Reading
Bouncing around (why ask why): Herbert (drank from the same glass as Eliot), Roth (him on him -- so-so), J. F. Powers (found via Roth -- also so-so, but I'll keep trying), Macbeth (because I want to revisit Leskov's Lady). Also, just finished my second Penelope Fitzgerald novel (about spring and Russia; not as good as Blue Flower). Anyway, from Zbigniew Herbert: To Ryszard Krynicki -- A Letter Not much will remain Ryszard in truth not much of the poetry of our mad century Rilke Eliot sure a few other worthy shamans who knew the secret of word spells time-resistant forms without which no phrase deserves memory and speech is like sand our school notebooks subjected to earnest torture with their traces of sweat tears and blood will be to the eternal proofreader a song without a score nobly righteous and all too self-evident we came too easily to believe beauty does not save that it leads wantons from dream to dream to death none ...