On Comp versus Creative

I spent some time on Friday pulling up the spent tomato plants and unhitching the watering system. It's not that the summer is over in the vegetable plot, more that my summer is over in the garden. School starts in a little less than two weeks and it's time to prepare.


So I pull plants that I won't have the time or inclination to tend. Nature has been kind in that she's killed them off already, so I don't have that guilt as I load the wheelbarrow. Once the vegetable beds are done with, I pull down the revision strips (lengths of pipe insulation attached to my book shelves) in my office. They've been "knob pin" home to poetry this summer: finished drafts, early versions which are more "random words on a page" than poetry, lines of inspiration for poems not yet begun. Once these are all down and boxed, I can see my books again and I can get ready for the semester.


In the fall, I teach two sections of College Comp. I'm meeting them where they live this semester. I've discarded the text book from previous semesters and am entering the classroom with a cracking grammar handbook and a collection of sports-related texts: Hemingway's Death in the Afternoon, some essays from Best of Sports Writing, Raging Bull, and three issues of Sports Illustrated.

I also have Houseman's "To a Dying Athlete." Maybe we'll get that far. Maybe we won't.


I'm currently in "mourning tomatoes" mode. This too shall pass.