Now to get back to poetry. Struck by the tone of Tony Tost's Invisible Bride -- except that the word tone doesn't cover all the categories of what struck me about the experience of reading IB. Yes, it speaks to the affect of his calm, wry, hurt, bemused, and occasionally joyful prose. But I want to point to his seamless and undetectable alternation between continuity and discontinuity -- he makes jumps feel like little steps and he imputes leaps to ordinary incremental storytelling. I especially like his freedom from smarm and smart-aleckiness. He dispenses pathos, but just enough.

The concept of voice in poetry has been discredited to death, thank goodness, but there is something like a signature -- which is different from voice how? Don't know. I do know I feel both safety and excitement when I read Invisible Bride, a book I look forward to rereading. Reminded me after I'd put it down of both Brenda Coultas and Naomi Shihab Nye; didn't think of anybody at all while I was reading it, except maybe Joe Donahue and TT's blurbers.

I was in Kinkos last night printing up some pages for the show -- they want $0.50 per 8x11 sheet. LSU is charging $16.95 for Tost's 57pp, or $0.30 a page. Can you tell I'm writing this from an early lunch break from the finance class?