One reason I'm sad to no longer be in the MFA program: I can't take this class with Juliana Spahr. I will try to work my way a bit through the reading list. Part of staying engaged once we fall outside the academic sphere appears to be continued reading and thinking and struggling with the ideas behind the work. At least, it seems to me, that if I'm not investigating through my poetry, then I'm just driveling self-absorbed trivialities.

I realized a long time ago that I was deeply interested in the world, in all sorts of different things and ideas and people and places. And instead of focusing in on any one thing (being a physicist or an activist or, god forbid, an accountant), I would be a writer, and I would write in any direction I felt like.