I just got back my first real criticism of my poetry by a Published Poet.

The upshot: I'm too self-consciously clever. But apparently my poetic voice has a dark tenor he wasn't expecting.

I completely see where he's coming from. I just need a thicker skin, I think.

I feel like I should have something to add now, but I really don't.

I should be reading Saussure right now

I could be spending my time working on papers and assignments due before the semester is over. Instead, it would seem that I argue the finer points of feminist theory and paint in between classes.




My head is a funny place to be these days. Things are mostly well, and sometimes not well, and sometimes great.

Here, have a Sue Goyette poem:

"The True Name of Birds"

There are more ways to abandon a child
than to leave them at the mouth of the woods.
Sometimes by the time you find them, they’ve made up names
for all the birds and constellations, and they’ve broken
their reflections in the lake with sticks.

With my daughter came promises and vows
that unfolded through time like a roadmap and led me
to myself as a child, filled with wonder for my father
who could make sound from a wide blade of grass

and his breath. Here in the stillness of forest,
the sun columning before me temple-ancient,
that wonder is what I regret losing most; that wonder
and the true name of birds.