Undulant, and further waves...

I've already spilled a good amount of ink other places delineating the origins of the sonnet Undulant, from the Aughts Philly section of Something Solid, which has been a #3 podcast on Soundclick and is on PennSound, with other material from the book. The incidents narrated in the poem concern the first of two nights I spent with Hannah Miller in 2005, which happened to be June 16, 2005: Bloomsday, a big one in Philly. My Logan Square flat is in full view, and Bar Noir, the celebrated walk down on 18th Street in Center City. One thing hasn't been mentioned, but is extremely important in catching the correct note of mid-Aughts mayhem attendant: the second night with Hannah happened a week after, and the next day I left for an MFA residency in Henniker, New Hampshire, eighty miles outside Boston. The summer 2005 residency, wedged in right before Poetry Incarnation '05, was its own spectacularly wild ride. It was at this residency that Mary Walker Graham, who had graduated with her MFA in '04, came to visit, and what happened between us, happened. I was, as they say, a little loose, a little unhinged, and a lot of us were, both in New England and in Philadelphia, that summer. But the consummation of two major affairs, spaced that closely together, was sui generis for me, and my appearance in Jacket Magazine that spring opened doors for me I didn't anticipate. By the time I was back in Philly for Poetry Incarnation '05, I had felt the earth move in several different directions. Even if neither affair led to a solid marriage.