July 09, 2014  On Tampa! (& Taming the Essay)  This snapshot is
misleading--I never got into the pool while in Tampa. Just felt
weird, hopping into the water between a morning workshop and an
afternoon craft lecture. Which is a shame, because I packed a
pretty awesome blue & white bikini.  On the upside, we did
enjoy rich plantains at Columbia, and bought a few cigars in
Ybor City, and made our way to the speakeasy off Bayshore
Boulevard. My favorite restaurants in the neighborhood of the
Sheraton Riverwalk, where the low-res MFA program puts us up,
are Spain Restaurant & Toma Bar--which imports its octopus and
has $4 sangria and live guitar on Friday evenings--and Bamboozle
Cafe, which has a great deal on design-your-own rice-paper
garden rolls, with ingredients like five-spice pork & pineapple
& jicama. Few from the program venture to these spots, which
makes them a welcome getaway. Next time: Taco Bus.  In our
workshop we talked about prose poems, erasures, haiku and other
syllabic forms from Japanese trad