cover art: "Rooms by the Sea" by Edward Hopper

David Jauss is my adviser this semester at Vermont College. During the residency, each student creates a reading list, which the adviser must approve. The books on the list may change as writing issues come up, but it’s a place to start.

Both semesters I’ve included books by my adviser on my list. This seems like an opportunity not to be missed–to read a writer’s work and have a dialogue about it.

Before I arrived at Vermont College, I knew of David Jauss mostly from his craft essays in the AWP Chronicle. I had also read a story of his. For my first packet due on Saturday, August 7th, I read some more of his work.

I started with his poetry and loved almost every one of his poems in the collection, You Are Not Here.

From “Requiem”:

“…how many times

have I paused at the crossroads, then turned right

toward home, instead of left,

toward the darkening highway that leads to that nowhere

called everywhere…”

And from “You Are Not Here”:

“each morning I ask myself

where I won’t be today

or ever.”