It's been sunny in Seattle this weekend. Summer's last hurrah? It was such a cool and wet August. We may not even get enough ripe tomatoes for sauce for the first time in . . . er . . . well . . . ever.

Dean and I spent a couple hours cleaning out the garage yesterday. Took a load to the dump and took a load to the shredder. We're thinking of having garage sale in a couple weeks. We'll empty out stuff from the storage locker and the basement (you know you have too much "stuff" when you have to rent a storage locker to store it). Glassware and dishes we never use anymore; framed art that we are tired of; odd pieces of furniture; books; extra garden pots and tools; maybe some of the camping gear, who knows. We did this about 10-12 years ago, and it was incredibly liberating. Hmmmmm.

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An interesting essay in Slate about the art of the poetic blurb:
Even if it comes from the most corrupt and sordid favor-trading, grant-grubbing, academic back-scratching sources, it's clear that those who are good at it are so very good at it that their work rises above its origins and deserves special recognition. It is not some degraded adjunct of contemporary poetry but perhaps its very apotheosis. It would be a tragedy to lose the poetry, of course, but to lose the even more brilliant blurbs!

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One of my writing groups meets for the first time in a couple months (we took most of the summer off). I am so looking forward to it!, but I have no idea what to bring. I'll spend some time looking through the files today. It's odd, but needing to bring a poem to group usually gets me going to read, revise, and even sometimes to draft something totally new at the last minute. I try to resist the tempation of bringing a totally new poem draft to group, though. It usually ends badly.

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