long weekend

• Good friends in town from Baltimore. Lots of carousing, good food, good drink, long walks, etc. One particularly noteworthy beer from Berkshire Brewing Company, an Imperial Stout aged in a whiskey barrel. Very tasty, very high octane.
• Spent the majority of last night working on Michael Carr's Platinum Blonde. It is very close. Hoping to have it and February at the printers soon or printed out soon.
• Embarassingly behind in correspondences & feeling like a heel. Will catch up this week. Thanks for being patient, I've been swamped. It is not for lack of appreciation.
• Agree with Jonathan on Guest's "ungraspable quality". Her work has always been opaque to me after a certain point. I've often heard people refer to Coolidge's work as opaque, which I can't understand unless they are tone dead. It has taken some effort for me to appreciate Guest, I've had to do a saturation job with her work, read it and reread it until it begins to permeate me. This is an approach I often will take with a poet, even if I get it from the get go. To allow the work to work me over until it echoes in my ear and head over and over, then any kind of opacity is disarmed through familiarity even if it remains on some level.