February 21, 2011

Warm night. Maud peers through the back screen at the show of night in the yard. Good exhaustion weighs my head to the tabletop. Excellent workout at the Y in the dark of the morning. I came away feeling like a teenager.

Nice review of Cyclamen in the San Francisco Examiner.

Went to the Orange Peel to hear the Punch Brothers. What excellent musicians! My standards are the standards of Classical musicians and conservatory trained virtuosi, and even by those standards the Punch Brothers were outstanding. Clever, entertaining, intricate, intimate. Plus, the “brothers” were cute. The venue is uncomfortable, though, and I limped the mile to my car long before the night was over. I wanted to stop in every bar I passed, as I would if I were in Ireland.

On the subject of Ireland, Trevor Markham’s wife turns out to be from Asheville (they met on a plane) and he has been to Asheville, and she to that well-remembered house in Ennis, and they are both friends of GM. The smallness of the world is startling. I meant more to the Markhams than I imagined. They meant more to me than I ever felt it was my place to say.

Fine class on Shelley this afternoon. I thought I’d experienced the zenith of classes a couple of years back, but I think the golden age is not over. We learn together. Anything that happened at school was overshadowed, though, by the announcement of PD’s retirement. I said to her with absolute truthfulness that the university, for me, is unimaginable without her. She drove me to the airport after my interview here the evening that I decided I would not take the job, though clearly I changed my mind. She was pregnant with the son I married to his wife last Halloween. Her energies are among the greatest in the institution, and so far a purity of thought and dedication, the highest of all. Partially she recognized it was a good time to leave. Partially she was driven away by institutional arrogance. A man may do a necessary thing and look like a hero, or he may do the very same thing and look like a martinet and a fool. This is not just a mistake; it is an outcome based on character, and some of our colleagues show their characters at every turn.

Read one of the poems at Christine Lassiter’s memorial reading at Malaprop’s tonight. Most of us came out of the old green door days, and all was familiar, if a little gray and creased by the passing of the years. Christine has been dead ten years. I don’t remember knowing her poems from that time, so I rediscovered them tonight. They are weak on form, but very long on emotion and candor, and often the perfect image flies through like a bluebird from a cloud of mist, illuminating and rearranging the listener’s knowledge of the world. She seems more consequential now than when I knew her, as we probably all shall be, bolstered by the trappings of remembrance. Listening to the sweetness of her poetry, I thought of the thousands and thousands who have shared their hearts in poetry and then passed on, and the poems molder in desk drawers or get thrown out when the house is sold, and I pray that some Recording Angel has heard them all and can speak them out of heaven when the time is right. I know for sure Asheville would have been different had Christine lived in it till now. She was beloved. That may be better than anything else.

Trivia with Merritt and his family at Jack of the Woods after the reading. We came in second.