an image diary

"And if he left off dreaming about you, where do you suppose you'd be? ... You'd be nowhere. Why, you're only a sort of thing in his dream! If that there King was to wake you'd go out -- bang! -- just like a candle!"

"Hush! You'll be waking him, I'm afraid, if you make so much noise."

"Well it's no use your talking about waking him when you're only one of the things in his dream. You know very well you're not real."

Wednesday, March 29, 2006



Well maybe 3 a.m. is too early to get up, even for me. All but the ever train whistle in the distance sleeps; I will work my miracles in the dark. And here are clouds tumbling by the Arch, my last view of it from the van window on Sunday: first photos with the new camera. Very pretty. Like a goddamn big promise. Like a hump day.

***

I've learned how to blink. Almost certain it will never come in handy.

***

The point is every term blurs into days of getting to the next great thing and I drop off here only to get back weeks later, forgetting: that both classes are wonderful, that they laughed openly today. That Longinus and Burke, they got it. One leaving the classroom grinned to himself and I asked: what is it? And startled he said: oh just that I can tell it's going to be wild. Which is what I've been trying to say--this is the stuff of going to be wild. --And I saw good poems today, Brian's tiny poems both just as variegated and lush as anything I read elsewhere. Howard and I read student poems together, and I remembered again: he is a mighty fine reader. Mary and I arranged her thesis, the tightness of the collection emerging as I looked at the possibilities and saw continuity in the work, however which way it turned. And the enthusiasm of the last group--Chris, Hilary, Stefen--next week the Four Quartets and their poems--what more? Long Wednesday, you could be full of yourself. You could be vacuous.

***

"and what is the use of a book...without pictures or conversations?"


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