Just finished a week of on call. And now, today, Saturday, it's as if Spring has broken out in Seattle. Me so happy!

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I've been reading Tony Hoagland's new book, Unincorporated Persons in the Late Honda Dynasty. I love his sense of humor and irony, and his willingness to take on politically incorrect topics. But the book is a little hit and miss for me. Sometimes the targets he takes on are a little too easy, and the poems come off as preachy. I'm thinking of poems like "Expensive Hotel," and "The Story of White People."

My favorite so far: "Personal." Who can't love a poem with lines like this:

. . .

Get over it, they said
at the School of Broken Hearts.

But I couldn't and I didn't and I don't
believe in the clean break;

I believe in the compound fracture
served with a sauce of dirty regret;

. . .

from "Personal" pages 48-49


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