July 16, 2022

Dream of the long corridor through the wilderness (which has been in my dreams before) which this time was a sort of diffuse graduate school, and my thesis advisor was a literal witch. When she found out I’d made a snide comment or cut some corner, she assigned me to fill fat little notebooks with essays on philosophy, written all along the sides and in the middle, like the Talmud. 

Coffee reading still Gunn’s letters. How amazing to have people read and discuss your work with you, you all the while assuming their sincere interest. He assures his correspondents that he is working on this and that, as though it were a matter of actual concern. I remember waiting to see when somebody expressed concern that I’d stopped painting. Still waiting. I could write or not write and I think nobody I normally see would mention it. Perhaps distant correspondents would, though one does not have those anymore. I’ve led a hidden life without actually hiding anything. 

As soon as I finish the paragraph above, Laura Budofsky writes from Vermont: Dear D. Thank you for the book. I just finished reading it through a couple of times. I found it wonderful: thrilling, abundant, generous. I say generous because I felt almost every line was full to the brim with beautiful, new, musical language and that the language itself was allowed as much space as it needed. I say thrilling because there were so many turns, so many surprises that sometimes I could barely hold on, but I did. Thrilling also because emotions, like humor, for instance, kept going right to the edge and falling off into their opposites, like grief, for instance. I say abundant because the whole world seemed to be in it, the most mundane and everyday and the biblical and mythic. I particularly liked “Benediction Before Sleep,” “The Alphabet Song,” “I Think of My Lover Lying Down,” and “Swan.” Of course, I’ve spent the years since Syracuse eking a living, raising children, teaching Yoga, writing alone at the kitchen table, etc. very far from anything academic… this info just so you can consider the source.