Just Wondering . . .

Actually, I'm being nosy, but how much money do you spend on books per month, average? I have to admit the dollar amount I spend is probably low. I tend to utilize the library a lot (hey, I'm poor, okay? My growing Monsters eat gargantuan amounts of groceries!).

But recently I've discovered some people spend a lot of money on books.

Like hundreds of dollars a month. Even before I had children, I might spend a fifty to sixty dollars a month on books. Now, I'm doing good if I get to buy 1-2 books a month (again, I read more than that . . . but I have to borrow right now).

Did you get that? Hundreds of dollars.

I so want to be able to do that. Can you imagine?

While I'm wishing, I really want a masters in English. I know, I know, I need one in education. But I want one in English. Or even better, I'd love to be able to take a year's sabbatical and do an MFA in creative writing. (Yes, Wayne, I know . . . I could go to Oxford. Scroll back and look at that line about the Monsters eating gargantuan amounts of food. I have to clothe them and send them to college in a few years. No Oxford for me!)

Oh, and being here would be nice:



I'm grading poetry anthologies, with the fabulous array of American poetry my kids find every year, and it tends to make me wistful for something I can't name. I know what I write has value . . . I believe all written work has value. But there's something ephemeral that I want, that I think might always be out of my grasp, and I see it in the poetry of Frost and Angelou and Collins and Ginsberg and Olds and countless others . . .

I don't see it in my work, not yet, and I'm afraid I won't ever see it there.

But it's something to think about.

Something to wonder about.

And something to work toward.