I asked Ali to name for me without looking at the table of contents ten poems of James Wright for me to re-read:

• The Old WPA Swimming Pool
• In Response to the Rumor that the Oldest Whorehouse in Wheeling, W.Va Was Closed
• The Branch Will Not Break
• St. Judas
• The Blessing
• Autumn Begins in Martin's Ferry, Ohio
• Beautiful Ohio
• The Scar (not the title, but something like that)
• Hook
• Green Wall

Then I asked her for a second list, this time looking:

• All the Beautiful Are Blameless
• The Accusation
• At the Executed Murderers' Grave
• Goodbye to the Poetry of Calcium
• Two Hangovers (called The Branch Will Not Break on the list from memory)
• Having Lost My Sons I Confront the Wreckage of the Moon
• A Poem About Breasts
• The Old WPA Swimming Pool in Martin's Ferry, Ohio
• On the Liberation of Woman
• She's Awake

I was surprised by the sudden discussion of revision and prosody in "She's Awake." I find I have to sit with Wright's poems for a long time before I can move on to the next. I'm so used to -- trained to -- consume poems, burn through them, look for the irreducible spark doubting its presence. These read differently.

I've been working on a reception model building on my back-and-forth with Jonathan. It may involve diagrams -- we'll see.