I'll pause to let you hear the white space.

This post was slated to be an exegesis of "Grocery shopping with Andrew," but as I have great faith in the intelligence of anyone who regularly checks my blog (and I don't feel like exegesis-ing right now), this is going to be my Blessed English Reading Series Post that occurs every once in a while.

Today's reader: Lance Larsen. Pause to prepare yourself.

I may have blogged this before, but I have an LL (Lance Larsen, not LadyLondon) complex. I've had him for a workshop before, he knows who I am, he stops to chat with me in the hall, etc. I'm completely comfortable chatting with him about anything, including poetry. But after I stop chatting, leave his office, walk in the opposite direction, etc., I freak out. Because that was Lance Larsen I was talking to. He's one of my favorite poets. The way that Kim Johnson makes me all tense inside and sitting on the edge of my seat? Just the opposite--I can relax. I can slowly savor every word. I love them both, but Lance is much friendlier.

Shoot. I have to conference with a student now, so I'll leave you with a few quickly jotted down statements from the reading. First, from Kapka's favorite Jorgensen, who intro'd Lance:

Becoming either one--a Mormon or a poet--is difficult.

Got Rilke?

Try making poems of whatever belongs to you.

Go home saying that.

And from Lance (Note: I was severely entranced, so I didn't get every pearl of poetry that fell from his lips.)

[Books] are the highest form of consumer therapy

ongoing meditations on mortality (re: his poetry)

Artists are the antennae of the race. (Ezra Pound)

I'll pause to let you hear the white space. (reading a journal entry)

There are a million ways to say California, but only a few promise rest. (From his poem "The World's Lap")