After numerous interruptions and blockages I've found a way back into Appearances: A Novel in 365 Fragments, completing fragment #101 yesterday.  Fragment #100 was the breakthrough occasion in which a new character was created which should figure importantly in the rest of the book.

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Earlier this week I had lunch and a nice visit with my good friend Jessica Grim.  She's the only poet I know in Ohio who I can talk to about anything and everything.  We only see each other a couple of times a year but the conversation is always easy and seamless--as if there had never been an interruption.  Such friendships are rare for me--and priceless.

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Listening to Keith Jarrett's La Scala cd.

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Received in the mail yesterday:  Captain Poetry's Sucker Punch: A Guide to the Homeric Punkhole, 1980-2012 by Kenneth Warren (BlazeVox, 2012). I know Ken somewhat from the time I was involved in a poetry reading series in Cleveland.  He inscribed my copy of his book thusly:

-for Tom Beckett-
-IN Kent
-IN VISION
-IN IMAGE
-IN SOUL
-IN WATER
7/25/12

 It's an impressive volume of essays, reviews, etc.  The work of a lifetime which I'll be a long time absorbing. And hopefully writing about at some point.  I particularly want to spend some time with his many rich essays and talks on Charles Olson.


I've barely dipped into this book and already I want to recommend it to anyone interested in contemporary poetics.

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