July 18, 2009

Much rain in my absence turned the garden into a jungle. I’m just venturing out into it, blades in hand. Harvested three zucchinis that, together, must have weighed 30 pounds. Harvested a perfect flame of rose for my mantel. The hibiscus came into full flower, pink and white and scarlet and pink-and-white striped. Zach called what he can see of it from his house, “a slow explosion.”

Painted with J and M, not long, though, the spirit being elsewhere in me. Instead, I weeded joyfully, thoroughly, though not quite finally. Harvested the first of the golden tomatoes.

The books I bought in Ireland are arriving. They’re mostly gifts, but one I got for myself is a huge volume of James Barry, the Irish history painter. I personally like his work, but I can see that in some ways it is ridiculous: big, laborious paintings about ridiculous (or unpaintable) subjects, or rendered at the moment when emotions are the most implausible. I study the paintings trying to figure why, addressing essentially the same subject, Poussin is eternally sublime, and Barry needs excuses to be made about his time and place. I recognize in myself a certain likeness with Barry. In both poetry and painting, I do not always choose the workable subject, but sometimes dwell on an image in my imagination which is either irreproducible, or beyond my skill. The Greeks triumphed by portraying the inhalation of calm between exertions. Barry wants the white-hot moment, a thing beyond his skills, and, unless one were Caravaggio, beyond anyone’s. Yet I like him. I understand what he’s up to. I sit here thinking back on all the times when I did the same, when what was a masterpiece in my head was baffling or meaningless to the world.