Life, I think, should be a fine balance between art and scholarship; accordingly, I'm somewhere between bluestocking and bohemian.

I love art of all kinds--I don't get to literary events as often as I should, but I'll often get there to see old teachers' or classmates' readings. I'm a member of San Francisco's art museums and happily spend a day (alone or with others) splitting my time between one of the museums and its adjacent park, writing. Give me a melting sunset or a broken mirror on the sidewalk or a lonely street performer and I'll abandon my conversation to rummage for my notebook.

I'm prone to rotating but consuming scholarly and not-so-scholarly obsessions; I have submerged myself nearly to drowning point at various times in (among others) Elizabethan/Jacobean literature, Mozart, the romantic friendship, the juvenilia of my favorite writers, Gilbert and Sullivan, the aesthetic movement, the trials of Oscar Wilde, Belle Epoque Paris, translations of Sappho, and--most recently--modernism, memory and consciousness.

I teach--mostly college comp and literature, though I tutor high schoolers on the side. I also read (a lot) and write poetry and fiction.

singing, which I am liable to do anywhere and everywhere without warning. Most of what I sing is older than my grandparents--opera, operetta, old jazz, lieder and chanson--but I make exceptions, especially for overly pretentious musical theater. I'm pretty good at playing the piano as well, but I don't practice nearly enough.

I'm probably paler than you.

My vocabulary runs away with me at times, especially in flights of passion, so I hope you're into big words.

My current literary obsessions: Proust and Woolf (the subjects of the paper I'm working on at the moment), Keats, Shakespeare, Anne Carson, Peter Shaffer, Willa Cather and Alison Bechdel. I also have a weakness for children's literature and fits of obsession with poetry.

Movies: Amelie, old Cary Grant movies, classic Disney, Pixar, and foreign flicks. I go weak in the knees for period films.

My music tastes are odd and eclectic: mostly opera, lieder, jazz, Chopin, Debussy, choral music, The Beatles, Ella Fitzgerald, show tunes, singer-songwriter/folk. When I find a song that gives me that "match in a crocus" feeling, I barricade myself in it.

Food? Give me an adventure. But as a native Arizonan, I do have a penchant for really, really, really spicy food. And, much to my detriment, I have a mordant (pun intended) sweet tooth.

1. My family. I include my best friend.

2. Books. An endless supply of books.

3. A notebook and pen.

4. Access to a piano.

5. Wine and cheese.

6. Coffee. On tap. Preferably Blue Bottle.

what it means to be human,

how behind I feel in accomplishing the infinite progression of things I want to accomplish,

how to inspire my students,

the phrases in books and music that have imprinted themselves on my soul.

reading, putting off grading, or engaging in wine-drenched deep conversations with my roommates or a friend.

I wrote a terrible novel as a teenager. The protagonist was a peasant-revolt-leading princess. I kid you not.

you can tell me something interesting about the last book you read.