Nice to see Kelli Russell Agodon and Timmy Liu in Crab Orchard Review: Ten Years After Documenting a Decade which I am reading straight through. A small miracle because I am finding it hard for most journals to hold my attention that long—I could barely get into Mary Karr’s article on religion and poetry. I know there has to be something in there but I am not finding it.

In the mail yesterday: Crab Orchard and An Anthology of Contemporary Russian Women Poets (I’m in heaven.) At the moment I am reading Anna Swir’s Talking to My Body. Thank you Miss Laurel K. Dodge for pointing me in her direction; she is simply amazing.

Which of course leads to the question of the day, is there an advantage to having English NOT be your native language as a poet? Does it allow you a deeper ability to stretch words? One of the things I try hard to do when teaching drawing and painting is to teach my students to loose themselves in an object. Stand there and look until the jar is no longer a jar. I’m famous for taking a painting and making my students stand on their heads….now tell me what you see?

I understand the basic principle in art, if one looses the object it has the ability to take on other form. But do I understand this in word? If all cars are called rutabagas, how does this change the function of a car? And if you speak several languages you already know in one tongue a word can mean this, another that.