Thing-Poet admits to moments of feeling like a geographically-isolated pariah wearing outdated costumes ill-fitted to her post-change, orange, lumpy physique.
The cool poet-parties occur at League Headquarters far away, and she is not invited. So it was fun, this week, to give a talk and a reading at the first residency for the brand-new Randolph MFA, which was full of superheroes.
That’s in Lynchburg, Virginia, so she didn’t even have to fly. There was an awful lot of car-time, though, for Poet-Thing and Comics-Man, between zipping over the mountain to the residency, picking up their son in Ohio, and driving two cars to D.C. so they could help their daughter move out of summer housing and into a dog-sitting gig (she’ll be home, too, before too long, which is wonderful, although it also means that summer is winding down, which is less wonderful).
So during this last quiet week, Poet-Thing hopes to do lots more reading and writing and playful working–some of it involving poetry comics. Quiet-work play, after all, is one thing rural Virginia is good for.
LESLEY WHEELER 