I’d like to say I’m blogging for extra-special reasons, but I’m not.  I’m blogging because the goblin on my desktop told me to.

As of about six minutes ago, however, I did in fact realize something a lot like news:  I now know the title of the collection I hope to finalize in the coming year.  I wrote a few weeks ago that I had a more vivid sense of the sectional arrangement of the assembled (and to be assembled) poems, but I didn’t have the right words to describe the larger coherence that would embrace the sections in question.  At approximately 9:17 AM, however–after consulting the OED to check the depth and dimension of the final term I had in mind–I committed to the title and the scope of the project.  I would call that closure, if it didn’t seem so much like an opening.

I’m feeling pretty mellow this morning, perhaps because I purged most of my bile over the weekend.  I’m finding that my days, when I can keep my vision fixed on the near term, can’t gather quite enough momentum to be festive or disappointing.  I did the work I intended to do, got a little good news, and got a little bad news.  I’ve got Robert Browning on tap in class today, but other than that, I’ve just about flatlined.

I’m wondering if that flattening of affect has something to do with countervailing catharses:  in addition to the feelings of ease achieved by getting all those nettlesome bits of news out of my head, I also got kicked in the grill by a devastating poem on Friday:  Carl Dennis’ “With Horses.”  I try not to subject any given text to analysis during the first time through, and accordingly if a poem packs a wallop, it’s likely to catch me on the chin during that initial reading.  And begorrah, Dennis caught me once again.  I suppose I need some ridiculous feeling of joy for the sake of triangulation, but any time you can empty a bucket of anger and tickle the heartstrings in the space of 24 hours, I think you’re doing pretty well for yourself.

WordPress is being a little tetchy right now—methinks Monday morning, especially after a newsy weekend, is a popular time for blogging—so I’m going to sign off and see if I can get this mounted.  Count on more thrills and chills the next go round, when I plan to reveal too much, yet not enough.

In an effort to make my life a little less noodlesome, I broke some bad internet habits a couple months back.  I weaned myself off some message boards, killed an e-mail address or three, unsubscribed from some listservs, and otherwise tried to decrease my virtual footprint.  Nowadays, when I fill in my odd hours, I tend to visit various news sites to see what’s cookin’.  In retrospect, I might have been better off paying my regular visits to existentialclambake.com.  (NB:  that is not a real site, though it should be.  The less you know about my browsing, the better.)

I am no rhetorician, nor have I recently stayed at a Holiday Inn Express, but the rhetoric out there in the newsie world alternately amuses and appalls me.  We have the “Arms Across Zimbabwe” coalition government appeal coming out of Zanu-PF, which would be a lot like a great big gubernatorial hug… were it not for the rampant beatings, egregious attempts at ballot box stuffing, inflammatory rhetoric, and other fairly compelling evidence that any coalition would be little more than a travishamockery.  We have the Team America spirit of ex-military talking heads trumpeting our successes in Iraq and Afghanistan…which doesn’t seem quite so shiny when we learn that these fellows own stock in the war machine and have been strategically placed to serve as “message force multipliers” (which ranks only slightly behind “Hilary Duff scorpion pants” in the list of search terms my irresponsible readers have sent me this week).   And of course we now have the Clinton campaign’s “Debate Watch,” an awesomely middle-school attempt to imply that Barack Obama is scurred to enter the ring with Hillary once again.  Note to Senator Clinton:  if the actions of your campaign staff seemingly would cast you as a 21st-century Grover Dill, tittering in the background to George Stephanopoulos’ Scut Farkus, all the Rocky references in the world won’t make you look tough.  Not a good week when John McCain halfheartedly lodges a form protest and outclasses you by a chickahominy mile.

Because I am wired improperly, however, such news makes me crave poetry.  While waiting for my copy of The Mariner’s Wife to arrive–oh yes, I’ve ordered; don’t you want to be cool like me?–I’ve been digging through some Dennis and Doty, and their complete works (or as many of them as I can find on Amazon) stand a good chance of becoming a self-inflicted gift.  Political rhetoric, even when it’s been turtle-waxed to a brilliant shine, makes me hungry for the chewiest words, the most appetizing language, the meatiest, most filling discourse I can find. 

I’ll only be able to nibble for a week or two, as the semester’s winding down here and I’ve got to finish scripting a new prep for Summer I.  After that, however, I would urge you to keep your appendages away from the table:  the bald man’s gonna get his gorge on.