Hey! Check out "Esteban's" response to my last post on the Comments page of "The Hummingbird's Workshop." It's very cool, and very thoughtful after my jolly rant. Don't worry, Esteban--I have been a dedicated academic, too. We change lives and open the world, and my own world was definitely opened by the academy. I'm just having fun--gadfly hour at the Urrea ranch. If you sit on too many PhD committees, you start to think you need some Hells Angels to ride through just lo liven things up. Especially if you teach where your general modus operandi is The Theoretical Theory of Theory. What are we teaching when we teach Writing? Are we making writing teachers, or writers? I just don't know. I know Kim Stafford, or the wood sprites at Fishtrap, make writers. The pustules throbbing at the heart of someplace like, oh, CU Boulder's "writing" program--they have that nose-to-bung thing in full force. Too bad, too, because I lucked out and stumbled into a golden age before evil-hearted medicrities took over. Any grad student from my days there can tell you what it was starting to promise to become...and did not. So, Esteban, brother, you can come free to my writing institue! But all the others pay double! Oh, and I finished the edits on House of Broken Angels. It will begin its long journeys through the publication--or rejection--wilderness this week. Let's see what my mentors at Little, Brown think. And, finally, I'll be heading for the Virginia Festival of the Book this weekend. I get to do a panel with Chuck Bowden on everybody's favorite topic--immigration! And I get the opportunity to read with Howard Norman and Lee Smith. Saturday looks like one of those long literary days. Then, Spring Break! Maybe I can write a book that week. XXX, L

# posted by Luis @ 7:42 PM