Sleeping In The Sun

Sometimes there's enough time between busses to take a catnap.

Vote For Colin

Yesterday, Colin entered a song he wrote in a scholarship competition offered by Brickfish.com. The $500 award is given based on the number of votes each song, which must support a cause or candidate, receives.

This is promotion of the shameless sort, but anyone who knows Colin knows how much he needs the money. (Have you seen the HOLE in the sleeve of his jacket?)

Voting takes ONE second. Maybe two. More if you actually listen to the song first. Please help him out by voting here.

April Seeds Dreaming Of Sky

David Hassler
Wick Poetry Center
Satterfield Hall
Kent State University


Dear Mr. Hassler,

I arrived on campus this morning to find reminders of two great literary influences from my childhood. First, I saw signage for a Virginia Hamilton conference at the student center. Ms. Hamilton was a driving force of creativity in my hometown of Yellow Springs, Ohio, until the time of her death. Climbing the stairs by KIVA, I smiled. I like to see Virginia honored as she certainly deserves to be.

Then I picked up a copy of the Daily Kent Stater. Who should I find on the cover but David Hassler, the first poet I ever recognized as such and another literary influence on me! I excitedly read the story about Maggie Anderson and learned that you work here at Kent State, and in the Wick Poetry Center (to which I submitted a poem for scholasrship consideration this past winter).

Please, allow me to reintroduce myself. My name is Elizabeth Brown, and I was a second grade student at Mills Lawn School in 1996 when you acted as Poet in Residence. Oh, how I admired you! Your residency was my foray into the poetic world.

I remember being particularly influenced by a poem from your Sabishi book. The poem is about soba noodles. I had never tasted soba noodles. I walked home from school that day and annunced to my parents that we must try them, so vivid had I found the picture you painted in my mind.

Though I was unaware that I was learning the poetic devices that would eventually frequent my writing, it was you who first taught me how to use a metaphor or a simile. Yours was the first non-rhyming poetry I had heard (Shel Silverstein and Dr. Seuss had covered that department). Even without that sing-song quality that is rhyme, you showed us how to make our words effective.

I heard that you recently completed a second residency at Mills Lawn. No doubt those youths were as inspired as I, and someday may experience the same joy that I experience now in having rediscovered your presence.

Since second grade, I have been an avid reader and writer, particularly of poetry. I've been published in a few anthologies and try to write as often as I can, though a college student's schedule is hardly leisurely enough to allow much). My passion for writing of all sorts has only swelled since my elementary school days. I am a sophomore magazine journalism and French major here at Kent State, a recent transfer student from DePaul University in Chicago. As a new student here this semester, I have ached to find familiar and welcoming faces on campus. The Daily Kent Stater caught you at such an angle that I could not see your face, but your name was enough to bring a grin to my face and that cliché to mind: It's a small world, after all.


Sincerely,
Elizabeth Brown

The Weather Made It Even Better

Last night, Colin's parents took us to the Civic Theatre to see Martin Scorsese's Rolling Stones concert film "Shine A Light."

Despite my not being a Stones fan, I enjoyed myself tremendously.

I even knocked out my postcard assignment for Photo Basics.

I'm A Pleasure Seeker, Looking For A New Distraction

I want a cameo,












... and dresses.