In any case, my apologies. A few quick notes about the things I've been reading:
Don DeLillo's Falling Man is brilliant. I used to think that White Noise was the book he'd go down in history for, but I may have changed my mind. Ask me again in a year, after I've had some time to put some distance between myself and the infatuation that comes with reading a great book for the first time, but I'm thinking that Falling Man may be the one instead. It's the kind of book that is difficult to put down, a compelling narrative, but it's also the sort of book that makes me wish I were in grad school again (or at least that it had been published while I was in grad school). DeLillo's work with trauma and with Alzheimer's, and the pairing of those two things, is brilliant. (Did I write brilliant twice? I suppose I did. But I'm going to leave them both.)
Emerson is, well, Emerson. And if you know me, you already know I enjoy reading and teaching his work. This time through, I've enjoyed the Divinity School Address a bit more than before. I'm teaching "History" this week in my American literature classes, so I'm anxious to see how it goes with my students.
I've been spending time with Ginsberg, too, and even when I think about it, I can't work through his collection in a linear fashion. So I've been spending some time with early poems like "In Society" and "The Bricklayer's Lunch Hour"--the first two in the collected works--as well as some of his Mid-50s San Francisco work--"A Supermarket in California," "Sunflower Sutra," "America," and Howl, of course. And last night I read "Many Loves" for the first time, a poem that is striking in its physicality, its intimacy, its honesty, its accumulation of detail.
From The Best American Poetry 2008, I've been visiting with Louise Glück's poem "Threshing." The space of imagination seems wide open when she writes,
The men lie under their canopy, apart from the heat,And C. Dale Young's poem "Sepsis" haunts me, from its opening admission--"God, I have coveted / sleep."--to its final question: "Dear God, how does a sinner outlast the sin?" Truth be told, that poem was what made me buy the book.
as though the work were done.
Beyond the fields, the river's soundless, motionless--
scum mottles the surface.
To a man, they know when the hour's gone.
The flask gets put away, the bread, if there's bread.
2 comments:
Have you read Wild Iris by Louise Gluck? Have you read any other books by DeLillo? I've read them all. Americana and Underworld are outstanding. I've taught high school English in an urban, low SES setting in Cincinnati, Ohio for seven years now and I stumbled across your blog a few months back. I enjoy reading your posts. I've gathered that you teach at a private school in Florida. What is it like? How do you like it? I'm just curious. Thanks for keeping such an interesting blog!
Unfortunately, all my experiences with Louise Glück have been with poems that have been in anthologies. But perhaps I'll add Wild Iris to the list of books to read. Have you read "Threshing"? Would you say it's indicative of her work in Iris?
As far as DeLillo goes, I've read White Noise, The Body Artist, and (of course) Falling Man. Underworld has been sitting unread on my shelf for a long, long time...one day soon. Or at least I keep telling myself. It's just so...long. And every time I pick it up, I think of all the other books I could read in the same time. But do you think it's worth the trade-off?
Teaching at the private school is, in some ways, the same as my experience teaching at a public school. In some ways, though, it's completely different. The biggest difference for me has been the international population of the student body. It's a challenge (teaching Emerson or Thoreau or Whitman to students whose native language isn't English) but also a blessing (having students from all over the world is a wonderful thing in many ways).
I'm glad you're enjoying the writing here, and I'm glad to meet you--as such online meetings go.
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