Random reading

Yes, still packing. I wish somebody would take this apt so I could stop stopping to clean up. It's getting old.

I packed about half the poetry bookcases yesterday. (There are some things I can't bear to put in a box just in case I might wanna look at them between now and moving day. I keep stopping to read. At this rate . . . )

I've been meaning to write about Bruce Covey's new book anyway, which made my list. It'll probably make your list too.

Elapsing Speedway Organism is aswirl with things & people. It's poppy & busy. There are crowds. Tourists, often. (Americans in otherwhere mirrors.) Attractions (in multiple senses). Everyday objects rendered in cartoony strokes, somehow miniaturized, & all giving off beeps & waves. (We're to tune in, find the frequency & pick up each clear-singing poem.) Idioms, superstitions, fortunes (as in cookies), forecasts, gaming odds, instructions, percentages of chance, flight numbers, the facts & wishes that electrify a life, marking or tweaking it as it goes speeding along. As in,

Flattery

What an enchanting homepage
Everyone wishes to fast forward to you
Your expectation of citrus, lemons mostly
Cirrus constellates about you
The graceful use of your canopener
You have an impeccable sense of direction
Your thoughts, I've noticed, count to ten
The delivery of your pitch always
Catches me off guard
Salem never saw such a beauty
You have more facets than a carrot
At the top of your line, the train stops
The abatement of time is up to your shadow
You cleave the rainbow from its pot
& wrap it around your reeboks
My personality split when you
Spoke to me for the first time
Your moss gathers no stones
Even ivory would beckon your thighs
Silk would hazard your expectations
If driving east, you would
Superimpose upon the rising sun
Your duty lies in explosions
Half the meals want to eat you
Trees bend, tides flow,
Volcanoes pop, waterfalls zigzag
All toward the florid canoe of your sublimity

Though it's somewhat ironized by the title, that there's a love poem on the order of Lisa Jarnot's "They Loved These Things Too" (one of my favorites) or Ron Padgett's many you-focused ecstasies. The seemingly exaggerated line "my personality split when you / spoke to me for the first time" turns out to be apt--it feels like that, doesn't it? Falling in love? There's the You before, & the changed You after. The You that's with your beloved & the You you are when you are not. Inconsequential & practical things become adorable, "your graceful use of a canopener," and "impeccable sense of direction." It's vulnerable/trusting to engage in such silliness as "half the meals want to eat you," but there's a carnality there as well, as there is in "even ivory would beckon your thighs." Actually that's a sexy little run there at the end, if you're paying attention: your moss, your thighs, silky expectations, driving east (a little more to the right, don't stop), the rising sun (a glowing crescendo), explosions, and then all of nature climaxes too, toward "the florid canoe"--my, my!

Oh, & just in case you missed it: Collin Kelley's audio interview with Bruce is here.