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Not only close but intimate reading
My spouse, Chris Gavaler, and I met while working on a Rutgers undergraduate literary magazine, The Anthologist. We were both chiefly poets then, shaping each other’s opinions in long Sunday night arguments over submissions (and sometimes over a twelve-pack). After graduation, we moved in together, after which followed many years of reading each other’s drafts; […]
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Errant in the Bewilderness
If I told you I’m just screwing around this week, I’d be exaggerating. This is exam week after our twelve-week winter term, so there’s lots of grading, as well as chores involving grants, event programming, etc. Liberation from the rigors of my former schedule, though–during which I was trying to do much of the same […]
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Bad girl, with rainbows
It’s so easy to veer off the path your mother sent you down, with cake and wine for grandma. Neglect to whiten your teeth or pluck your eyebrows; be less than completely self-abnegating in a meeting; show anger on your own behalf; gain weight and fail to express shame. And I’m the stereotypical eldest daughter: […]
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Dancing to Loy: teaching modernist poetry and performance
This is the moment in the term when some of my craziest teaching experiments come to fruition (or wither pathetically on the vine). I always assign something fun or peculiar in the last week or two of the semester, in part to combat exhaustion as everyone faces down final papers and exams, and in part […]