St. Paul Delights

New Year's passed with an abundance of St. Paul delights, including a Prairie Home Companion show with free champagne, two really nice visits with a new poet friend, and plenty of face time with slightly tipsy members of the Macalester College music department. As the family knows (to the detriment of their ear-drums and patience) I was unimpressed with Billy Collins, a special guest on the radio show: the poems he read seemed to me schlocky, prosy, and often a little mean-spirited, though with occasional tingles of something more. Even though his poems are famously accessible, I think they do more harm than good in terms of poetry's standing with the general public because they are almost totally without urgency or ambition. All they could ever provoke would be a wry chuckle, and who wants to invest a lot of time for that when Garrison Keillor (with the help of Jessica's punch-ups) can deliver the same thing so much less pretentiously?

Anyway, I think I'm pretty much alone here in Irvine, me and the downed trees. I'm reading furiously in preparation for starting to teach Lit-J in only 4 days!