The Rumored Existence of Other Poetry Collections

Recently, I ordered five poetry collections, which, upon delivery, I tore through with wild abandon. It has become increasingly difficult to write a poem, to even imagine writing a poem. The sheer idea of constructing a poem to exist in some quantum space is, in itself, an exercise in pathos—no, actually, you know those wonderful daguerreotypes that depict a person in the midst of spewing a face-filled cloud of ectoplasm from their maws in a fit of spiritual possession? It's an exercise in that. That's kind of what I imagine is happening to poets around me as I dumbly sit with pen in hand, waiting for the paranormal to take plasmic form in my mouth. Anyway. Since the inception of the blog, the goal has been to provide the nectar of writerly wisdom. (Nectar may or may not include ghastly plasma.)

WEIRD.

I'm alive--I guess--

I will as I always do, with the guilt-ridden acuity that comes with being a slacker in pursuit of some kind of excellence, apologize for my near month-long silence. It turns out that I have been doing nothing at all to possibly excuse myself of this inactivity; I am merely practicing nothing, still being matter myself, still able to clean moldy bathtubs and everything! Since we last spoke however, I've read Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart, This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald, and am now up to page 350 of Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace, the latter of which feels abso-fucking-lutely interminable. Despite the monstrosity in book-heft alone; despite the rather exhausting diatribes people would find themselves standing before me spewing on what DFW was really trying to do with this "piece"; despite the dense, long-winded chapters siphoned through nearly incomprehensible street verbiage matched only by dense, long winded chapters siphoned through mad, conspiracy-theoried scientific language that has so plagued my reading experience; despite these, I'll call them humps, there is some of the finest, most beautiful prose I have ever read.

But this isn't really a post about David Foster Wallace. This is more of an assurance post, to say that I am in the process of lining up more interviews, and that I'm not going to post my Joanna Klink review in full here because I've decided to submit it to a few magazines instead. I'm sorry that I can't stay true to you and only you, blog.

I'm also going to be teaching a class on the contemporary line, so I may post my ideas here every once in a while for you, dear readers, and my theoretical students. So just be on the look-out for that.