updates

Mike Young of NOO (that's pronounced "new" but I don't know how to make the accent mark over the second o) is taking Gelatin. I'm going to be in print! Very exciting news.

Mom and I went to the movies yesterday. We watched Whip It. Drew Barrymore did an incredible job with this film. It has the sweetest, sexiest, silliest pool scene that I've ever seen. The couple in front of us at the theater said, "white people are weird," after the scene was over.

Oh, I was driving across the Delaware Memorial and I saw a bumper sticker that said, "God is Pro-life." I had to laugh. Then I imagined a hand coming out of the sky and flicking my car into the Delaware River. Exactly.

We are meeting with the surgeon later today. I've had a lot of coffee this morning.

I talked with Cole Swensen! She approached me before the i.e. reading. She wanted to know about my salt water tattoo. She thought of taffy. Most people do. That's very curious to me. I recited the Dinesen quote for her and then I asked her about the American Hybrid project. She said it took about five years to put together and that the process of compiling the book went against her thesis! I was surprised she was open about that. The thesis-- that there aren't schools of poetry anymore-- is so well argued in the introduction. She and the other poet that put the book together had different tastes and wanted different things from the book. I'm glad that I was early to the show because I never would have had the courage to talk to her. Her reading was incredible. I believe her last line was something like this:

an army of children clothed only in rage walking on their hands across the sea

whoa.

The other two poets were incredible as well. It was a great night for Baltimore. I went home immediately after, though, because I had ridden thirty miles on my bike that morning(on the b&a trail) and needed sleep.

I woke up this morning to the scrabble of starlings in the flashing.