Update

Some difficulty locating wireless access, as well as time for blogging, and can now hardly remember all of the things I wanted to blather on about. All of my campus visits, without exception, have been really wonderful; each school seems like it would be a fine place study. I did, however, really, really fall in love with Berkeley, where the students dispelled everything negative I'd heard about the place--that it's cut-throat, that they thresh the chaff from each entering class, breakdowns in the halls, dissertation catastrophes, etc. And it seems, in all respects, a place where being a poet is not only tolerated but, in fact, encouraged; not seen as a quaint sideline but a vital part of some students' critical endeavors. In fact, they think of themselves as a place that offers the study of creative writing within and under the aegis of the PhD. Who would have known? I went to a really fantastic extraganza reading at the library there--Poems against the War--where Bob Hass, Brenda Hillman, Geoffrey G. O'Brien, Peter Dale Scott, and others read war and anti-war poems by others and by themselves. One of the highlights was Jennifer Scappettone, who's finishing up her diss. at Berkeley. I was really excited to discover her echoic, high-velocity, pun -and -sound-driven riffs on themes aesthetic and political.

I'll post another installment soon. It's a bit crazy here with niece and nephew and sister and brother-in-law et. al.