Let's all eat cake

Above, my little Eliot and I share the messiest birthday ritual ever: baby's frist birthday cake-dive. Well, the party was a huge success, aside from running out of food and being really stressful. It's really hard to throw a party at someone else's house when you're totally in charge of everything. I definitely needed a vacation from my vacation.

Anyway, my little man is one year old and in only two days, things have pretty much settled down on the homefront. Back to school and studying. Read a big chunk of Shelly's "defense of poetry" yesterday, which is really quite interesting, especially since I'm reading it right after book X of Plato's Republic which is all about how poetry is infectious and, well, basically worthless because its only purpose is to mimic a thing and the person who mimics a thing has no knowledge of the thing he mimics, blah, blah, blah. Shelly, on the other hand, seems to privelege the mimetic value of poetry and uses it as part of his defense. He also thinks heroic odes are the best form of poetry EVER, which I would say is a slightly dated opinion.

I've also been reading the new(ish) collected works of Faye Kicknosway, which came out in 2002 I believe, and is very spectacular. She's been one of my faves since I came across a used copy of her book Man is a Hook, Trouble in a used bookstore in Boulder (once owned by the famed essay writer, Reg Saner, BYW. He signed it and everything. . .). Her collected book is titled Mixed Plate and is quirkier than ever. After thumbing through it for a few days, I'm only now opening it to the first page to read it cover to cover (my usual book-reading process) so I'll surely post more about it once I'm in the thick of it.

I got my rejection yesterday from Harvard review (as expected) and it's quite a nice postcard. One of my favorite rejections yet. Ninth Letter also has a great rejection slip- very sleek and crisp, and the stamp on it seems to change every year. Good stuff. Nothing beats the crusty BPJ rejection from about a month ago. Yummy.

My friend, Scott Glassman, got three poems accepted into the Iowa Review which is just awesome. His poem "Burning, so you swim" is probably one of the best poems I've read all year, so look for it in the upcoming issue (i assume, no?).