25 March 2008

new blog header

Several folks have commented on how great (and appropriate) the old header was..."Nothing is plumb, level or square." I love that line, but since I was technically using it without asking, I decided I shouldn't make it into my header with getting permission first. Whether or not they will grant it, I have no idea. Alan Dugan died a few years ago, so first I've got to figure out who to ask...

I fell in love with the poem the first time I read it, in Modern Poetry class as an undergrad. We were instructed to choose from a list of poems and explicate them, without using any reference materials--just our own ideas about the poem. Of course, the professor, who I believe hated me, told me that all my ideas were wrong! I mean, seriously, how do you instruct someone to write their own opinion about something and then say it's wrong? At any rate, I read my paper again years later and decided she was probably right.

The complete text of the poem is located on the lower right of the page. I found a link recently that lets you listen to Alan Dugan reading it himself, but it was different than I imagined, and not in a pleasant way, so I'll leave it to you if you want to search it out yourself.

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