Saturday, February 08, 2003

In about twenty minutes a photographer friend of Emily's is coming over to take a picture of me for the back inside flap of my book. How cheerfully we commodify ourselves! I hate having my picture taken but not having to smile or pose awkwardly with relatives should improve the experience somewhat. Not that I'm against smiling, but I don't want a picture that would produce any of the following impressions:

* too cool for school
* smugness
* snideness
* fatness
* smirkiness
* thinking deep, sad thoughts
* idiotic
* whoreish
* heroic
* false modesty
* crazy
* French

Just the mug, ma'am, and nothing but the mug. And no, my dog will not be in the picture. I want to come across as a man of taste if not wealth. And the physical book itself will be elegant and perfect bound (the designer has done a fantastic job—if I figure out how to post an image of the cover here I will do so), and I make no apologies for that. I'm only getting 1,500 copies printed and I want them to be memorable.

I'd like to post something substantive about poetry here, but I'm drowning in student papers and glamour this weekend. But we're reading Lucille Clifton's Blessing the Boats for the Poetics class on Tuesday and I'll be sure to post my thoughts about it here. I've only read Clifton glancingly here and there and don't really know what to expect—I imagine more Gwendolyn Brooks than Harryette Mullen (who we're also reading, yay). Stay tuned.

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