October 31, 2018

Maud pissed on the desk in the living room, wetting the work list for my show and the pile of bills I had laid out for paying. Out comes a step ladder to drape them on to dry until they can be written on, sealed, paid. I hope the recipients can’t guess what happened, why the ink is smeared and the paper wrinkled..

Made the appointment to see about my never-ending exhaustion. My conviction is that most things just go away: this hasn’t. I realize that part of my postponement was anxiety. If I need surgery and convalescence, there is no one to look after me, no one to look after the house or the sick cats during whatever absence might be necessary.  I did not make this bed; nevertheless, I must lie in it.

Read Frost’s witch poems in class for Halloween. Planted one final scarlet tree peony.

October 29, 2018

The trees around the studio parking lot twitter with greenish-yellowish autumn warblers.

October 28, 2018

The choir of Holy Communion, Charleston, joined us today. The basses around me were magnificent, one vast and rumbling- like me but bigger–one high and clear and silvery, like a tenor with a baritone range. It was enlightening to sing with people doing it right. Simone clutched my hand as she went to communion. Maud is confused and goes to the bathroom in the wrong place. I screamed at her, and her dismay and confusion were palpable. Then I held her in my arms and wept bitterly. I prayed to Artemis, who gives the innocent painless death in good time.

October 27, 2018

Waiting for the people who wanted to use my office down by the river, I opened old notebooks– 1969-1971– and read the poems I’d written then. They were, by and large, terrible. I wondered why I went so long without much improvement. Then I realized that I wasn’t interested in working on craft. I’d hit upon a workable tone of wonder, and with it I wanted to celebrate and memorialize all that happened in my life. I took the concept of Bard seriously, and a bard, I thought, opens his mouth and sings praises. The sort of exultant, semi-biblical vein I mined almost from the first was perfect for that. When did I decide I wanted to write poems which were actually good on their own, without reference to the elevation of their subject matter? My guests arrived before I read that far, but the image that comes into my mind now is me sitting in my upstairs apartment in Baltimore, reading a rejection slip–from I forget whom–that finally told me what I was doing wrong. I’d been such a prodigy all through high school and college that no one ventured to correct me. I think now with wonder on the patience of Hale Chatfield and others who praised and encouraged what they much surely have recognized as, at best, overreaching,

Gary Dodd is dead. He was my hero when we lived at his family’s house when my mother was ill.

October 26, 2018

Students bring Rice Krisipies treats studded with Froot Loops for breakfast. 

Had anticipated all week and prepared much of the day for Jason’s visit this afternoon. Bought a variety of teas, assuming that his recent rehab experiences would make wine a bad choice. Sat downstairs waiting. Of course he didn’t come, didn’t indicate that he wasn’t coming. That is such an invariable in my life I have to explain to myself why it takes me by surprise every single time. That I am simply not regarded by others seems a fairly scientific conclusion. Afterwards I was too disheartened even to climb the stairs and try to do some work. Too much TV, sitting in the wrong position on the couch.

A comment on Facebook about pizza made me remember going to the drive-in in the 50's, seeing and smelling pizza there for the first time and asking dad if we could have some. “No,” said he, “that’s low class. It’s only for Italians.”

October 25, 2018

Only the men showed up for playwriting, and not all of them. Curiously, they had plays in the voices of women. Brahms in the evening, our director irritated that we not only did not make progress but seem to have backslided. Mirth afterwards at the Wayside. A police cruiser followed me out of Biltmore, followed me to my driveway, but kept on going when I veered in. Maybe he saw me leave the bar and was checking for signs of intoxication. The last time a cop followed me like that it was a refused lover who was about to change my life.

October 24, 2018

When I rose in darkness the moon rode low in the sky, but was with me everywhere I stopped, finally cut by the tips of trees over the university parking lot.

October 23, 2018

Inspecting my haircut in the mirror, my eyes happen to take in the whole picture. Physically, there’s not much left to me now but old and ugly. This is a phase that might last a long time. . . .

My playwrights are lagging, so I cancelled class today to give them time to catch up. I said I wasn’t feeling well, and I wasn’t.

Freeze warnings, and yet the flowers bloom, a little exhausted, as if looking forward finally to the razor night. 

October 22, 2018

Woke with an almost absurd sensation of well being, partially, but by no means fully, eroded by the day. Taught Yeats. Got the first haircut I’ve liked in maybe five years. Ate lamb chops, which I seldom think to do. Went to the Mall and bought a shirt. . . novelty after novelty. . . .The shirt guy looked at me and said ”Did you mean to. . . uh. .  get slim fit?” Indeed I did not.  All the clerks were bitching about what a slow day it was.  Circe gives up on the litterbox. And so it goes.

October 21, 2018

Om mani padme hum chant the monks on my You Tube station. Soothing, a golden light, just as promised. Put together Limerick Station. Great wind last night. My biggest dogwood lost its biggest limb.  None of my flowers was touched by the frost.

October 20, 2018

Dark Saturday morning, silent but for the cats crunching their breakfast downstairs.

Went to the Magnetic last night to see Ghost Lullaby, maybe the most satisfying thing I’ve seen there that I hadn’t written myself, shapely and, as it intended to be, deeply creepy.

Mike T sat in my office testifying to a new life, which involved a conversion, breaking up with his girlfriend (one of those was apparently contingent upon the other), and a fresh view of Creation. Such exuberance, one thought at one moment. Such near-hysteria, one thought at another moment. But part of the confession was to tell me he loved me because I had done good in his life, so I shall let it all ride on that. It must have built up for a while, as he talked very fast for more than an hour. I hope I retain what I was meant to retain. I couldn’t quite figure out what was the matter with his girlfriend, since she is a Christian too. It was clear in is mind. He quotes his religious advisers. They seem very stringent to me, like prophets or Apostles rather than modern people. He believes it is what he needs right now. More than once I have thought it– some focused and unyielding path-- was what I need right now. Never found a master I could follow who wanted to be followed.

Good day in the studio. Painted a picture I didn’t expect to paint. Lost my temper when no visitors made it into my studio, came home.

October 19, 2018

All contracts for At the Creche are signed and JD is hard at work finishing the music. Will there be a blow-up from the Vast Infant when this one is passed out? Does everyone who might blow up already know, and there will be peace for Christmas? My students, after we slogged dutifully through the Enlightenment, still believe that some passionately held prejudices should trump the truth. One settles back, decides, like Satan, to skirmish at the periphery.

October 18, 2018

The Vast Infant carries on his program of ignoring me. Is there someone on his side? If so, it would be well to know why. Voted on the first day I could, blue from top to bottom. I wonder if I’ve become a sort of fanatic, but when I look at what the Republicans actually do and declare themselves to stand for, I think that whatever level of fanaticism leveled against them can’t quite be enough. Everything that America has proudly stood for, they do not. The argument in their favor from a voice at once moral and intelligent cannot be imagined.

October 17, 2018

I watch the society of the department whirl around me. I am now the old man, and the kids respect me without including me. It’s lonely, but so to be expected that nothing can be said. They are more corporate and attentive to the rules than we used to be, climbing their way up the committee ladders. This does not seem to have paved our way within the institution.  We’re seriously underhanded and can teach no electives, but our hiring requests keep getting turned down. I think sometimes I did everything wrong in connection to the university. In this I seem to have been following a plan laid for me when I arrived. “This one is special.” Perhaps I was. Perhaps I wasn’t.

October 16, 2018

Take what I believe to be the last elements of my show to the framers. If I ever actually expected to have a show I might have been more provident in this area. Writing well and steadily on short fiction, having to fight off the angels of futility to get back to the novels.

October 15, 2018

I write a short story as my students take their 8 AM exam.

October 14, 2018

Arrive in my study to hear a tremendous skein of geese flying and honking over the roof. The squirrels are in a frenzy of activity trying to get all the walnuts into the ground, which they will forget, which will sprout and require me to dig them out next summer.

Sadness over my life. I lie down and sleep it away. That I do lie down and sleep it away seems one of the greater gifts.

October 13, 2018

I never know for sure what has interceded when I look and days have passed since I last recorded. It’s not as though there’s not time. . . though, perhaps, there’s no time.

Gave Tennyson a triumph in class on Friday. 

Most of my students though A was a “jackass” when he came to the workshop. This surprised me because I didn’t see that at all. I thought he was candid and maybe a bit heroic. Maybe those qualities read as “jackass” to the young.

Impressed myself by getting the work done that finishes off the garden in preparation for winter. All the bulbs are planted, and what is not finished can wait for a day or a season. The terrible exhaustion abates measurably, a contributing factor to my success.

AW, our colleague, is caught by the police removing political signs. The local Republicans are in a froth about it, of course. Both AW and our chairman have received death threats, and people solemnly ask “is THAT what they’re teaching at that university?” It’s all so petty it’s probably old news even as I remark on it. It’s mostly a matter of bad luck that she got caught. You do perhaps wonder what possessed a grown woman. . . . Me, I would have tried to incite my students to do it. . . .

Proofing done for The Falls of the Wyona. There was less of it than might be expected, fewer mistakes, fewer passages of questionable taste. I respected and was grateful for their punctiliousness.

I believe I have enough paintings for the show. Took the last to be framed today. What will people think of it? I don’t know, and since there has been no reviewing apparatus since I was fired from the CT, I probably will never know.  I am painting what I like the way I like it, so perhaps the main thins is accomplished. 

Downtown to see Frost/Nixon and have a drink at Zambra’s. The play requires impersonation, and impersonation is hard to judge except as to believability, and in that realm, Michael was magnificent. Nixon was always the smartest person on stage. I remember the real thing, but I was young, and remember it mostly for being boring.

Blue jays in the blue sky, the remnant of the orange zinnias buzzing in the clash of light.

October 8, 2018

Day of almost comic productivity. Rose with a sense of vast well-being. In the last dream I had been playing in bed with my sons. Went for the first time since August to High-5, where I wrote an ending to the poem about Ireland. Tom was sitting with Wind, gnawing the edges of their screenplay. Most of my adult life was spent pursuing two relationships that would never bear fruit. Nothing to be done about that except to acknowledge.Then I went to the studio where I repainted the landscape that’s been hanging in my dining room. Dabbled, repainted, detailed, varnished. Came home and prepared the second raised bed. The edited version of The Falls of the Wyona arrived in email; that will be the great task of the week. Precision which so far exceeds mine is a wonder and a tribulation.

Trying not to listen to the news.

October 7, 2018

Turned off all electric media and sat with my fingers arched over the keys until I had made a poem. The poem is about my Irish lovers, a subject never dealt with fully, or in a way even I might call comprehensive. It is a beginning. It was beautiful, and then I slept.

October 6, 2018

Two excellent studio days in a row, preparing for the show in November. Skip emails to ask what pieces I’ll be exhibiting, and I want to fire back, “I don’t know. I haven’t made them yet.” People who manage to make it to the second floor barely stick their heads into my studio, or come in and do a tight little turn in the entranceway. My studio may have more of the feel of an exhibit than a studio. I try to be friendly. . . I have been unable to monetize any of my endeavors.

October 5, 2018


Andrew spoke to our playwrights, and was unexpectedly brilliant. John comes before his show opens. One of my students said to me, “If I go by what you say I’d think you hated the theater.” I stopped dead in my tracks, thinking about that. Am still thinking about it. I THINK that I love the theater and am pretty much pleased by everything, but that’s not the witness I give, apparently. Am I envious? If so, is my envy so sharp that it leaks through without my knowing?

October 4, 2018

Bear on the roof and then the lawn of All Souls, very black and very bewildered. The Dean stood in the doorway hollering, “Everyone into the Parish Hall!” Much singing of Brahms, which I understood at the time and later to be a great blessing. Gossip over red wine afterward.

October 3, 2018

One golden persimmon hangs from my persimmon tree.

Spectacular class on Shelley. 

Heroic gardening– Mount Hood daffodils planted, one raised bed fully prepared.

Thoughts on the massage table: the boy who took me to a sleazy hotel in Syracuse. I lied when I told him my name. He was very sweet and beautiful. On the way home I plucked a louse from my hair.

I was incredibly young. It was my bedroom on Goodview Avenue. Mt little lamp was on and I kneeling at my bedside. Mom and dad stood in the doorway, looking at me. They were teaching me how to pray, “Now I lay me down to sleep. . . God bless mommy and daddy and grandma and. . .” But the thought in my mind, clear and hard at that very hour was, “How odd these people are, and what an odd thing they’re asking me to do. But, if I’m here, I have to get along, so I will do what they ask, and smile and be child-like, for that is how it is done.”  How early is the recollection? Impossible to tell. But all my earliest recollections share the conviction that I had been cast among strangers, and had to conceal and adapt cunningly in order to survive.

October 2, 2018

Circe on the keyboard makes for interesting typing. Raft of rejections all in one day. Is there enough contempt to be spread so thin? We discussed the horrendous comprehensive exams, decided that their horrendousness was not our fault. Students don’t believe they have to know anything. Someone has led them to think a general aura of understanding is enough. Crushed a flea on white paper, where it looks exactly like a flea.

October 1, 2018

After class, gardening, heroic gardening. Bought a truckload of dirt from Reems Creek, dug out of its summer of weeds a chunk of the east garden and planted a stand of Japanese iris. Chopped out of the ground great lengths of invasive bamboo– what is it?– it looks like stems boring underground.  Shoulders ache with digging and carrying.

Women will be disappointed when the patriarchy doesn’t fall. For us there is no other natural option. It may be modified but not replaced. I’m not celebrating, merely observing. This is a moment in time when this cannot be said in any public forum.

September 30, 2018

Rose and took a brisk walk around the block, being only slightly winded on the slope in front of the donut shop–which I passed by. I did this to test my suspicion that a certain measure of my vitality is returning. I noticed first while gardening, that I could heave the great bags of mulch around without having to sit on the porch to catch my breath. Half moon above me. Energetic crying of birds, as if it were spring. Homeless sleep in the gazebo near the Fresh Market. Many of them. I was too embarrassed to count.

A volunteer mimosa grows too close to my serviceberry. Which do I save?

Never want to hear the name Brett Kavanaugh again.  He’s not a man at all, but a symptom of the careless corruption of the Republican party.

Oh, on the day after Pride, I’m thinking how I will praise the gods if I never have to sing “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend” again.