Merry President's Day...

I hope you enjoyed your day off, or if you were like me, your day at work minus the reward of mail when you got home. The fellow having a sit just North of here is one Millard Fillmore...he was a president and according to this picture quite unevenly skin-toned.

A few poetry related things: Tomorrow, come on down to good old Hyde Park and watch Betsy Wheeler and Joshua Marie Wilkinson hawk their wares at the Hyde Park Art Center. I'll be there, if you don't know me, ask around...I'll be happy to say hi. The reading starts at 7 and if you live anywhere else but Hyde Park...I'd leave early. I've been looking forward to this reading for quite awhile, and have no doubts that it will live up to my self-imposed hype.

Also, I found a 1st ed. copy of Frank O'Hara's "Lunch Poems" at the antiquarian book store last Saturday. I bought it for only $8 (what a deal!) and it used to belong to Ralph J. Miller Jr. I know this because his name is inside the front cover. I think I'll write my name just below his, that way neither of us will lose it.

Last Friday I spent the evening at the Checkerboard Lounge with a friend and her parents...inevitably the question regarding, "what kind" of poetry I write came up. I have to say, that is the hardest question in the history of questions to answer. It's a question only non-poets will ask, which, I guess, makes it not so difficult (figuring they don't really give a shit, they're just trying to be polite), but I always try, like an idiot, to answer them. And my answers fizzle down into a puddle of mumbo-jumbo that make me sound as though I'm making the whole, I'm a poet thing up.

Which I am...