I'm sorry to have missed November altogether, but our computer died, and my husband wanted to wait until Windows 8 came out, only to be disappointed.  We bought a new desktop on Black Friday, with Windows 7, tried and true.  Our daughter helped to get us established this weekend.  (I didn't make the October meetings, sorry to say.)
    Now, what comes by snail mail that keeps me going.  I've sung the praises of Poetry at 100 years and also Blue Unicorn.  That California journal continues to include traditional verse, which pleases me still.  The current issue has a poem by B. E. Stock, who studied with Murieol Rukeyser.  It's entitled "These Things Happen" and the poem gives a new twist to Emily Dickinson's "I'm Nobody."  It's lovely.
   But I really want to talk about the American Poetry Review.  Even as I lifted it out of the mailbox, newspaper format that it is, I wondered why I still subscribe, when Poetry and Blue Unicorn are more to my taste.  But by the time I reached the front door, I had my answer.  There are two prose pieces I'm glad I didn't miss.
   The first is a copy of a memorial to Anne Sexton by Adrienne Rich, written upon her death, the copy cherished and shared now by Rich's student, Lynn Emanuel, who also has poems in the issue.
   The second is an article by David Wajahn entitled, "Bishop, Reagan and the Making of North and South."  His thesis is intriguing---a contrast between the political Reagan and the poet Bishop.  Wajahn finds the conservative Reagan superficial and shallow, compared to the depths plumbed by Elizabeth Bishop, whose poetry he discusses with great admiration.
Over the course of the article, he brings in poets of her generation--Randall Jarrell, Swartz, Robdert Lowell, and John Berryman, lamenting the suicides.This reminds me of a book he does not mention, written by John Berryman's divorced wife, Poets in their Youth  Eileen Simpson divorced Berryman in 1956, pursuing then her own career.  Her thesis for the poets is this: it is not their poetry that killed them; instead, it kept them alive.  Hers is an insightful analysis, with fascinating details of the lives of the poets.  It complements Wajohn's contrast between poetry and politics quite well.
   Yes, I'm glad I renewed my subscription of American Poetry Review.