September 30, 2016

Weeks now the sewer-and-road men have closed the street, opened the street, ruined the street, shoddily repaired the street; now great machines run up and down poxing it with little holes and making the traffic pile up on either side, while a little man in an orange vest at the edge of my lawn screams into a communicator. You want to walk out and say, calmly, “that’s enough, now,” and make them all go away.
   
Rose late this morning, past 7:30, rushed to school without ablutions, discovered I had forgotten the DVD I meant to play for class, turned around, drove home, used the toilet, got the DVD, returned, and had time to chat with Sam for a moment even yet before class began. The DVD was Genius, a quite good view of Thomas Wolfe and Max Perkins in New York. It made me weep with my face turned away from the room.
   
Email from a student to the administration thanking me for being “understanding and professional” as she was going through problems in her life. Glad that it evens out a little bit.
   
A week from now The Birth of Color will have premiered at the Kicelli and I will have been in Hungary for a full day and more.
    

September 29, 2016

The question of what to do an a day off was solved when the packing cartons from nurseries began to pile up. Turned into one of the great gardening days of my life. Weeding projects cleared out the front plots, and into the ground when two kind of flowering maple, five peonies, one exotic arisaema. Out of the ground came almost endless clumps of violet. It’s hard to think of violet as a weed, but when you see it closing ranks over every inch of clear ground . . .  and I’ve made the east sloop down to the woods a violet garden, so it’s not as if it is actual enmity. Then Antonio arrived top cut the grass and atomize the piles of weeds I had left lying around.
   
Much singing last night and this weekend. Too much, though one might say “no” and one doesn’t.
   
Apparent firm interest in publishing Peniel. Around that I shall tiptoe as one in a mine field.
   
Hung Elderflowers in the dining room, and it looks classy and elegant.

September 28, 2016

Confabulation of owls in my great pine in the night, liquid and eerie music.
Planted yellow crocus.

September 27, 2016

Blessed rain in the night.

My furious student, renews her attacks, demands an audience with my chairman and a vice-chancellor, where she is rebuffed. I want to say “finally” rebuffed, but it is difficult to know where fury will stop. The VC even took the “offending” email to the university attorney to see if there was anything even vaguely protestable. Of course not. She left a sticky note on my door overnight saying “Why Are U Still Teaching Here?”  She got a member of student government to say that my email was “unprofessional,” an analysis pretty hilarious coming from a sophomore. The note–the one and only communication from me to her, amid a see of vituperations coming from her-- said nothing but the truth in the politest possible terms, with an offer of help and support according to her decision, so I’ve been baffled by the whole affair. I’ve been baffled by the hesitation of the system to tell her to shut up and go away, since it was clear from the first she had no grounds for complaint but that vague and inadmssable morass “hurt feelings.” Perhaps w have gone too far in insuring power to the “powerless”; reversal of injustice is not redress of injustice. This is going to go down in history as the time I made a student drop my class, when in fact no such thing happened and, it turns out, cannot happen. Except in rare cases (rarer than this one) only a student can remove herself from a class, which is what she did. Oh well. It’s the small things. . . .
   
Coffee with Alex, who is in the full flame of young artist-hood and a pleasure to be with.
   
Andrew visiting my class last night, being eloquent and exuberant.

September 25, 2016

Rose in darkness and walked under a fragment of moon and brilliant stars, lovely except for one who so longs for rain. I had the city to myself. A cat talked to me from the school parking lot, but he seemed fat and happy and I walked on, so solitary that for the most part I walked in the middle of the street. What I noticed was that I felt miraculously well, the aches and stiffnesses that made me murmur “ouch!” at almost every movement gone. The bit of gardening I did yesterday loosened me up? The steroid Dr. Hicks gave me for gout but which I took last night because of the pain? If the latter–if either, now that I think of it–I am saved. It is still night outside.

I have wonderful poems that I forgot I had written, I’ll bet 200 which have never seen the light of day.

Woke dreaming that I was grading comprehensives, which means I should probably do that in truth some time today.

Prairie Wolf Review takes two poems.

I have been telling people the wrong title for the show I’m “producing.” Bruce sent me an outline. Not electrifing positive, but not a dud.

(Music, lyrics and book by Dave Malloy, directed by Rachel Chavkin. Performances begin at the Imperial Theatre on October 18th)
Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 (a.k.a The Great Comet) is one of my most cherished discoveries of the past few seasons. The show is by triple-threat author Dave Malloy, and it’s a stunner. Based on one mere thread of the literary tapestry that is Tolstoy’s War and Peace, The Great Comet has a score that artfully weaves in Russian musical idioms into what is an otherwise contemporary score. The show features just a tad too much narration (telling versus showing) for my personal taste, but overall the musical is rich and rewarding. I’m a tad concerned that Malloy’s more recent musical efforts have been alternately baffling (Ghost Quartet) and inert (Preludes), but The Great Comet is thankfully a strong piece in its own right. The big question for the Broadway version is whether Josh Groban, who will be making his Broadway debut as Pierre, has the acting chops for the role. He’s an odd fit: Pierre is grizzled and dyspeptic, two adjectives it would be hard to apply to Mr. Groban. Even so, I’m quite intrigued to see how the show, which was done in an immersive ballroom setting Off-Broadway, will translate to a proscenium stage. Based on the recent American Repertory Theater staging of the show, the show should make the transfer quite handily. Plus, there’s a stunning new song for Pierre that isn’t on the Off-Broadway cast recording, a brooding atmospheric solo called “Dust and Ashes,” which may well have been added to beef up the role for Groban, but it’s a strong song nonetheless, one that adds to the already rich fabric of The Great Comet.

It is apparently a version of War and Peace and had a life off Broadway. Interesting how I get into these things knowing nothing about them. 

Played the original cast album on Spotify. Hmm. “Triple threat Dave Malloy” made an error I could have spared him at the outset– exhausting references to the whole text of War and Peace, when he should have taken the moment of his show as though that’s all there was. Constant jokes about the characters’ many names. I wouldn’t have invested had I heard it first, but it might not be a disaster: the degree to which I and the Great Public differ in our theatrical tastes is legendary. 

4:30. Thunderstorm. Blessed.

September 24, 2016

Rehearsal for the bishop’s installation. Almost wept with frustration going, though it was all right once I was there.
   
Planted iris against the fence, then mulched the spot, like covering a sleeping child with a blanket. The dirt was dust. It looked like a movie of people digging graves in the Wild West.
   
Got together the collection Me with a White Rose in My Hand. Worked hard at writing. Thirsty and exhausted now. Through the study window the northern sky looks green.

September 23, 2016

Cool of evening. I spent the last hour watering slow, thorough, aiming the hose until pools gathered under the leaves, determined that if the sky was not going to do its duty I would. The swamp hibiscus had collapsed on the ground for lack of water. The small red one in front is lifting itself up even now. I expect that great white in back to be erect again by morning.
   
Wonderful reading last night in the Reuter’s Center, Wiley-organized. I wasn’t a fan of the book being read from, but I was of the great crowd gathered for the sake of literature,
   
Z claims to have held his breath four minutes this morning, based on exercises developed by a man called “The Ice Man,” because he can endure low temperatures and climb Everest in his shorts and the like. I don’t know that I need to hold my breath for four minutes, but there must be some general good to be derived from such an achievement.
   
The last sky behind a few bunched-up clouds is cruel and fiery azure.