lovely news . . .

. . . this morning. Exactly how I like to start my days. It makes up for yesterday which was a minor run-in with disappointment.

No classes Monday or Tuesday. Fall Break. A marvelous invention. Reading selected stories from Sixty Stories by Donald Barthelme. I never would have picked up this book on my own, mostly based on the fact that they are short stories and the less than lackluster title. However, I am very grateful I did pick it up (for a fiction class), and read the intro by David Gates who addresses the title of the collection. I must say that overall, I am very impressed with Barthelme's titling propensities, being that I am myself rather title-challenged. I am going to start naming my poems Bob. Bob 1, Bob 2, Bob 3, so on and so forth. Okay, not really, but I do feel that titles are an area I really have to work at. I find them rather difficult because they are almost expected to be summations of a poem, or they draw uber-attention to a certain aspect of the poem. Perhaps this is why I am fond of long illustrious titles that bounce back off the poem or first lines that play immediately off the title.

Also finished The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova, and found out that she will be a visiting writer next semester. I hope I am able to take her class. I think of her book as being more in the pop fiction vein, and since I have had my students read Stephen King's On Writing this semester the idea of literature versus pop fiction has been on our collective minds. I haven't read any reviews of her book, but I suspect it was well received. I was more than happy to follow her down the path she took, and was pretty enthralled the entire book, and then found the ending to be almost anti-climatic. But part of me is hoping this is because she has a second follow-up novel in her sleeve, which I will tentatively call The Librarian. It seems only fitting.

Also reading Kim Addonizio's What is This Thing Called Love. Pretty much loving it. I am amazed at how she is using form in this book. Rather experimental and incredibly colloquial at the same time. Some are more successful than others, but when she is on, she is dead on. Amazing moments. I will definitely have to read her other books.

I wrote four poems last week (inspired by Addonizio), and two of them seem to work pretty well, the others need some serious life support. I like this bout of prolific writing, although the product may be somewhat questionable. It still feels like a good balance. Read a book of poetry, write four or five poems.

Considering all the news that the movie of Khaled Hosseini's book Kite Runner is getting these days, I may try to read it this week before I become immersed in knowing too much about it (which I sort of feel I do already). Of course this runs the risk of not liking the movie then, which is usually the case (books are better with the exception of Lord of the Rings, yeah I know, but come on - one can only read so many fake folk songs in horrid iambic trimeter/tetrameter).