March 11, 2010

Purple crocus on the back terrace.

I receive a copy of Frank and my Cyclamen from ECS Publishing, my first published musical collaboration. I receive from Harold Bloom a hardback of The Sublime, which includes my essays on Whitman, Rilke, Shelley, my first bound-in-a-book literary criticism. I look at literary criticism like a neglected part of the yard, rich and promising, but it seemed I always had something better to do than tend to it. Plus, compared even with poetry and theater, the tides of fashion that tug at literary criticism are absurd and exhausting. But still, I look at the book and push new projects from my mind, quell excitement till a better time.

Spent yesterday working out and revising Bronzino’s Gaze according to impressions from the reading.