What a pleasure to see and hear Deborah Kim, Pablo Pinero Stillmann, and Bethany Carlson read their luscious and shimmering, haunted and inspiring poems and short stories on Friday the Thirteenth. And what a pleasure to be an audience with Lana Spendl, Sarah Suksiri and all the others who believe in the “unequivocal glamour of language” (a la Bethany Carlson)
I clean a yoga studio in Chicago for three hours once a week in exchange for unlimited yoga classes. (In reality this equals about 2-4 classes a week.) And while I mop, vacuum, dust, and wipe I revel in three hours of podcast joy. This last week I covered a shift for another yogi-cleaner so by the second shift I was out of podcasts: I was caught up on This American Life, The Moth, Poetry Off the Shelf, Radiolab! Left to peruse the podcast warehouses, I found New Yorker’s aptly named Fiction Podcast. In this podcast, usually 30-40 minutes long, a NYer published writer reads another NYer published writer’s story–from ANY magazine since the New Yorker started printing fiction! Not only does this podcast provide storytime, but also insightful conversation between author and fiction editor, Deborah Triesman. Now, I love any good storytime but I’ve also enjoyed hearing writers talk about other people’s work. Today, I entered into the world created by Bruno Schulz. He’s a surreal and amazing writer from the 1930s who I had never heard of. Now I can say his writing is completely enchanting and it will keep you warm, and walking. But you don’t have to take my word for it….take a look, and listen, HERE. Enjoy!
I have the potential to be a big hair poet, at least with the hair part. My hair gets big when: I brush it and oddly enough when I do not brush it. On Tuesdays and Thursdays when I teach, I can’t seem to get the rhythm right with the commute, showering, tying it up, letting it dry especially in the winter grey mornings.
So this week I embraced it. Instead of trying to tie it back, I dug my fingers and messed up the hair a little more.
This moment before class when I could not tame the tresses with a hair band, and I was left with a choice to leave it as is or make it a bit bigger made me think about the personas we project around us. There is poet-professor I know who plays the part of tweed-coat-wild-grey-black-hair-unshaven-slightly-angry-poet professor so well. Does he know he is playing it? Does he try to or do his untucked button-ups and elbow patches just come naturally to him.
alessandra simmons 
