My life is a flurry of teaching-related responsibilities and escape fantasies. And when things started feeling really tetchy, I turned to Dobby Gibson's collection Skirmish--not least because of 1) the title and 2) that he is reading this Sunday at the Jones Library in Amherst (where I'm hoping I'll hear another Ben Kopel original introduction. If I ever do release my book of poems, I hereby request that Ben Kopel give my introduction every time I read somewhere).
I don't have anything intelligent to say about Skirmish right this minute (see: "grading" redux), but I thought I'd share just a little bit from one of the poems early in the book:
From "Mercy":
The universe expands in every direction
simultaneously at the speed of light,
but expands into what?
At the edges, it gets extremely dense.
It's all held together by eye contact.
In the center stands your father,
and in his bowl is just enough batter
for one last pancake.
We are born in tiny collisions.
Buttoned into our best suits
we eventually drift apart.
So, I'm off to drift (more or less in my best clothing) into brief contact with my students. And hopefully later into contact with a balloon-type present. I hope you enjoyed your brief touchdown into a Dobby Gibson poem. And I hope I can write some things later about his reading. And about his poems. And about Ben Kopel.
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