An awesome reading for ACM last night—everybody damn good poets and a short story that was highly disturbing and yet very good—the mark of all great literature I’m beginning to think. I did come to the conclusion that I shouldn’t drink past a certain point before getting up to read. I was a little buzzed and flubbed a couple things I normally wouldn’t. “iceboxes and lightbulbs” became “lightboxes and icebulbs”. I corrected myself, but maybe I should have just pretended that’s what I intended. Yet another casualty of PWI---Poeting While Intoxicated. There ought to be a law.
Outside of indulging my Dorothy Parker tendencies, it’s been an insane week and I’m glad it’s over. Having to come back to work at all after a week off wasn’t fun, but add in that weird flu thing earlier in the week, the heat /humidity city griminess, and various ends that need to be tied and I’m a wreck by Friday. I want to crawl into clean white sheets and sleep for days. I just might.
Addendum: I was watching on the news this morning the hysteria over the new Harry Potter book. While I could never get into the first one (not enough sex and violence for my taste--or violent sex--), I remember the kids clamoring for our sorry three copies of the first two at my old job, the one in the elementary school library. It has this odd, glassy-eyed effect on even the most reading reticent kids. Even the second graders who were barely reading at all.
I read somewhere that the initial print run is in the millions and I imagined how very nice it would be if poetry books could garner that much enthusiasm, people dressing up and waiting in lines overnight at bookstores. Though not so cheesy and geeky. Maybe cooler, like Rocky Horror Picture Show crowds.
