Hiatus
This is the first summer I am spending working full time in a very long time. Since I spent all of my life until this year as either a teacher or a student (or both), I had most summers off, with adjunct teaching jobs usually unavailable for summer sessions. I had little income in those lean summer months, but I enjoyed the time to focus on my own creative projects. I always saw summer as most academics do: as a time to dig into my own work, settle in deep and write up a storm. I rarely went on any kind of vacation in the summer, especially with no income for those months, but I found more pockets of ease and rest.
Things are different now. For reasons I can’t really get into, I need to take a (hopefully brief) hiatus from the newsletter.
When in doubt, go read some poetry. Here, start with this summer poem:
The Philosopher in Florida
C. Dale Young
Midsummer lies on this town
like a plague: locusts now replaced
by humidity, the bloodied Nile
now an algae-covered rivulet
struggling to find its terminus.
Our choice is a simple one:
to leave or to remain, to render
the Spanish moss a memory
or to pull it from trees, repeatedly.
And this must be what the young
philosopher felt, the pull of a dialectic so basic
the mind refuses, normally,
to take much notice of it.
Outside, beyond a palm-tree fence,
a flock of ibis mounts the air,
our concerns ignored
by their quick white wings.
Feathered flashes reflected in water,
the bending necks of the cattails:
the landscape feels nothing—
it repeats itself with or without us.
Copyright © 2001 by C. Dale Young. Reprinted by permission of TriQuarterly Books/Northwestern University Press. All rights reserved.