

written 17 August 1992
published in Poet & Critic