Hi Gabe--I followed your link and was thrilled to see that your book's
finally in print. It may be awhile before I can order a copy--still being
unemployed and subsisting on my working-class entitlement of $396/week (but
it's far cleaner than shoveling shit for rock stars, I suspect)--though will
look forward to it all the more. So much poetry (some other Pitt offerings
included) is pretentious and/or preachy these days that your voice really
refreshes the genre. (Intriguing sample, that Yeats poem, with its
Lennon-McCartney echoes--really took me back to the brave old world when
lies were lies and not some lipsticked service to an alleged "greater
truth"--as if!)

By the way, what are you doing in Illinois? Thought you had a good job in
Mississippi(?). Sorry to have been out of touch, but it's taken all my
resources to stay on my feet (more or less) while under siege by someone who
thought me to blame for his own intellectual crimes--or so I gather, and
really rather doubt on the whole. Feeling very alone these days and missing
me old Dad mightily--

Candice



> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Gabriel Gudding" <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Thursday, October 24, 2002 1:49 PM
> Subject: Re: lets talk about the weather
>
>
>> oh Claire. That was lovely. I was almost there with you. Almost there.
>> Thank you. g
>>
>> At 12:57 PM 10/24/2002 +1000, you wrote:
>>> Here in the Central highlands you just motivated me to go outside, where
> the
>>> wind is cool and it has actually been raining.
>>> This means that I may not have to worry about friends with tanks not
> having
>>> water this summer. When you visit you don't expect a cup of tea.
>>> It also means there will be no work in the long paddock for poor poets.
> The
>>> long paddock is the side of the road where cattle graze in drought. My
>>> partner was hoping to be sitting in a ute reading keeping half an eye on
> the
>>> cattle.
>>> It is spring and it is heady, so much so the willy wag tails fly into the
>>> windows like they are drunk or mad or love crazed. The birds are so loud
>>> here, the magpies warble, the great  white cockies squawk My children
>>> complain its harder to do a teenage sleepin then when we lived on
> Dandenong
>>> road with semi-trailors gearing up and down.
>>> The jasmine is growing into this room where I write to you almost
>>> overwhelming the smell of books.
>>> Claire
>>> ----- Original Message -----
>>> From: "david.bircumshaw" <[log in to unmask]>
>>> To: <[log in to unmask]>
>>> Sent: Wednesday, October 23, 2002 3:17 PM
>>> Subject: Re: lets talk about the weather
>>>
>>>
>>>> Ha! nice one, Gabe.
>>>>
>>>> Yes it is both very late and early here. The invisibility of the
> weather
>>> is
>>>> a moot point: much of the time you can't see it, and when it is most
>>> present
>>>> it brings darkness, now and then it relents, and we get sunlight,
> rather
>>>> like prisoners allowed out for the day.
>>>>
>>>> Otherwise it broods, moodily above.
>>>>
>>>> Best
>>>>
>>>> Dave
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> David Bircumshaw
>>>>
>>>> Leicester, England
>>>>
>>>> Home Page
>>>>
>>>> A Chide's Alphabet
>>>>
>>>> Painting Without Numbers
>>>>
>>>> http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.bircumshaw/index.htm
>>>> ----- Original Message -----
>>>> From: "Gabriel Gudding" <[log in to unmask]>
>>>> To: <[log in to unmask]>
>>>> Sent: Wednesday, October 23, 2002 5:59 AM
>>>> Subject: Re: lets talk about the weather
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I suggest to you that it is very late in England. Or very early.
> Either
>>>> way, the weather will be not be visible. As the weather at this hour
> is
>>>> invisible, I submit to you that you will naturally consider the
> weather
>>>> "moody." (This is most especially because the approach of each "gust"
> will
>>>> surprise you).
>>>>
>>>> At 05:52 AM 10/23/2002 +0100, you wrote:
>>>>> In England, 'Everything' is the weather: it lours, it promises, it
> comes
>>>>> close then withdraws, it seems to be a friend then retreats into
> sullen
>>>>> hostility. Moods are all, although we live in one of the most urban
>>>>> environments in the world it hovers over us, watchfully. As if to say
>>> that
>>>>> 'you are not independent, despite your bustle, I am still here'.
>>>>>
>>>>> I've often thought that the eponym of our national poem, Mr King
> Lear,
>>>>> represents a weather god, it would be apt for this Atlantic edge
> island.
>>>>>
>>>>> Best
>>>>>
>>>>> Dave
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> David Bircumshaw
>>>>>
>>>>> Leicester, England
>>>>>
>>>>> Home Page
>>>>>
>>>>> A Chide's Alphabet
>>>>>
>>>>> Painting Without Numbers
>>>>>
>>>>> http://homepage.ntlworld.com/david.bircumshaw/index.htm
>>>>
>>>> Gabriel Gudding
>>>> Assistant Professor
>>>> Department of English
>>>> Illinois State University
>>>> Normal, IL  61790
>>>> office 309.438.5284
>>>> home 309.828.8377
>>>>
>>>> http://www.pitt.edu/~press/2002/gudding.html
>>
>> Gabriel Gudding
>> Assistant Professor
>> Department of English
>> Illinois State University
>> Normal, IL  61790
>> office 309.438.5284
>> home 309.828.8377
>>
>> http://www.pitt.edu/~press/2002/gudding.html