Atlanta

I'm in Atlanta, Georgia, at the annual conference of the South Atlantic Modern Language Association (SAMLA). This morning, at the first session of the conference, I presented a paper on Spokane/Coeur D'Alene author/filmmaker Sherman Alexie's 2002 film The Business of Fancydancing. As is usual, I didn't finish writing the paper until an hour or so before the panel began, so I hadn't eaten anything. When the session ended at noon, I walked out along a cold and windy Peachtree Street (NE) and after a couple of blocks found a little place called Noodle. After taking a seat at the bar, I looked at the menu only for a moment before something caught my eye: a bowl of kimchi fried rice for $9. I could add beef to it for $2, so I did and then added a Korean beer called "Hite." Good lunch!

Afterwards, I returned to the conference hotel for the session that began at 2:45. Because of my strong interest in the work of Nathaniel Hawthorne, I attended a panel focused on his last completed novel The Marble Faun, published 150 ago in 1860. It was a fine panel with three insightful and interesting papers. Having been somewhat bitten by the poetry bug in October, I couldn't help write down some thoughts that came to me during the session.

At SAMLA, 2:45-4:15

We sit in this small room
on an unnumbered floor
in a hotel in downtown Atlanta,

a room filled with a few ordered chairs
and fewer scattered people.
Two smart plain women and a pretty
nervous one read essays
on the beautiful Nathaniel Hawthorne.
I nod, nearly dozing, thinking I must
read his Marble Faun again.