I just procured my textbooks for the upcoming semester, one of my favorite things, and yet one of the most frustrating. For the craft seminar in writing Chicago Poems (and other regional-inspired books apparently), there was, of course, Carl Sandburg's book, Jana Harris' We Never Speak of It (Idaho/Wyoming), Brenda Coultas' A Handmade Museum(New York), and not in the bookstore, CD Wright's Deepstep Come Shining, and Merrill Gillfallan's Magpie Rising. Also Eleni Sikeliano's California Poems (which I've had checked out forever and read through once last winter.)All very interesting.
The workshop requires the Poetry Daily anthology, which I’ve toyed with the idea of buying in the past, but talked myself out of it, and another, Western Wind: An Introduction to Poetry, which looks to be rather bland and typical. I decided to pass on buying this one, and checked out the library’s copy, an older edition with roughly the same page count, which means nothing has been added really. After two degrees in literature, my shelves sag with those sad anthologies, always replaced with a new edition every couple of years w/ a hefty price raising. They're pretty much useless, since most of the damn poems can be found online. (Although I admit I recently consulted my Norton Modern Poems to find a Heaney poem I couldn’t track down online.) The quality is terrible, thin paper and crappy spines. I really don’t need another one.
