This was the first week of classes at the University of Iowa and somehow, what with meeting new students, attending meetings, and navigating a new computer that actually has Satan in its operating system, well, I've managed to drop off the blogosphere. I really hate dropping off the blogosphere because doing so makes me feel the old Lutheran panic of my upbringing. That is, there's a whiff of failure about the whole affair. This has nothing to do with my readers or even with the reality principle. The condition I speak of is analogous to having something troubling in your shoe.
Meantime I'm off to a good semester with students both undergrad and grad, and we're talking about poems and essays and what could be better?
I told my students in the undergrad class that Walt Whitman was very likely a frotteurist–a person who has orgasms from casual touch with strangers. In general terms one wants the students to get their money's worth out of a liberal education.
I must now contend with new information. Expand! Rouse the wits!
I told my students in the grad class that the word "fud" exists in the Oxford English dictionary and it means a "rabbit's rectum" –I wanted the MFA students to get their money's worth as well.
It is possible that my early fascination with the writings of Kurt Vonnegut Jr. has mangled my sensibility.
If I ask the question "whatever became of me?" there will be no end to the inquiry.
S.K.
Poet, Essayist, Blogger, Journalist, Memoirist, Disability Rights Advocate, Public Speaker, Professor, Syracuse University
You certainly caught me, off guard with the Walt Whitman remark. I am not sure if you’re serious or what.
I heard of a book you wrote and it has a scene of you riding a bike. I can easily see the reactions of others, as I had seen it on my mother. I was born with low vision and it’s a little better than yours. Still, it doesn’t stop the worriers out there. BTW, I never suffered a serious injury riding my bike, as a kid.
The last mental image I had was of you swimming out into the center of Lake Winniepinniewhatever, and then you seemed to quite disappear. Me and Leonard are worriers; on the day Virginia took her last walk down by the river, he was wondering why she was gone so long…
Glad all is well, except for the new PC system — weren’t these originally introduced so that they would be helpful to humankind? Wasn’t that the point?