At the end of tomorrow, my life will seem much simpler, even though I’ll still have a major paper left to write on
Daniel Deronda. Tonight I hand in one final paper, tomorrow another. Plus I get to go to a poetry reading tomorrow night at the Library of Congress. (Mark Strand and Charles Wright. When I went to the Adelaide Writers’ Festival in 2002, Mark Strand had had to cancel: now I get to see him.) There’s also a reading this weekend at the Smithsonian Museum of the American Indian. So, while I’ll still be working on the final touches of the semester, I’m really pleased that I’ll be able to transition into thinking more exclusively about poetry. I just spent the morning writing about Pound’s first canto—of, duh!,
The Cantos, and it was an oddly pleasurable experience. Perhaps because it gave me a chance to revisit all his absolute statements in
The ABC of Reading, which—as well as finding admonishing and inspiring as well—I always find quite amusing. Homer is not to be translated. Go out and learn Ancient Greek, philistine, or you will never truly understand his greatness!
I’m hoping at the end of classes my late nights will come to an end, and I will get onto something like normal hours. It’s strange to me to suddenly be a night owl.
ANZAC day in two days time. I wonder if I should convince someone to have a dawn observance of the fact with me? At least the weather here is lovely. Dawn might not seem quite so cruel if the weather is still nice… I haven’t heard anything from the Centre of Australian and New Zealand Studies here (it’s our centre, so I’m spelling it our way, in spite of Georgetown… this spelling malarky gets complicated sometimes). Normally they have a ANZAC lecture that is the centrepiece of their yearly events—last year, for instance, Thomas Keneally gave it. There is meant to be a talk by a New Zealander this year—but no word. I checked their website, and nothing there either. Still, the Australian and New Zealand Embassies have organised a Dawn Service at the Korean War Veterans Memorial. I’ll just have to drag myself out of bed!
ANZAC day in two days time. I wonder if I should convince someone to have a dawn observance of the fact with me? At least the weather here is lovely. Dawn might not seem quite so cruel if the weather is still nice… I haven’t heard anything from the Centre of Australian and New Zealand Studies here (it’s our centre, so I’m spelling it our way, in spite of Georgetown… this spelling malarky gets complicated sometimes). Normally they have a ANZAC lecture that is the centrepiece of their yearly events—last year, for instance, Thomas Keneally gave it. There is meant to be a talk by a New Zealander this year—but no word. I checked their website, and nothing there either. Still, the Australian and New Zealand Embassies have organised a Dawn Service at the Korean War Veterans Memorial. I’ll just have to drag myself out of bed!
