August 2008: Sailing Alone Around the Room (Collins) & Native Guard (Trethewey)

We went around the circle reading selected poems from Billy Collins' collected works, enjoying his humor, accessibility, and confirming Sherrill's observation that he uses the colors blue and brown consistently more often than any other color (the dharmic dog walking about in his brown coat and blue collar, for example). We could see why he is so popular. In discussing Natasha Trethewey's poems from Native Guard, the book incoming Smith students read for the start of this school year, we discussed racial politics and the South, and especially the mixed-race experience that is getting so much attention as we all examine Barack Obama. Why is a person with a white parent and a black parent called black? Clearly our culture is still coming to terms with the grey areas of race relations.