So practically all of my students have revealed themselves to be past or present pyromaniacs, which I salute and endorse, but it's just funny. I'm not sure how it even came up, but apparently a good portion of them spent their childhoods burning stuff up. Many of them come from more rural backgrounds and I think it's more common to burn leaves or rubbish than, say, someone who lived within city limits where there are often ordinances against burning. I had to tell the story of one of my brothers setting the doghouse on fire years ago. My own poem, "The Pyromaniac's Eulogy," has its roots in my firebug childhood.
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Fighting off a cold. Feeling ok.
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Saw A Very Long Engagement this weekend. A little long, I thought, but lovely.
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Today's word is ASAP. I'm using it as often as possible. It makes me happy.
About Me
- Paul
- Paul Guest is the author of four volumes of poetry and a memoir. His debut, The Resurrection of the Body and the Ruin of the World, was awarded the 2002 New Issues Poetry Prize. His second collection, Notes for My Body Double, was awarded the 2006 Prairie Schooner Book Prize. His third collection, My Index of Slightly Horrifying Knowledge, was published by Ecco Press/HarperCollins in 2008. His fourth collection, Because Everything Is Terrible, was published by Diode Editions. His poems have appeared in Harper's, The Paris Review, Poetry, Tin House, The Kenyon Review, and elsewhere. His memoir, One More Theory About Happiness, was published by Ecco in May 2010 and selected for the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Program. The recipient of a 2011 Guggenheim Fellowship and a 2007 Whiting Writers' Award, Guest lives in Charlottesville, Virginia.
3 comments:
I think we are all fascinated and drawn to fire. I suspect it predates the modern concepts of the human.
Feel better soon. If you feel feverish, drink lots of fluids.
Famous past time.
If you are ever behind a K-mart in the drainage ditch: Take a Nylon sock(I don't know what they make them out of now); set fire to the end then proceed to twirl in as dangerous and careless manner as possible; the little globs of fiery nylon that fly off and stick to things make a great noise like a zipper being zipped except better. I have no idea how none of us ended up with a glob of that in the eye or a napalm like burn somewhere else. Of course, we enjoyed having bottle rocket wars back then also. :-)
I don't know if you've been following all this GoogleWhacking nonsense, but I found one today, (and I think you should assign the creation of these to your students -- cue evil laughter): Pyromania Sestinas.
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