Shakespyeare: Day 332 — Christmas sweater tights

Whether it should be viewed as a benefit or no, one of the side effects of reading is that one connects lines and snippets of literature to the stuff of everyday life. Last weekend, I was stuck at the mall for four hours — my car needed engine repair and my mechanic is located in the outskirts of the parking lot. So, marooned, I wandered, window-shopping and people watching. This latter activity brought to me the prevalence of something I had heard of but seen only a few times: Christmas sweater tights.

Teenager after teenager, college student after college student, I saw a dozen or perhaps a score of young women and girls wearing these substitutes for pants. Fascinating to think of the brief years between the widespread introduction of fashion tights and jeggings and these snowflake and Christmas tree patterned show-all garments!

Others interested in prescriptive fashion will and do (I am sure) have much to say about these bottom enhancing bottoms, as several of my friends have. But the first thing that ran through my head when I saw a gaggle of snowflake and Christmas tree sweater tight clad college coeds walking through the mall was a line from Shakespeare: oh brave new world, / that has such people in't.

Updates and Miscellany

Another fall has fallen on Whitmore Lake, strewing leaves on my lawn and darkening the skies before I leave work. In the thick of teaching and preparing issue 11 of Structo, I've neglected you, dear reader. So here's a round-up of the last few months:

• Identity Theory published my poems "Salt for Katharina" and "Cicada." 
• Modern Poetry in Translation published three of my translations of Jóanes Nielsen, his debut in English. Another of my translations of Nielsen is forthcoming in RHINO.
• I'm happy to be publishing translations from Jèrriais, Irish, Scotch Gaelic, and medieval Korean in Structo 11.  
• Verse Junkies published two translations of Agnar Artúvertin. From layout of the picture, it looks like I am that mustachioed poet. That is actually Agnar.
• A singer at the local open-mic told me, "If you love the sea, that love will always be unrequited."
• I've recorded another poetry reading for 88.1 WYCE, available here - zebras, the Berlin underground, and Faroese puns in translation.
• I translated two stories for the Nordic House. My favorite line (from Sólrun Michelsen's The Rat): "tað er so hugaligt at hoyra onkran skavast inni í myrkrinum og at hava onkran at  siga góða nátt við." How nice indeed, reader!

There are many things that appear on to-do list after to-do list that keep getting pushed back — finishing an essay on the word the, learning Love Is Like Tobacco on guitar, writing to you. I will. I will.

10/22/2013 WYCE Poetry Reading

My latest appearance on Electric Poetry on 88.1 WYCE.