I never gather Duncan. I try to read the poems assigned, I never get them. I buy some of his books, don’t think I’ll crack them. I pay $300 for this class, I’m not sure why. I pay it in installments once a month, and I get shy about my childish checks with purple swirlies on them and a Comic front. I think I should have soberer checks like a real poet.

Trying to contribute. I translate a poem of mine into Olde English. Enjoy this exercise. I’m asked to read it aloud, a fairly strugglish effort. Seems okay. Better in Olde English than it was in New. Lisa picks out phrases in our poems. Well, should I toss the rest away, enshrine that phrase? Who knows.

I learn some techniques, puzzle over leading vowels. I want craft but I don’t want it. I am interested in the other students. I’m interested in shaping the interactions. The environment is so subdued, inhibiting. I ask a lot of questions. One dominates. She seems suitably irritable for a teacher of poetry. Poetry teachers swimming daily in bad words. THere are no highlights. I observe the women’s clothes. I’m familiar with an odd fact or two, like Ian Hamilton Finlay’s death this year or fallout on the Hanford Reservation.

Somewhere I don’t bloom. People very sparing with email, commentary, keeping their vast opinions to themselves. Closetsfull of opinions, jamming in on the shelves.

One of my thematic exercises highlights the word Intimacy.

I go to Bernadette Mayer’s reading at St. Mark’s. Appreciate it. I read Winter’s Day from cover to cover on my 2nd try.

I drop Ashbery’s name a couple of times, get a small sound of acknowledgement from Lisa, but no more.

Incomprehensible.