Lots of fun with the reading at Nova, with Jesse and Jill (we were billed as the "triple J," kind of like a pro wrestling smackdown), and extended fun staying with Jesse and Lyn, with special guests Kimberly, Jane, and Maybelle, and as always, our Sammie.
The organizer for the reading, Richard Ryals, is a tremendously kind-souled and generous man, and we learned that ours was the last installment of the series, at least its formation of it at Nova. After the reading, we went to a terrific Indian restaurant (I had aloo golib), and Richard was telling us of the lack of support he had from the Nova folks for putting up the readings--clearly he was tired and frustrated. It reminded me of the suspicions cast against creative writing folks by otherwise friendly academics, just how uneasy that relationship is, which is also true at my home institution, even though on the whole that relationship is as healthy as I have seen it at almost any other university I've experienced.
To be sure, many poets and fiction writers invite those suspicions, just through being ill mannered, but there's a point where it just gets to be silly, juvenile. So much of it is a paltry turf war, battling over the most measly scrap, only because we all have so little. Fortunately, on both sides, I know enough good folks who see the bigger picture, who understand that the real enemies out there are the politicians, bio-techno-media honchos, etc., who love to see us fight and squabble, confirming only our own irrelevance in our sad pillow fights.
The organizer for the reading, Richard Ryals, is a tremendously kind-souled and generous man, and we learned that ours was the last installment of the series, at least its formation of it at Nova. After the reading, we went to a terrific Indian restaurant (I had aloo golib), and Richard was telling us of the lack of support he had from the Nova folks for putting up the readings--clearly he was tired and frustrated. It reminded me of the suspicions cast against creative writing folks by otherwise friendly academics, just how uneasy that relationship is, which is also true at my home institution, even though on the whole that relationship is as healthy as I have seen it at almost any other university I've experienced.
To be sure, many poets and fiction writers invite those suspicions, just through being ill mannered, but there's a point where it just gets to be silly, juvenile. So much of it is a paltry turf war, battling over the most measly scrap, only because we all have so little. Fortunately, on both sides, I know enough good folks who see the bigger picture, who understand that the real enemies out there are the politicians, bio-techno-media honchos, etc., who love to see us fight and squabble, confirming only our own irrelevance in our sad pillow fights.
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