While at the Mosinee Farm

What can I say about carrying with me Langston Hughes' Selected Poems and Adam Fell's Dear Corporation,?

I can say that while at the farm I read from them more than I thought I might (if you'd have asked me before the trip), though I'm equally surprised at how much more there is to read from both and how having read a poem once does not mean that it is read.

I fall into each of their grooves.

I read from both aloud to Biffy, something I almost never do.

Both make us laugh.

Langston Hughes reminds me some of Shel Silverstein.  Both wrote songs.

I don't know if Adam Fell writes songs.

If he does, he doesn't mention it, or he does mention it but not in the poems I read, or he mentions it in the poems I read, but not in the parts I remember from the poems I read.

I like the look and feel of both books so spend as much time as I do reading them, fondling them and flipping through them, appreciating the type face (Hughes' set in ELECTRA), the line breaks (Fell's in narrow paragraphs), the white on black illustrations (E. McKnight Kauffer), the post cards (signed "A.", addressed "Dear Corporation,").

My husband took me to a poetry reading, something he almost never does, and there was Adam Fell. While browsing the library stacks for ekphrasis class, I pulled Selected Poems of Langston Hughes from the shelf.

I carry them around with me and wonder about how that changes things.