Read yesterday & today, new book:

This Much : selected poems 1970-2000, by David Cashman. Catskill Press, 2003. David used to edit The Providence Review with Mark Halliday. I met him back in the 70s and then didn't see him for 30 years, until I started going to church across the street from my house & found him there. He's an excellent poet, & I admire & envy this book. Makes our blogger's games look like so much trivial pursuit.

(Poetry happens, sometimes, on a different level, unbeknownst, anonymous almost, closer to ordinary non-literary life, without losing any of its authority, integrity, freedom, "literariness".) (I'm being somewhat more inarticulate than usual this morning.) (The ambitious & the professional can lose touch with it. I am speaking for myself here, others may identify. This may be some kind of natural or moral cycle, leading perhaps to re-discovery.)