Lithuania: J

Jake Levin: A poetry Fulbright scholar, the organizer, the finder of EVERYONE'S hostels, hotels, apartments-- the coordinator of all arrivals and flat mates. The creative force behind the readings, the cultural events and seminars. The leader of a bagel collective and a leader reclaiming Jewish Vilna's history.

And, the man can wear color coordinate his bandannas! Cute.

Lithuania: I

I am visiting the Baltic Sea, surrounded by fifty foot tall sand dunes. I am taking self portraits. One of these is on purpose, the other isn't. I am thirty-one and I think I look thirty-one in one of the pictures and maybe not in the other. Huh!

Lithuania: H

Hothouse: A reading inside one, on the grounds of a tiny restaurant across the river.

That's Robin Hemley-- the incredibly funny, awesome writer.

Jake Levin told the owners that they could easily grow mint in the boxes-- and look at them now! They had been empty before his suggestion.

Lithuania: G

Ghetto: Vilna (the first recorded spelling, the Jewish spelling) was over seventy percent Jewish before WWII. Most were taken to fields and
or forced onto trains and
or fled and

See the small star carved into the cement? This was taken on "German Street," the entrance to the largest ghetto.

I cannot describe the story I read about a rabbi, a Torah and a blade. I cannot.

Lithuania: E (I am mostly proficient)

Edward Hirsch: I can say that he changed the way I read and write poetry-- in six classes! He is a powerful teacher and it was humbling to be in a workshop with someone so completely devoted to poetry. I return to the poems he picked out for us to study and can hear his New York accent talking about Krakow vs. Warsaw, a city intact and a city destroyed, a city of traditional poetry and a city of modern. And of course, Milosz. Milosz, Milosz, Milosz-- a man born in Wilno (Vilnius).

Hirsch taught me to care about form more than I have in the past. He taught the importance of respecting someone as a "maker." His classes were the academic highlight of the trip.

Lithuania: F

Fish: smoked, salted-- only fish, no- fisherman points at self-- oh of course, I don't want to make you local color, some folk attraction, your fish is just beautiful, peels from skin and from bone smokey, oily. In a plastic bag on a six hour bus trip next to an Utenos "Basketball Celebration" beer. Eaten at a rest stop on cement stairs, scrape scales from nails, wash hands in beer. Return to bus and try not to touch anything with oily fish beer hands. Smile at person in seat next to me, sip on beer when driver isn't looking.

Lithuania: D

(You understand)