If you were to look at the reading list in the righthand column of this blog, you'd no doubt wonder why someone who calls herself a poet only seems to read novels. Well, in truth that list doesn't tell the whole story. To begin with, as I've been researching material for my forthcoming anthology (and by the way the publisher has okayed my table of contents; hurray!), I've been reading an enormous number of poems and writings about poetry. However, because the embryo book is under contract, it has seemed impolitic to list those works publicly without the publisher's sanction, so I haven't.

Setting aside the anthology situation, I do read many poems on my own volition, yet for some reason I rarely think of that interaction as actual reading. For instance, take that Raleigh poem I've been talking about for the last couple of days. Did I add "Raleigh" to the reading list? No. Why? I have no idea, except that what I did with that poem felt more like breathing than reading.

I don't know if my reaction is flightiness, or misplaced modesty, or something else altogether. I do imagine that it may have something to do with my scholarly anxieties: my worry that I don't know how to study a poem but only how to react to it. Still, you'd think I could manage to write the name on a list. But mostly I don't.