July 16, 2020

First thing in the morning assembled The Ones with Difficult Names. Have been receiving books of poetry in the mail, and the one thing they have in common is that they are beautifully produced, lovely to look at, and within the covers, dreadful. Not merely bad, but aggressively bad, as if badness were a kind of goal to be achieved and surpassed. One at my elbow is called.The Bees Make Money in the Lion The author’s name is Chinese, so the fact that it sounds like someone attempting poetry in a language they don’t understand may be exactly the case. Even the blurbs on the back are nonsensical: “Her honeyed roar, itself golden and generously gilding, acknowledges an echo’s willingness to submit, and cries ‘Lo!’” Not one line makes sense from beginning to end, or conveys a palpable image. People have so given up on poetry, even those who pay lip service to it, that they no longer require it to possess meaning or content, in fact resent when it does. In such a world all efforts are equal. The New Yorker fills its poetry nooks with sawdust and last night’s caviar. Publishers bring out volumes based, apparently, on how distant the work manages to be from any ghost of relevancy. The odder the poet’s name, the better. That’s what I’m up against. I know Difficult Names is a masterpiece, and that fact will be absolutely irrelevant to its fate from the moment of its conception forward. 

But, two books in two days, not written, but at least gathered. Assembling this one humbled me a little, for I realized how many poems can never, for reasons of quality, be gathered into a volume.

Blocked M on Facebook, only the second person who has suffered that fate. She called–one of those Facebook calls, with the horrible ring tone–ELEVEN times this morning. Let it ring each time several minutes. I knew who it was without looking. I told her before that I’d text with her any time, but the phone did not work for me. I saw on the screen she had begun to message, “I’ll keep calling until you answer.” Texted back for her to stop, which began a long diatribe about why am I treating her this way and do I have dementia, etc. Everyone had shut her out except me. It’s not that I didn’t know she is as mean as a snake, but that I thought I could get beyond that. Not today. I wonder if a person knows she’s blocked, or of she’s still sitting in her cabin in the jungle typing out ugly messages.

Brother bear returned. I heard him ripping out one of the basement windows. That puzzles me, for he can’t possibly get in. I chased him around front. He soaked in the pond for a while, ate some waterlily leaves, headed out back over the wall. Got a lovely video.

Hot. Maud hasn’t moved for two hours. My little work fan moves warm air against me, but that is enough.

Sort of wanted to be an Emeritus. I looked that up, and it appears that honor’s initiated by the Provost. The last Provost was an officious biddy, and this one, taking into account the gender change, is the same, though maybe even a little dumber. Practically his first task was to remind me of the penance for my harassing students which his predecessor had set me, and which of course I never did. So much for that.