The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Julia here. Ah, National Poetry Month. Suddenly poetry is inescapable, it seems to seep from everywhere. Last weekend caught the last day (practically the last hour, actually) of the POETRY and its ARTS: Bay Area interactions 1954-2004 exhibit at the California Historical Society, which featured art by poets, poems by artists, collaborations between poets and artists, etc. Features included Norma Cole's fabric-sketchbook installation and hand-drawn poems by Bob Grenier and other works too numerous to mention here as I trip toward sleep. I love that the quiet little gallery is tucked away on Mission Street not two doors down from my very first office building from my very first days in San Francisco, when I worked for a quiet little women's history research group. I loved working in the Financial District - my well-paid lawyer friend would treat me to bagels and smoothies for lunch and the SF MOMA is free once a month and the incomparable Alexander Books was just two blocks away. What have I been reading lately? "The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time." Immediate and wonderful. The other big news, of course, is wholly self-interested: come fall, I will be a student again ("but was I ever not?") in Philadelphia, city of my grandmother's birth but a new city to me. I'll look for her there, I'll study poetics and critical theory and write smart things, and our little press will truly become TRI-COASTAL (east, west and Mississippi, kids). Alright, time for sleep. More to come.