Stagger the line between loneliness and sociability—back in Louisville, Ali’s town, prince of the Southern Rust Belt, for my turn in the bourbon barrel, hunched in streets or stretched between the interstate and the partial-brick purgatory of the Humanities building. In cinderblock classrooms casual brilliance on display, nearly spontaneous Festschriften in which the author is present, head bowed, smiling; or else dead, enigmatic, rescued (Jack Sharpless thy lovely lines). Snug with poets on hotel couches or encircling a table at that goddamn Persian place, hovering over the groaning board of dear Alan Golding’s, reading out poems and each other.