I had a fun time at the Floating Bridge reading last night. Nancy Pagh read from her chapbook, After, which is a series of poems about a painful relationship that has ended badly. To write the poems, she turned to poems like Dickinson's "After great pain, a formal feeling comes," and Eliot's "Prufrock," and others, and wrote a poem "after" it. A kind of imitation, or riffing off, of the original. For the reading, Nancy had planted several people in the audience who would stand and read the original poem, and then she would read her "after" poem. It set up a really interesting call and response kind of energy, something I had never seen done before at a reading, and I liked it.

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I have been on CME this week (continuing ed at UW). I usually do this conference every September, because it's convenient, and it's really very good. So far the most interesting presentations have been: Moe Haglund's talk on the management of ascites (she is such a hoot; she could be Ellen and have her own talk show!), Al Berg's latest on the USPSTF (United States Preventative Services Task Force) guidelines: he is just so matter-of-fact about it, and takes no prisoners. Rebecca Dunsmoor-Su's talk about chronic pelvic pain and the "Neuromatrix"--if I were a woman with pelvic pain, I would go see her.

It's kind of fun to be "back in school" for a few days, and to walk around the campus, and down the halls of the medical center (it's where I went to med school and did my residency, so there are a lot of memories here). But how in the hell did I (or anybody) ever sit through all those hours & hours of classes? Egad. I am bored silly and sore in the butt from sitting after 2 hrs max, and need to get up and move. And besides, it has been just GORGEOUS out the past few days. And it would be a shame to miss out on the sunlight and the Vitamin D.

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I am reading in Port Townsend Thursday, for the Northwind Arts series. I have no idea what I am going to read yet. Lately, I have been starting with new stuff, and then reading from the last book. But I'm bored with that, and want to mix it up a little. Hmmmmm . . . . we'll see what I can come up with.

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