After reading the packet that was assigned to us. A couple of the pieces really stuck out to me. I enjoyed Michael Van Wallenghen's poem Walking the Baby to the Liquor Store. His precision for word choice adds an ambiguous sense of purpose for walking the baby. On going to the liquor store he says, and I quote "Believe me, I wouldn't miss these excursions for the world. I wouldn't miss them even if it meant giving up the National Book Award." He's willing to give up a book award for his trip to the liquor store. The baby is just how he rationalizes taking the walk every day. As he comes home, immediately he has a drink, puts the baby to sleep and passes out on the porch. The poem ends with a bleak passage.

     The last line "...watching the fireflies coming on and going out again in the long grass like so many sparks flying off the anvil of the world." Is such a beautiful line. It evokes this primal sense of creation, banging on the anvil, forging the world.  But I ask myself what type of world is he forging for his baby, as he's passed out on the porch?

     The other piece I enjoyed was Wallet by Allen Woodman. The story picks up with an old man who's been pick-pocketed and he's intent on playing a trick on the thief. His actual baiting process, is written well by Woodman, describing this bumbling old man that's really hamming it up dangling a fat worm on a hook. It's comical because you get this sense that the old man really wanted no contact with the thief other than giving him a bogus wallet. Was it a waste of the thieves time? Was it a waste of the old man times? Or the narrators? As Woodman says. "Life is the same old story told over and over." The thief tries to run, the old man tries to run, the narrator runs. And so the world goes on running.