Saturday, August 23, 2008

Payment In Kind

Did a workshop for some sort of lit seminar this morning and got a heap of book tokens for Kinokuniya as a reward. Lovely idea - I'm donating some to Fa Fa and Fi Fi and we plan to 'spend' them together. It's a mark of my estimable character that I'd agreed to do the thing before I knew about the tokens. Are they taxable, I wonder?

Anyway, I had a lot of fun looking at some short poems and hope the recipients felt the same way. I slipped in two by the wonderful Archie Ammons and found myself liking them even more after we'd done the lit crit bit on them than before. I suppose that might be a useful definition of a good poem: something that survives being used as an 'unseen.'

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

My friend Susan, who lectures at NUS, says she met you; apparently, you made an impression! *grin*

Brian Connor said...

Yes, the lady said she knew you, and I almost asked her to spill the beans, but time was not friendly, alas.