Back at the alma mater they're protesting the cancellation of Laura Bush's little poetry get-together at the White House... this is happening all over of course, but it warms my heart to see it at IU. I was actually part of that scene when I was there, although the magazine my friend and I published (which, amazingly enough given the long years it's been defunct, is still online) deliberately excluded poetry, in favor of prose. It's hard for me to get excited about the cancellation as a freedom of speech/expression issue, but I do think it's hilarious to see the nation's artistic elite reject the first lady's heartfelt advances. It's too bad American poetry is in such decline.