subtext

I took my oldest son, 15, and his girlfriend to a bookstore the other afternoon. My son and his girlfriend both think going to a bookstore together is a great way to spend time with each other; I feel my wife and I have done something right. I wandered off to look at CD’s, philosophy and poetry. Every now and then I would see them in a different section of the store huddled before the shelves, looking at the back of a book and whispering together. It was cute. I eventually found a poetry anthology called, “Staying Alive: Real Poetry for Unreal Times,” found a chair and waited for them to finish their date. The book is a fairly conventional collection of what Charles Bernstein would call the dominant poetic culture, which I have decided can be translated as fairly conventional accessible poetry. I decided to buy it because within the first few pages I found several poems I could use in my class next year. Some I have read before, but had forgotten, not from any fault of theirs; some of the others are new to me. So a good mix overall.