BBQ Time!

Busy work week with call, patient care, electronic health records stuff. Whew!

Looking forward to having my friend Joe and his wife Aspa and their kids over for a little summer back yard BBQ this evening: hamburgers, hot dogs, chips, beer, ice cream, maybe a little whiffle ball. How American is that!

Poetry group last night was fun: got to see J & J's new baby. Poems about Japanese quail month, fever dreams, autopsies, and channel surfing. Good stuff. But we missed K, who was not there to celebrate her new book.

Have been reading in the latest issue of Parnassus. Some great essays this issue: Langdon Hammer on the work of Richard Howard (whom Cocteau once advised: "what other people reproach you for, cultivate: it is yourself); Jay Ladin on Heather McHugh and academia ("Before we've read a word of her poetry, she wants us to be sure we see her as a thinker thinking about how other thinkers think of her); Garth Greenwall on Frank Bidart as a "lyric poet:" Robert Hanh on the difficulties and surprises of translating Charles Wright into Italian; Peter Campion on James Wright's "classicism." Great summer reading! I hope to take it to the beach this e-weekend.