NoraSawyer.com

So. This past Tuesday, the Western Association of Schools and Colleges announced that it was terminating New College of California’s accreditation. As most (if not all) of you are aware, New College is where I earned both my masters degrees, where I finished my bachelors, and where I taught as an adjunct from the fall [...]

And this article from the Chronicle for Higher Education explains why not:
“It’s like we have this trick scale… Here’s how that scale works: Self-doubt and negative feedback weigh heavily on the mind, but praise barely registers. You attribute your failures to a stable, inner core of ineptness. Meanwhile, you discount your successes as accidental or, [...]

So, I’m reading tonight at the Bazaar Cafe on California St. here in San Francisco, between 21st and 22nd streets. The reading starts around 7:30ish. Ish because I’m coming from work, and god knows how I’ll get there on time.

from Unforseen
Evocation by Micah Ballard
From the burialgrounds of Old Metairie& hallways thru pyramids
with unnumbered bonesto the 3 St. Louises& live oaks of Cypress Grove
onward we carry whatever has traced our way. So might the soil
turn over — Apparitionscome forth, this pathhath only one following
one way to get away.East of [...]

The White Fires of Venusby Denis Johnson
We mourn this senseless planet of regret,droughts, rust, rain, cadaversthat can’t tell us, but I promiseyou one day the white firesof Venus shall rage: the dead,feeling that power, shall be lifted, and eachof us will have his resurrected one to tell him,“Greetings. You will recoveror die. The simple curefor [...]

I’m having trouble sitting still. There are — let me count them — seven windows open in my browser right now, one unfinished email waiting (five if you count the ones I’m intending to write, but havent started), and (if we might go outside my computer screen for a moment) two open books and [...]

5. Light and Shade: New and Selected Poetry, by Tom Clark
Vagabondage
Summer nightklang of stars
inner acoustic
water diamonds aroundthe oars

Gnosticism VIby Anne Carson, from Decreation
Walking the wild mountain in a storm I saw the great trees throw their arms.Ruin! they cried and seemed aware
the sublime is called a “science of anxiety.”What do men and women know of it? — at first
not even realizing they were naked!The language knew.
Watch “naked” (arumim) flesh slide into “cunning” [...]

by Tom Clark, from Night Sky
Black doldrums, then a stir, then tackle snapping —Which would you prefer, the calm after, duringOr before the storm? Anxious news fluttersIts broadsides across our ragged, tatteredSails; lightning darkens, and it rains moreThan if the sun, drunk the night before,Staggered by a wave, fell below the hatches;While the moon, [...]