This morning I went to the Phillips and got back to working on the museum manuscript---I had gone with the intention of writing about the Klee paintings but ended up mesmerized by a small Cezanne in the corner of a room.

Came back home and found out I'll be reading with Anna Ziegler at GW in November and that in the middle of my life, Sonia Sanchez is doing something (more than writing poems) about the war. Yesterday my friend Leslie asked me to give some insight into what's happening in Israel and Lebanon because I'm the only Jewish person she knows.


http://www.citypaper.net/articles/2006-07-06/cover.shtml

I keep watching the news and really don't know what to make of all of this. One of my students wrote a phenomenal vilanelle about it, and I'm glad to see politics coming in to the arts. I have been talking a lot to them about the importance of art and how it can help us to see the world, and to inspire us to reconsider our positions, to examine new ideas, and to perhaps even move us to action.