I woke up this morning feeling stoned. Well, rephrase: I woke up this morning feeling like I had eaten one too many pot brownies last night. My eyes wouldn’t open out of their own volition and as I got up to find my way to the bathroom, I had to fumble through the halls using a bastard form of synesthesia, brushing my fingertips along the walls. I made it to the bathroom just fine, thank you. I think this is just the result of the second day after an all-nighter. Anyway, not stoned and I certainly didn’t have pot brownies last night.
No special brownies, but I did have my favorite dish from La Casa. Helena invited me and Melissa to go to dinner with the Wilson Poet, Julianna Baggott. Earlier in the day, Helena had rationalized inviting us, saying that we were both poets who also wrote prose. You should’ve seen H’s face when Julianna came to our class and, among other nuggets of truth, declared rather vehemently that she can always tell when someone writes poetry who should just be writing prose. She went on to say something about how wrong it is and blah blah blah. I kind of stopped listening because H looked like she had choked on a fly. Oh well, I can’t write prose or poetry, so there we have it!
Vegetarian quesadillas. Nearly everyone at the table (okay, that’s an exaggeration—Helena, Danit, Julianna and I) all ordered the veggie quesadillas at my reccommendation. “They’re $3 cheaper than the vegetarian fajitas, yet they’re made with the same sauteed vegetables and it comes with yummy melted cheese on top!” I’m not sure how much pride I should take in being so well versed in La Casa’s menu. I just hope nothing went terribly wrong with the meal and H, D or JB felt like regurgitating their food during the reading.
The reading was wonderful and I’m excited to be an old lady, teaching Baggott to my community college creative writing class (God help me!), and being able to say, “You know, I met her back in the day. We went to dinner at a Mexican place and her baby kept handing me a straw wrapper. It was a fun game!” I’ll probably also say something about how great it is that she’s a poet who writes about the act and art of writing, a la Wallace Stevens (“You like it under the trees in autumn,/Because everything is half dead…The motive for metaphor, shrinking from/The weight of primary noon,/The A B C of being.”) . I’m sorry, I can’t help that I’m still in love with Stevens. Man is the ultimate abstraction? I love that shit. Anyway, a poet who deconstructs poetry within a poem is admirable in my mind because they tell me what poetry looks like, how it breathes and moves and changes and appeals. It’s like watching your favourite DVD with the director’s commentary on; you know you’ve loved the movie all along, but getting the voice of someone making their artistic intentions clear? A whole new movie!
Read Julianna Baggott’s Compulsions of Silkworms & Bees, eat a cheap vegetarian quesadilla, and celebrate your own inability to make either delicious poetry or Mexican food. That’s what my Friday schedule looks like!
