Dispatch from Prague: Week Three Begins

We began our workshop with Roger Weingarten on Monday and spent the better part of three hours writing a collaborative sestina.

...

Tomorrow, the members of our workshop have to go to some tourist trap sex museum to write another collaborative poem.

...

Other changes: The program has a two week option as well as the month-long option, so a bunch of people left and a new batch of people arrived. Since I spend most of my time reading in the dorm room, this hasn't had a huge effect on my life here.

Speaking of reading, I can't get enough of novels. After four years of living, eating, and breathing poetry, all I want now is to lose myself in expansive fictions. I've finished Arnost Lustig's Lovely Green Eyes, Phillip Pullman's The Subtle Knife, and Amy Bloom's Away.

I'm currently reading Kundera's The Book of Laughter and Forgetting and I'm saving Ulysses for the flight home.

Books are incredibly expensive here. A paperback copy of Pullman's The Amber Spyglass at the English language bookstore goes for about 25 dollars.

In other news, we saw Victor Wooten walking around the Charles Bridge yesterday. Doug's a huge, huge fan of his, so of course he plotyed. Turns out Mr. Wooten was headlining the Bohemian Jazz festival that night. It was free, so we went. Things are never free here, so you have to grab that brass ring whenever it presents itself. It was like any other festival--bratwursts and beer, big crowd, etc. The lady in front of me had a kid on her shoulders and was dancing frenetically so that said kid's butt kept waving within an inch of my face. Unpleasant.

So I'm off to eat some goulash and take a nap. Tonight: Vibe Fantasy at the USP Jazz Lounge.