Tuesday, November 22, 2005

Hurcun, or AWOL

A is for Annotated Bibliographies.
My students are supposed to be emailing their homework to me. Which means my inbox is full with homework assignments I need to read and respond to. I will never, never, never cancel class again.

W is for Wislawa Szymborska.
So in September or October I purchased miracle fair, a collection of poetry by Szymborska, who is fast becoming my favorite poet. . . or at least one of my favorites. I read the first section of the book, shared it with some people who agreed that it was brilliant stuff, and then duty called and the book was left lonely on the shelf. I waited too long, ignored it, allowed its pages to collect dust. And so it got revenge. When I finally had time to pick it up again this weekend, I found that starting in the second section, every other spread was blank. At first I thought it was an artistic, poet thing. But then I checked the table of contents and poems were supposed to be on those pages. I took the sad specimen to the bookstore, got in-store credit, and, after a day of mourning, bought Szymborska's newest book, Monologue of a Dog. This one has Polish on the verso and English on the recto--and it's hardback. And yes, I do spend too much money on poetry.

O is for "Out," which is the next word in (one of) my favorite Shakespeare passage(s).
Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow,
creeps in this petty pace from day to day
to the last syllable of recorded time,
and all our yesterdays have lighted fools
the way to dusty death.

L is for London buddies.
There has been a sudden influx of Londoners (i.e., students who went on the 2002 Theatre in London study abroad program) in my life. First Kimball "accidentally" forwarded me some piece of chain mail, which I teasingly rebuked her for and then we spent an hour on the phone catching up. And then yesterday I got an email from Todd. Just before our London trip, Todd had been an intern at BYU Magazine. He would tell me about it as we walked back to the flats from school and I decided that was what I wanted to do--and I did it. He was also the one who recruited me for Inscape. I didn't join the staff until after he had left, but I still blame him for my illustrious editing career at BYU. (Did you catch the slight sarcasm there? Just checking.)

P.S. I'm still in Provo, waiting for the parents to show up.

3 comments:

Tolkien Boy said...

And you didn't come to Poetasters? Shame. We had a most enjoyable evening, and you would have heard my infamous "Pink Christmas" poem.

Alas, it is too late now.

JB said...

Wow. I didn't know books could get revenge like that! That's...strange...hopefully the one you got this time is less spiteful.

And Happy early Turkey Day!

Kristen said...

happy hurricin thanksgiving...

 

Template by Blogger Candy