Oranges, Sunshine & 31 linear feet of poetry books

I recently bought a Robert Hass book of essays, Now and Then, because I want to go back to school. About ten years ago, a friend who was auditing one of his undergraduate classes at Berkeley asked me to join her at a session. So I took an afternoon off work. With a hundred people in the lecture hall, no one noticed an interloper taking notes. The subject was Emma Lazarus. He built such a rich context around her that it made me want to read everything she'd written. Coincidentally, I soon started work on my M.F.A. in creative writing at the University of San Francisco.

A decade later, the expense of a Ph.D. program isn't something I want to tackle. The program would design much of the work I would have to do, taking me away from current projects. And the good Lord know there are enough poetry books in this house that I haven't thoroughly read, I don't need to go adding to the collection.

Originally, I thought I'd read a Hass essay, then search my library or the public library, if I didn't have any of the subject poet's work. Easy enough to read everything I could put my hands on. (A professor once called me an information sponge.) The first essay was called "Wallace Stevens and Joni Mitchell." After I began to read Stevens, the poems made two things clear. Some of them had to be read aloud, with a cup of tea in hand, preferably on the patio in the shadow of orange trees. Second, the only way to learn from the reading was to write a response to it.

At times, I actually hunger to share what I know about poets and poetry. As a volunteer with WriteGirl in Los Angeles, there's an opportunity of share some of this. But the next step in search of a larger audience seems to be an exploration into the ego-driven world of blogs. Since they don't seem to be defined as daily journals, I can share the occasional stops I make on my slow ride through Now and Then.