Poetry Slam

I've started writing poetry. Don't ask.

I showed one of my first efforts to Ben, who sees everything before my writing group.

"It's good," he said.

"Really? It's, like, my first poem. Good? Really?"

"Yeah, it's good."

I basked in his praise for a few hours before I thought to ask a follow-up question.

"What, exactly, was good about it?"

"Your poem? I understood it."

"You understood it."

"Yeah, you know, some poems you can't understand. I was able to read yours."

"So your standard for 'good' in poetry is (a) written in the English language and (b) intelligible?"

"It makes me sound like a philistine when you put it that way."

I stopped basking and got back to work.

New Design

I spent today switching blog templates. I liked the old one, but this one lets me get a lot more in the way of lists and other stuff into the sidebar in a space-efficient manner, so I'm going with it. I'll probably continue to tweak it for a while longer—comments and suggestions welcome!

The photo in the header is actually of the tree behind our house. I took pictures with our digital camera, imported them into iPhoto, cropped one to fit the new design, punched up the color a smidgen (OK, three smidgens), and voilà! I do love my Mac.

In Which I Realize What a Bad Person I Am for Patronizing a Chain Bookseller

"Hi," I said, walking up to the employee at the desk on the second floor in the literary nonfiction section of the big chain bookstore out by the mall. "Do you have the new Best American Essays?"

"Is that, like ... a book?"

Yes, my good man, it is exactly like a book. In fact, it is a book! Even though it is National Sarcasm Awareness Month (and thanks to the fabulous Miss Conduct for the notice!), I keep this observation to myself. I really want that ... book thingy.

"Yes, it's a series that's published annually. I think this year it will be Best American Essays 2008."

He types it in on the computer, with Ben and me looking over his shoulder.

"Yep, it's in stock," he says. "It's downstairs by the main information desk."

I sigh audibly for his benefit (I am a jerk) and head down the escalator. How can you not have at least a copy or two of Best American Essays in your essay section? I realize I am about to support, though my patronage, both this bizarre shelving scheme and the hiring of employees who have to think about whether something called Best American Essays is a book. I feel even worse because I heard this volume was available though the email newsletter of an independent bookstore that I love, but that is also a good 40 minutes from my house. I am a jerk, and lazy, and a bad, unreflective consumer.

Two take-aways:

1. Best American Essays 2008 (yes, I did buy it) totally rocks, about which more soon.
   
   
2. Find and patronize your local independent bookstore. Do it even when it's inconvenient and more expensive. The aggravation (and guilt) you save may be your own.

The Final Top 10 For 2007

Safekeeping, by Abigail Thomas
A Three Dog Life, by Abigail Thomas
Here If You Need Me, by Kate Braestrup
Tell It Slant: Writing and Shaping Creative Nonfiction, by Brenda Miller and Suzanne Paola
Housekeeping vs. the Dirt, by Nick Hornby
The Polysyllabic Spree, by Nick Hornby
"Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?", by Beverly Daniel Tatum
The Namesake, by Jhumpa Lahiri
The Stones of Florence, by Mary McCarthy
(Not that You Asked): Rants, Exploits, and Obsessions, by Steve Almond

2007 was, as is often the case for me, a year of author jags: Abigail Thomas and Nick Hornby both had multiple books in the top ten. There's a fuller discussion of Thomas's work here, but let me take a moment to sing the praises of Nick Hornby. Both titles on my list are collections of his book reviews for The Believer. I would love Hornby forever on the basis of his appreciation of Marilynn Robinson alone, but in addition to that he is everything one could want in a reviewer: opinionated, funny, forthright about his prejudices, willing to be pleased, and, above all, firmly on the reader's side. He talks about books the way your best-read friends do—as if he has discovered something he knows you'll love and can't wait to tell you about it.

Excellent Technical Blog Post on Writing

I subscribe to a lot of technical blogs for work. This post was on one of them, Signal vs. Noise, today: [On writing] John Gruber, Paul Graham, Joel Spolsky, and Judge Judy. Well worth reading.