October 6, 2014

The cold house is more damaging to my sense of well-being than it is to my body. Rose last night to go to the bathroom, and when I returned the spots where Circe lay and the spot where I had lain were hot, I mean, almost burning hot, as though I’d had an electric blanket, which I had not. New respect for endothermy. Massive Cosmopolitans before bed, so no dreams.

Asked Bill, who was at the rally but didn’t sing with us, if we sounded OK. He said, “The sound system was awful,” by which I assume that particular labor was for naught.

Accidental contact with a documentary on the New York Review of Books on TV. Deep satisfaction.

Finished off the bags of mulch and the bags of dirt mulching and planting, or in the case of the laburnum, transplanting. It looks noble in the backyard, where it is now. I hope I caught at the right moment, when it was almost asleep, but still could send out root. Allium to fill in the space of the laburnum.

Much revising of poetry, putting together of manuscripts, laying old ones to rest. On some days you’re simply in the groove and can’t be stopped. On other days, even fiddling with punctuation is pointless. One of my students used his class presentation to, humorously, mock the qualities of poetry, reviving the old canard that it is needlessly obscure, and why can’t it just come out and say what it means. What I have always loved is that it DOES come out and say what it means. My sense of that is so strong that I am not helpful to people like my student.  It’s like trying to point at something in the night sky, you keep crying “There! Right over there!” but if they don’t see it, they don’t.

The sun is very low now, in the south, and doesn’t light the same things it lit through the summer.