A New Post

Frank Stanford

Quite a gap between posts there. That's not like me. But I have been busy with a class I'm taking and finishing The Savage Detectives and putting up storm windows and reading my friend Dawn Potter's blog and wondering where all the world's money went and putting up storm windows.

I just finished an essay on Stanford that is okay. I started with a title that came to me when I woke up one recent morning after I had been thinking about it for awhile:

The Blackest Joke: Frank Stanford’s Surreal Ontology

I liked it. I said it to myself while I drove to work. Sometimes when I was shaving. I said it at Catherine like it was a dare. Then, I decided I better figure out what the hell it meant, so I started making up stuff, pretty much. It's amazing how closely critical writing resembles creative writing. I mean, you can only map so much out on an outline and then you have to close your eyes and start typing.

Anyway, The Savage Detectives is so sadly thrilling. It would be book of the year if I kept such ratings. Now for another long book, probably David Copperfield.

Eric Baus at Visiting Writers Series

Local poet Eric Baus returned to town Monday night.

I read his book, The To Sound, all the time. I try to be like that book.

His next book, Tuned Droves, is out soon, and his readings from that were my favorites of the night.

Here, a form of Haiku jujitsu.

I asked him who his favorite English teacher was at Snider H.S. and he said "Randy Rusk and Pam Teagarden." Randy taught me, too, so I thought "yeah, Mr. Rusk. He yelled a lot--in a good way."

Noah Eli Gordon also read, a poet of diverse talents and wit.
He blinked in every picture I took of him, though.

not that drunk driving is funny

but this is.