Man, I want to go to this thing: they've actually organized a conference for Frank Stanford in Fayetteville in two weekends. If I can get it approved for my professional development this year, I'm going to fly down, but time is running short for me to get approval before ticket prices go up. I wish I had known about the thing sooner, but oh well.
For the last year or so, more than almost anybody else, it has been his books that fall out at me when I go stare at the shelf. Here's one I read with my writing club last Friday, and which got a stronger reaction that I'd even expected.
Everybody Who is Dead
When a man knows another man
Is looking for him
He doesn’t hide.
He doesn’t wait
To spend another night
With his wife
Or put his children to sleep.
He puts on a clean shirt and a dark suit
And goes to the barber shop
To let another man shave him.
He shuts his eyes
Remembers himself as a boy
Lying naked on a rock by the water.
Then he asks for the special lotion.
The old men line up by the chair
And the barber pours a little
In each of their hands.
UPDATE: I'm going! My goal is to have at least one of my patented "awkward conversations with a kind of famous person who matters to me" with C.D. Wright!
UPDATE: I'm going! My goal is to have at least one of my patented "awkward conversations with a kind of famous person who matters to me" with C.D. Wright!
7 comments:
Nice!!!
Say, what was that Facebook group we were going to make?
What was it you were planning to ask C. D. Wright?
I think I'll probably ask "so when are you going to write something I can make hide or tail of?"
And then we'll laugh and she'll say "do you wanna blow this joint?" and I'll say "mos def"
and then we'll go driving down a river road with the headlights off, maybe go frog giggin', spy on a backwoods midnight revival, get chased, I'll fall down a ravine, C.D. Wright will leave me not because I say "go on, leave me," which I don't, but because she knows I left my wallet in the car and she plans to steal my last $10 and spend it drying the laundry she has waiting for her in a 'mat, sitting in a wet ball on the floor.
That's how these encounters usually go for me, anyway.
Please do not say "mos def." Just don't. :)
I can't believe you are going. One day you want to go. The next day you're going. How do you do it?
Well, Sarah, I read this book called "The Secret," or rather heard about it from a friend who saw it on tv, and according to it, the idea is, if you want something, you just go get it, so that's what I'm doing.
It's that simple.
Ohhhh, boy.
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