So many today.  So many great students, speaking truth. Fantastic students.  Their poems.

But the high point is Sharon H, who gave me a letter, written on hotel stationerys….Baymont Inn and Suites notepad paper, etc., from her spring break.  She’s from Florida, and that’s where she went, and I’m from Florida, and she knows something of what it all means to me, all the elbows and scrapes and swimsuits and sadness and sweet low suns….she gets it.  She also gave me a leaf from Florida. To smell that! And feel the waxy weirdness that is a Florida leaf. Wow wow wow.  I’m so moved by it.  I can only read the letter a little at a time.

I’m to give the commencement speech at Hope in a month and I think I might use some of the letter to launch my first draft.

Also, we did BAD WRITING YOUR WORST ever in class today and I did BAD TEACHING and the writing was so good it was bad.  What B did with that tear falling. The similes.  And: how hard it is to be so bad now that we’ve gotten so good.

Then, a committee meeting where I really made no sense at all and argued against myself and then against that….I am so terrible at meetings. I always feel like I am at the rodeo and everyone else is so brave and prepared, so horsey and spectacular and I’m standing there, in a prom dress, what what what what are we doing?

I have neglected the blog.  Some reasons: I’m doing a Poem a Day project with a friend, and the energy that goes into the blog goes into writing the poem a day.  It’s a fantastic wonderful practice, poem a day.  You wake up, as my partner says, with a poem in your heart and on your lips every day, but it’s sort of like I feel I’m swimming everywhere, through water, and everyone else is normal.  I’m just in this other country. It’s not unlike childhood or mental illness. Seeing things no one else notices.  And consuming.

I have to write though!  I have to tell you!  There are three books I just have to say READ THESE PLEASE! READ THESE BOOKS!  I spent my spring break how I wanted to spend it this year: in my house. Mostly in my bed, tub, and kitchen. I gained seven pounds. And it was the best break I have ever had. I read read read read, like how I read on breaks when I was a kid and I had to hide from my family.

BEREFT by Jane Bernstein.  You have to read this book, about her solving her sister’s murder, at midlife, but really she’s solving the problem of herself.  I couldn’t put this book down. It’s so smart. Every sentence works on two levels.  And, Bernstein is the master of summary, which you know completely escapes me. I love this book. Hard-edged and heart-full.

SAVAGE THE BONES by Jesmyn Ward. National Book Award winner. Worth it to buy hardback. I couldn’t put it down. Goes really well with Zeitoun and Their Eyes Were Watching God and you just have to read it. It’s set during Katrina, but in a way that is so smart and sneaky and brilliant–you won’t even see the hurricane coming. Heartbreaking. There’s Member of the Wedding.  And this book. Ah! Read!

THE WARMTH OF OTHER SUNS by Isabel Wilkerson.  She writes a braided history of the Great Migration, following three souls who make their way from the south to the north.  Complicated. Layered. Brilliant. Eye-opening. You must read this book.