95. Elisa Gabbert writes } “What I miss about childhood is…”

Friday, my eldest and I will visit Boston to look at colored glass and ice and to listen to Elisa Gabbert read from The Self Unstable. Prose poems; of them, Black Ocean sez, “combines elements of memoir, philosophy, and aphorism.” Which doesn’t make them sound at all different from billions of poems. The difference is Elisa—from what I’ve read, the pieces in The Self Unstable are like lines of her poems and thoughts from her blog, with some interesting deviations in-between. (An in-between, for instance: “I saw a figure from a distance and thought it was me. I drink from the opposite side of a glass.” Make that the opening line of your horror story.)

The book’s design is as eye-catching as all Black Ocean titles are. You can read quite a lot from the book online—do a simple search Gabbert+The+Self+Unstable.

Will I seem to mock Elisa, by bringing my six year-old daughter to hear poems about ageing? My daughter, staring up at an end-result? Perhaps my own great age will dull the edge of my daughter's smile.