Weeks have rushed by of late. I don’t think I can honestly say I’ve been feeling very lazy in the last fortnight—in reality I’ve basically been run off my feet. It’s been good though. I feel a little electric: every time I sit down to the thing that needs my attention right now I feel like the attention is right there.

What’s been keeping me so busy? Writing Center and running my workshops, which have started to gain attendance. It’s funny—some days I feel really exhausted by the very idea of tutoring, but the moment my students arrive I’m right there in the work. I wish I could remember this ahead of time. I feel like I’m a grump. I guess it’s partly being so protective of my own time, which is divided between so many things. I’m tutoring at Duke Ellington, a performing arts high school a few blocks from Georgetown, two days a week—though there have been weeks when I’ve only made it to one of my days. (This week for instance: I really needed the whole of Tuesday to get things done…) But students are starting to come in, and I love talking to these students about writing—it’s really getting into fundamentals, and instilling ideas about writing as a process at the outset. It also gives me a chance to talk to them about the contexts for writing, so they know that there are different conventions for different types of writing, and they can use those conventions, and play with them, as long as they’re aware of them. I’ve also been working intensively with one particular student, and spent an hour going through a single paper he had already handed in, looking at where the writing was really strong, and where he could take it further. Every time I look at these pieces of writing at this level I feel like I’m learning about my own writing. When I grade papers, I limit myself to the amount of time I spend on individual papers, and don’t comment on every possible aspect, but instead what I think are the next steps the particular writer can master to improve, so writing improves incrementally. Perhaps that’s ingrained from my flute-playing days: I’ve read bits and pieces of gaining expertise in writing, with comparisons to the type of training a musician undergoes, and I know that it’s counterproductive to try and work on everything at once.

Of course, I don’t get around to implementing every suggestion I make to students in my own (critical) writing. But slowly comes to matter less—each paper I write there’s something that is becoming more ingrained, and my conscious attention can shift to a different factor. It generally takes 10 years—or longer—to gain mastery. (This is, in fact, a problem for wind players and singers. To reach maturity as a musician, you really do need that ten years. String players and pianists start at a very early age, but you can’t really start serious lessons on wind instruments until later, because they are physically demanding in different ways—the breath required. Wind players will often graduate from a music degree only just beginning to reach a level of expertise—or still not quite there—while string players are at a different level. This interests me a lot.) Oh, the point? I feel like I’ve really been focusing on what it takes to write a critical paper for no longer than 5 years—and I’m not sure I’ve been focussing truly for that long. I mean, I know I started at university over ten years ago (oh—realising that is… huge) but I was at sea when I started, and the feedback I got didn’t really help me figure out how to improve. I figured some things out for myself—but at the same time I’ve been reformulating my writing since I’ve been in America.

So, tutoring has been keeping me busy. Thinking about writing has been keeping me busy. Wordsworth and Coleridge have been keeping me busy—sadly it’s started to turn cold, and, today, wet, which means soon I’ll be giving up my canal-side position. I wonder where my new reading spot will be?

I feel like my thesis has been a little on the backburner in the past fortnight. I managed to sit down on Thursday morning—there were no clients in the writing center—and get some writing done towards my thesis. I want to finish the analysis of the poem I’m looking at soon—today? I can dream… maybe it will become a reality. I also have a paper to write for Monday: I have to choose three lines of a poem and write an analysis of them, between 600 and 1000 words. And that will happen today. Writing about poems takes time, but it is also joyful. I feel like reading Helen Vendler’s book Poets Thinking has helped me think about a particular way to write on poems. I learned a few things about writing from her. Good stuff!

I’ve also started to be a research/general assistant with the other hours I’m allowed to be employed by Georgetown University. This has been great—at present I’m organising a research library. It’s actually a really good workout—running up and down a stepladder with piles of books, especially when I have to reach up to the top shelf. The day after my first shelving marathon my lats were sore… it was so nice! And a good excuse to settle into a lavender flavoured bath with a copy of Vogue.

As if all that weren’t enough, there’ve been poets in town. Ilya Kaminsky came to Carolyn’s class on Wednesday, and I got to chat with him before and after class. Marvellous! He is a joyful poet, and a joyful presence. He gave me some recommendations—I love getting recommendations!—and quizzed me on who to read from Australia. (I threw in a few New Zealanders for good measure…)

And then! And then! Thursday night Adam Zagajewski read at Georgetown. Now, some people may remember the day, several years ago, that I pulled Tremor out of the Melbourne University and started reading it. The result? Well, I accosted more than one person and made them listen to or read certain poems. I went home and wrote certain poems, including “Testimony.” Then when I found books of his essays, and Without End in bookshops I immediately bought them. The days I walked into Readings and swore to myself that I just couldn’t buy any books today… that I couldn’t afford it. But whenever I found Zagajewski’s work I was scared I wouldn’t see it in Australia again. Though I suspect it’s getting to be more and more available. So—meeting him. Hearing him speak. Listening to him read. And talking to him about music—about Shostakovich and about Messiaen. About Chopin and about Mahler. About Lutosławski and about Pärt. It made me crave music!

If you haven’t read his work, please, please do. Here are a few quotes from his talk at the Lannan reading on Thursday night:


"A dissenter is someone who knows the answer—and more and more I felt that to write poetry was to know nothing."


"I think poetry is an instrument that measures the world. An instrument is a scale—but there is no knowledge built into the instrument."


"I think we survive as poets thanks to a system of illusions. We do something, and we think we do something else. And my illusion is a search for radiance."


"The border between poetry of dissent and questioning poetry is not very thick, and I think there is probably always something dissenting about poetry.

"Poetry by definition is a dissent—because it is read by few, written by few, with high standards. It’s elitist, but elitist in the least exclusive sense, in that it doesn’t cost any money. It’s a very democratic elite."

Apparently the email about the writing workshops I’m holding for Liberal Studies students at Georgetown went out yesterday—this morning I had five people register for workshops. Wonderful! So that’s great. It’s all about people taking advantage of these opportunities, and it will give me a little bit more teaching experience.

In the mean time I’ve been scribbling toward this response to “The Idiot Boy”—I feel very sluggish in my writing at the moment. Damn it! Or perhaps its just that I’ve only been blog-writing and poem-writing for so long that I’m out of practice when it comes to sharp analysis, rather than “hey, I’m thinking this” or “here-is-a-hopefully-startling/apt-metaphor” writing. Hey, I’m a grad student again!

That said, I should now turn my attention to “The Idiot Boy.” At least I’ve got my Baked & Wired coffee to get… well… wired. (Doesn’t this look enticing? Jacob Grier is responsible for this photo.)

As usual I’m feeling insanely busy. I also think I’m probably not managing my time as well as I could be—should be. But I got through some tutoring, some reading, some scribbling of notes today. Got through some knitting. Thought about of Anne Carson’s work. Started to think about Wordsworth again, after two days off—and at the moment, taking two days off from Wordsworth feels almost like a crime.

But I did enlighten the ducks of the C & O Canal last weekend when I saw canal-side and read the whole of Lyrical Ballads aloud to them. (I’m glad I have a segment of the canal near me that I really don’t have to share with anyone but the occasional dog and its owner, and the ducks.)

Tutoring at the Writing Center has been really busy—today was the first shift where I’ve had a breather. Read about Hegel for a while after I saw my client. While the Writing Center was quiet, I had two students come in to see me while I was tutoring (as a volunteer) at Duke Ellington this morning—it’s nice that those students are starting to take advantage of the tutoring service.

I have to write a short paper on a poem from Lyrical Ballads in the next few days—I want to get a draft of the thing done tomorrow morning, so that I can go through my ideas of the next few days. I’m mostly likely going to write on “The Idiot Boy”—there are things that interest me in it, though also things that don’t work for me. I’m giving a presentation in class next week on “Tintern Abbey” too.

Last week I was quite social—in between doing an intense amount of reading I went to see the Shakespeare Theatre Company production of Romeo and Juliet with my friend C, and two of his friends. Thursday I went to a great launch at the Library of Congress—short and sweet speeches, a few good poems, and a couple that were wonderful. Discovered the work of Sinead Morrisey. I can't wait to read more. Friday I decided not to go dancing at the last minute, and instead stayed in. But then it was back out on Saturday night—after reading all day I ended up at a friend-of-a-friend’s party. Dancing, handstands, talking with fabulous people and general fun ensued.

And I’ve been thinking and thinking that soon I will get to writing some poems. It hasn’t happened yet, but I have high hopes. I have ideas—both reading Wordsworth and Coleridge, and all the poets for Carolyn’s class on Poetry of Witness, and any extra poetry I happen to be able to stuff into my days.

It’s been so long since I wrote a response paper that I’m feeling really nervous! I know I’ve done a lot of other writing, but my ideas seem so chaotic at the moment. also went through some days of panicking about my thesis last week—and then dreamed that Michael Ondaatje emailed me some ideas for it. Odd. I guess I really am going insane: as happens to grad students.

My second birthday in DC. I have, of course, talked to my mum. And, since it’s my birthday (as well as Independence Day for Mali and Bulgaria), I’m trying to ignore the whole economic crisis thing going on. I mean, I know in some quarters people were feeling ye olde “cautious optimism” on Friday, but I’m just waiting for the next thing to fall apart. And I’ve been worried about global warming for 22 years. Wait, it’s my birthday. That’s a day off worry, right?

I read some Coleridge this morning that I really loved. It was exciting, as I thought I was in the Wordsworth and Coleridge class all for WW’s sake. No, it turns out I can be a sucker for Coleridge, and perhaps I will be.

I’ve just started a research blog for my thesis project. This means that I have basically become the queen of blogs in the English department. I don’t think that’s a cool thing—just a fact. Anyway, since it’s messy, it’s pretty much a closed blog. But if you’re interested I can register you to read it. Send your details on a piece of batter pudding… Oh wait, this isn’t The Goon Show (damn it!). Email me.

And I read a bunch of Nelly Sachs on the weekend. Wow. Also, a bunch of Brecht’s poetry. Obviously in translation as my super high school German skills from year 8 and 9 don’t reach to reading… well, anything—beyond “Hi, my name’s [insert name here] and I’m from Australia.” I can also say that I study geography, even though I don’t. It’s sort of like how I can say in Auslan (that’s Australian sign language for those not in the know… and yes, Australian sign is different from American) “I have a duck.” Life skills.

So, I’m turning 29. What’s happening? Well, there’s been some nice news on the poetry front. My book will come out sometime next year, I’ll have a piece in Best Australian Poems and there’s another anthology that wants me to send some work. I also had an odd dream about a journal I could submit poetry to. I wonder if it exists. Maybe I could dream it into existence, just like, apparently, people in ancient Greece could go to a certain temple to dream their own cures.

I have to get into Serious Attention to School mode. With a side serve of Serious Attention to Writing. Any day now. Life keeps being unexpectedly busy.

I feel like it’s been quite a week, but I’m not sure if that’s true. I’ve been doing quite a lot of stuff—but I think I’ve also had quite a bit of down time. Knitting, admiring Luke Perry, sitting on the floor… But today I did some proper reading, and started to make lists in my head about the sorts of things I need to get done. And whoa! Do I need to get things done.

Yesterday, though, I had a bit of a time out from all the university stuff. My friend Marie works for a senator, and she took me on a tour of the Capitol. Now for some reason I thought it would be a drama for me even to get in, but no—no passports, fingerprints, background check… Just the normal walk through a metal detector while we scan your bag.

The tour was pretty interesting—especially since we cut through lots of little corridors and underground passages and things. I’m more interested in the unglamorous shortcuts, I guess. I got all sorts of things—and asked some probably strange questions. I wondered how many of the statues in the building featured people in Confederate uniforms (thanks to my father and our recent civil war tours…) and when Marie pointed out a chandelier and told me that before it was at the Capitol it had been in a church and a theatre, I found myself wondering what denomination the church was—I mean, it’s in a pretty central room (if I remember rightly, next to THE central room) so I think it’s significant. Marie didn’t know, but her husband thinks it’s an ex-Methodist chandelier that has pride of place.

Also, when I saw the place where presidents lie in state, there was a list next to it of the presidents who had lain in that very place. Alongside the presidents, there were unknown soldiers: obviously one from World War I at the end of the war, similarly one from Vietnam at the end of that war. But also—1958, Unknown Soldier World War II and Korean War. This puzzled me—if it was one soldier, well—he was unknown, so how could you know he was in two conflicts? If it was two soldiers, what state was the World War II soldier in in 1958? And why would you wait until 1958 to decide to give an WWII Unknown Soldier lying in state status?

I also so the room of the first supreme court. It kind of gave me chills. And the room that is featured in Mr Smith Goes to Washington.

When I noticed the number of Barack Obama’s senate office, I walked by it. Marie told me one of her friends had gone in and talked to them—they gave her a signed photograph. Now I didn’t go into that office, but the idea was rolling around my head. We “cruised” a couple of other senate offices (and I saw what had been JFK’s office) and then I decided to be brave—or just get over how daggy it was—and get a couple of signed senator photographs. I started with Ted Kennedy, and since that went smoothly, I got John Kerry to. Then I thought, “hey! I could get a Democratic Convention set!” I stopped in at Hillary Clinton’s office, but they’d run out. They said I could go to the website, put in the details and they’d send it to me—but I guess I have a short attention span. Now I’m kind of over the idea. Still, I’m pretty pleased with my Kennedy-Kerry duo.

Oh, and can I just say that Sarah Palin makes me angry? So, so angry.

Spoke to my mum this evening—wonderful! I love speaking to my mum. I’m a mama’s girl.

I’m still on my alarming 90210 kick. So I’ll just say Donna Martin Graduates!

Squash it.

For now, I’m out of doctor’s offices for a while. That’s going to be nice—another follow up in three months, but that’s pretty much it. Cyst was benign—there was really very little chance it wasn’t going to be—and I got to see some good photos of my insides. My liver looks healthy, but the photo also made it look like it has teeth. Hopefully at some point I will have these photos to put on the blog. Which I imagine might not be a big hit, but… they’re my insides, people! Sibley Hospital accidentally put two sets of photos in my file at the hospital instead of giving me the spare set like they were supposed to. I wonder if this is how the civil war general who constantly visited his own leg bone in Washington felt?

So, fingers crossed that I’m going to have a lot less drama in the coming months.

I’ve been rereading The Beauty of the Husband and starting to make notes and bibliographies for myself. I’ve got some other reading to get done for Monday—in fact, Monday is going to be a very busy day this semester. Thinking of trying to get out to some of DCs free stuff this coming week, and I’ll be going to see the Silver Jews play next week. I’m also hoping to see Juliana Hatfield on Tuesday—I’ve loved her, in probably far too dorky and devoted a way, for nearly a decade now… Without counting my love for her My So-Called Life so-called angel appearance.

Oh, and I’ve watched a truly shameful amount of old-school 90210 lately. You know what? I choose me. (Jeremy Jordan—alright!)

So I’ve been underground for a while. It’s been a fairly overwhelming month—finishing up teaching, going straight into ER visits, painkillers, surgery. My wonderful parents being in town, and then all of us going out of town the moment I was well enough, and then the day after getting back, straight back into the university life, with the welcome party for the next academic year, and meeting with Carolyn (Forché) who will be my thesis advisor over the next year, as well as attending her undergraduate class on the poetry of witness.

I guess I got a little down when I was sick—I felt drained at the end of teaching (full of self-doubt as to whether my students felt that they had learned, and whether I am, in fact, a capable teacher) and had wanted the couple of weeks before semester to relax, do some reading, prepare myself emotionally for the final year of this particular degree… (I feel like I’m going to be endlessly juggling degrees, though I hope sometime my place will become more obvious.)

What’s actually been nice in the past few days to take my mind off that slight depression has been helping out a friend. Having someone to check up on regularly. Also, knitting helps. Television does not.

So I’ve been starting to think out my Anne Carson project. An initial discussion with Carolyn yesterday has had me thinking through some ways to focus, which has made me happy. I will get there in the end. I have some Wordsworth and Coleridge to read too… No shortage of things to do!

I feel like I’m going to get some writing done sometime—sometime. I’m going to try to have at least a day off each week, and to try to get some writing bits and pieces done as well. Try. Who knows if that will ever happen…

Tomorrow I’ll sign up for my writing center hours—and hopefully it won’t take too much longer to find out which Liberal Studies class I’m working with so I’ll have a real idea of what my schedule is going to be. And then I guess I’ll have to block out my study properly. I was so good about that in Melbourne last year. I feel like I haven’t been quite as good here, but I’m going to start working on it.

So I’ve been reading mostly poetry, and trying to get Independence Day Project bits and pieces written.

It’s sad that my parents are gone! It’s only three days since they left, but it has been feeling like an age.

Things keep running away from me—well, time does. Things keep getting done, and then I find suddenly it’s several days down the track, and I’ve read a few books, written a few scraps, thought some things that later it may have been useful to have thought… I’ve been making notes and underlining things and making little connections in my mind. It’s been a nice week.

Though I didn’t make it to Philadelphia—devestation! There was some talk last night of driving to West Virginia today, too, but that was talk over whiskey and crème brulee. So. It could just be that my potential-intrepid-co-traveller hasn’t awaken as yet. Or she could just be disappointer that the town of Intercourse that she proposed we visit (because of its Amish population) is in Pennsylvania and not West Virginia. Either way, I’m guessing that there’s no getting out of DC today—but I hold out hope. Maybe tomorrow?

I asked a friend to recommend me some readings in poetics and poetic criticism—just to have a bit of roving reading through the summer before I settle into a more directed reading list. So last week I read James Longenbach’s The Resistance to Poetry, which I loved. I haven’t managed to sit down and write much this week—no poem or article, just Independence Day Project entries—the Independence Days come thick and fast at this time of the year—but I’ve got some ideas.

My housemate was fasting a week and a half ago—though she was drinking a concoction of water, maple syrup and lemon juice, so it wasn’t a complete fast. Anyway, I believe she went for five days. This reminded me that I’ve had a fascination with fasting ever since I read a book by Sharman Apt Russell entitled Hunger: An Unnatural History. It makes me want try it for a week, just to see what it’s like. (And then, of course, have the opportunity to write about it.) I do find the history of fasting and the religious and political uses of it fascinating. And now there are apparently secular fasting clinics in California… go for three weeks and eat nothing under supervision. There’s something beguiling about the idea, though I’m not entirely sure why. (And I don’t expect everyone to be beguiled as I am.)

Last week I was interviewed on 3RRR in Melbourne. I forgot to tell my friends, and yet they seem to have caught it by chance anyway—even a guy from my primary school who emailed me a “did you happen to be on the radio...?” note a few days later. Apparently I spoke in complete sentences, which is nice to know.

I do feel like my life is turning into commenting on student writing and reading books at the moment. Which is not at all a complaint—there’s a glorious slowness to it all. I occasionally think—maybe I’ll go look at some art. Or—maybe I’ll go watch a film. But by and large the days are mine.

I still don’t have enough enrolments for the class I’m meant to be teaching—I’ve got to admit I’m sad about this. I both wanted the teaching experience, and the money that accompanied the experience. I don’t expect to find myself entirely destitute, but—. The work I’m doing with Professor Bradford’s liberal studies class on the Renaissance is really rewarding, though, and I may get a chance to lead a segment on Renaissance music. I’ll have to cast my mind back to those motets…

And of course there’s online Scrabble. A very important part of my life. Trying to find seven letter words does keep me up nights…

“Should I bounce on a rock off his head?”
“Respect your father dear. —What kind of rock?”

—from The Bank Dick

Yes, there have been a few more films—All That Heaven Allows and The Bank Dick. Having now seen the former I can see just how much Todd Haynes’s wonderful Far From Heaven owes to this film. Also, I can see why Rock Hudson was such a sex symbol—in the Doris Day films it always seemed obvious to me that he was gay, but as the Walden-esque self-sufficient nature man, with his house in the woods, his hunting, trees and—terribly important—his flannel shirts I can definitely see why anyone would fall for him.

The Bank Dick is W. C. Fields’s best-known films—at least these days. (I don’t know how it stacked up at the time it came out…) I’m so glad I’ve finally seen one of his films—though Louise Brooks wrote that his films don’t capture the genius of his stage performances. The film certainly did well enough—his stage performances must have been something!

On top of this I’ve been catching up with friends, working in the Writing Center, begun working with a Liberal Studies summer class, planning the syllabus for the class I’m (hopefully) teaching in a few weeks (enrolments are still low—fingers crossed the numbers arrive), writing and attending performances, reading things and thinking about the thesis I’ll be writing this coming academic year. As my mother always says, “No rest for the wicked.”

I went to another free performance at the Kennedy Center last night—a dance performance by the NORD/NOBA Center for Dance, which is a community partnership between the New Orleans Recreation Department and the New Orleans Ballet Association. For a number of the pieces the dancers were accompanied by Rising Appalachia, a musical duo of sisters Leah and Chloe Smith—they were pretty fabulous. I’m hoping to track down their CDs soon. The dancers were great—again making me wish I had the knowledge and experience to write about dance (particularly contemporary dance) effectively.

The writing center and writing consultant work has started up pretty much as if I never left off. It still feels strange to me that I’m reasonably good at giving advice on all the writing that comes through the door. I’m used to knowing my way around a poem, but I feel like it’s taken me so long to get the hang of academic writing—and I’m still getting the hang of American academic writing—that I can’t quite trust my own advice a lot of the time! On the other hand, I think the struggles I’ve had, and really learning to think about it in terms of academic conventions has probably helped me relate to writers and helped them understand the very things that troubled me. It does make me wish there had been an explicit pedagogical strategy in my undergraduate degree to assist with writing—my writing fluency has always been considered a strength, but I really feel like I had to begin to find my own way through the labyrinth. In a way I think it has made me a better writer—because I’ve got idiosyncrasies that I wouldn’t otherwise have—but sometimes the weird individuality that creeps into my academic work does raise eyebrows. Of course, finding my own solution is, I think, the best way to have come out of the thing (even if it did take me an inordinately long time to do so!) but at the same time, the lack of focus on the pedagogy meant I was incredibly shy of asking for guidance to improve my writing for a long time. Slowly these things come together…

And now I’m trying to get the nuts and bolts of this syllabus together as I contemplate not just tutoring but actually teaching writing. I was reluctant to even apply for the teaching position as I didn’t feel qualified. As it’s like to be high school students or “rising seniors” I wanted to choose something familiar that they could begin to think critically about, and so the theme for the course is representations of America, specifically American youth, looking at television, print-media, film and short stories. I’m planning to use an episode of The West Wing (probably the last of season one; Charlie is reluctant to join the conversation because he feels his inexperience; Zoe, the priviledged presidential daughter, feels no qualms and doesn’t fully understand his reluctance; the president cites the report Charlie eventually gives him on youth attitudes to politics; the shooters are themselves young white-extremists… there’s a narrative about privilege versus lack of privilege, and about education versus ignorance in youth underlying what seems to be a whole adult focussed drama I’d like them to see) and an episode of My So-Called Life—probably the substitute teacher episode, which raises a lot of questions about youth investment in a cause and youth apathy, when censorship becomes an issue. I was thinking about using the film Pleasantville—which I haven’t seen in years—to try to think about adult nostalgia and youth culture… and perhaps—because, let’s face it, I’m a dork—the king of teen representation John Hughes’s Pretty in Pink. (I suppose Clueless would also work—I like Pretty in Pink because of the class representations and classic teen “types” staples of teen films that are clear but also not so explicit as The Breakfast Club… though The Breakfast Club works better in some other ways, acknowledging the near-impossibility of crossing into other social spaces…)

And of course I want to look at election coverage and the commentary on the youth vote.

I feel like it’s evolving day to day.

I may be heading to Philadelphia tomorrow—if I do it will be my first time in Pennsylvania (another state!)—with Kacee, a girl I met in Costa Rica who’s in DC all summer before moving to Philadelphia for law school. She’s looking at places and areas to live, and hopefully I’ll be along for the ride. If there can be a stop by some major sight and a Philly cheesesteak then I will consider it a good first foray into the city. And I’ll be back. We were also talking last night about going on a crazy five day road trip up to Boston—and maybe going further on right up to Canada and New Brunswick—in the next week or two. I’ve got my fingers crossed. She has access to a car, so I hope it happens. She seems ready to get out of DC, having, like me, been back for under two weeks! Girl after my own heart… Nothing like someone who understands nomadism.

Tonight I’m having a cultural experience of a different kind: I’m going to my first baseball match. Not just any baseball match, though—it’s the “Stitch’n’Pitch,” which means that the game at the DC stadium will have a contingent (I do not know how large) of knitters in the stands, knitting and purling away as the innings pass by… Yes, I’m taking some knitting with me. Yes, I think it is strange—but how could I pass up such an invitation?

I am adjusting to life post-epigraphs. I had hoped to just put them out of my mind immediately, but it seems it will take a day or two to recover from the process of waking, thinking about how this epigraph relates to that epigraph, how they both relate to the Jewish plot, and - so forth. Plus, being "epigraph-free" makes me sound like I had a rash.

You should see print out of all the epigraphs and quotations in Daniel Deronda. Lines going everywhere. John Nash has nothing on me.

I'm celebrating. I had a hamburger earlier today. I think I'm going to go wild and see if my body can handle a milkshake.

(Oh, and I'm pleased that Häagen Dazs has released a new flavour of icecream that raises awareness about the world's dying honeybee populations. I've been worried about the honeybees for quite a while now. But I seem to have been the only one. Admittedly, most people probably didn't take multiple excursions to "The Honey Pot" near Coffs Harbour in their childhoods, to learn about bees AND taste many, many types of honey, but still... We don't know why they're dying. And it's not just a problem because of the honey... Now icecream lovers everywhere can share the concern.)

Okay, so I went to the Library of Congress last night—it was Charles Simic’s final event as poet laureate, and he gave a lecture. The lecture was on translation and poetry—a favourite subject of mine—and yet I felt grouchy with it. He shuffled papers and told occasional anecdotes, in between repeating the same things I’ve read over and over about the act of translation. He read one poem by Vasko Popa. One? Only one? I was hoping he’d talk about a specific translating—what was involved in translating Popa’s “little box” poems—but he didn’t. I feel a little like I’ve spent the last several months breaking up with Simic. In part it’s that I enjoy reading his poems the first time, and then rereading them, they’re a disappointment.

I wonder if it’s the tyranny of distance wearing off. In Australia I’m so excited when anyone international becomes accessible. Here it feels like so much is accessible, and so the novelty is gone. Instead of feeling like a thirsty girl at an oasis, I feel like I can just evaluate each thing I go to on what it added to my thinking. This, unfortunately, added very little. (He did read the first poem he ever translated—a twelfth century Serbian “poem” that was pretty fantastic. I want to track it down. So—there was a glimmer of joy. Plus, hearing just one Vasko Popa poem read aloud was also pretty great. Not a complete loss.)

Still toiling on George Eliot and thinking through authority and framing texts and the way she defines audience through use of foreign language texts and literary allusion and proto-Zionist rants by Mordecai and the two incredibly anti-Semitic sequels and… you get the general idea. I was telling Professor Ragussis about my big chart and pile of notes on the epigraphs, and the odd anomalies I found, and he was really interesting. Mediating Jewish space and Deronda as Moses, baby.

Bought Cage’s lectures and essays on silence yesterday. Opened it and instantly remembered reading these texts a few times back when I was studying music intently. I’ve been reading a few different music texts recently, and as well as thinking through the implications in poetic terms, I found myself wanting to compose something. Something small. Oh! It’s been so long… Oh! John Cage!

Gewanter yesterday. Wearing a Krispy Kreme Doughnuts t-shirt. Hmm. The class met at his place for pizza and general conversation. A couple of people said they’d be reading more poetry over the summer—success! Surely that should be the measure of a good contemporary poetry class? He amusingly revealed the “key” to getting papers accepted for conferences.

I have to get a couple of conference papers together, actually. Timely advice, oh sage one.

For the second time this week I’m going out to Actually Be Social. Gathering at Robyn’s house for a cheap happy hour. How cheap? I’m tossing up between taking “two buck chucks” wine from Trader Joes, or splurging and taking a bottle of whisky. (I am still amused I’ve become a whisky drinker. Even if it’s only a bit of whisky, and only now and then. Still, my celebratory evening a few months back of mussels, whisky and chocolate mousse will live on in my memory forever. Best celebration ever.)

Robyn! Most likely going to Hungary! On a Fulbright! I’m so, so proud of her. And a little devastated that she’ll be gone… Actually, my friend Carolyn too—to Bulgaria. While I just want to get somewhere to write. To get this paper done, and think about poems and poetics and other writings for myself. The countdown is on.

So, I’ve spent most of today thinking about the epigraphs in Daniel Deronda. (I know, I know—it’s what you think about every day too.) I think my copy of the book is going to be in a pretty dire state by the time this paper is written. Supposedly within two weeks—how am I going to get all this thinking done in two weeks?

I sat down with them this morning (at Baked and Wired, as usual). I typed them all out over the last week or two, and with my printouts I started to scribble all over them.

Somehow, it seems like there are so many in other languages—but it’s only 12 out of the 73. Five in French, five in German, two in Italian. The German and Italian ones are the most interesting for me. Out of the 61 leftovers that are in English, 30 were written by George Eliot herself (next most-used author is, appropriately, Shakespeare at five, followed by Wordsworth at four) and five are actually translated from other languages—including one each from French and Italian. It’s an odd body of material. An odd lot of numbers I’ve got—it reminds me of the end of last semester, when I was suddenly driven to counting pages and illustrations in Bleak House, figuring out that Esther Summerson actually spends twice as much time outside of Bleak House as she does in it. Here I’ve made lists not just of the epigraphs, but also which characters are in each chapter, so I can try to sort out if there are patterns in her use of epigraphs between the English plot and the Jewish plot. It all makes for an odd game of literary detective-itis. Was that more than you ever wanted to know about the epigraphs of Daniel Deronda?

It’s times like these that I wonder what intensive study of literature has driven me to? But I think I’m the only page-counter/epigraph-mapper in the department… Nonetheless, I do really enjoy it. And figuring out the patterns is strangely satisfying. I’m sure, however, it’s changed the way I read. I remember the first time I read Middlemarch I skipped about half the epigraphs. Ah, the foolhardiness of youth…

Looking for images of George Eliot, I’m not sure whether I’m pleased or alarmed to find Eliot-quoting magnets for sale.

A few days ago I was exhausted and so glad that classes would be over. Monday night, though, I had my last class with the Liberal Studies group I’ve been a TA for, and I’m really sad that I won’t be working with them again. Though I’m hoping I’ll see them in the writing center, or in other classes if I’m TAing again next year.

I don’t think I’m going to be good for much over the next two weeks. Well, except coffee drinking. The Baked and Wired crew will be sure to get sick of me!

I finished Daniel Deronda last night, sobbing. George Eliot is amazing.

I have to write an erudite paper on it today. Now I have to find that erudite strain in myself...

It’s been quite a few days—I’m exhausted, and in recuperation.

I haven’t been sleeping consistently—odd hours, not enough and then making up for it later. It’s got me a little bit out of whack. On Thursday, following my final Contemporary Poetry class, I was pretty shattered. But, I had to push on and go to the Library of Congress for the reading.

Unfortunately, I was cranky. Things that I would normally have found charming grated on me a bit—this was both being tired and hungry (my food intake on Thursday was appalling. Damn finals season) and also sitting near the infamous Library of Congress Poetry Readings Laugher. A loud laugh at the slightest thing that could be construed to have an iota of humour in it. It wasn’t pretty.

Charles Simic gave an intro that indicated he, Mark Strand and Charles Wright had all known each other for over forty years. Ah! The camaraderie of old men! See, I’m recovering my normally sunny disposition, because once again I find this lovely, adorable. At the time, it made me cranky. But it seems the reading blooms after the fact, and my mind is revising the whole experience. It’s nice that readings, like books, are allowed these afterlives…

At the time, though, crankiness. While that is slowly being revised, it seems to have left at least one lasting mark. Mark Strand read this poem, and the information he gave beforehand blew me away. He quoted Apollinaire and his question—“Who will be the first person to forget a continent?” His poem was about the forgetters. It kind of followed the trajectory of Elizabeth Bishop’s “One Art.” This does strike me as a brave move—and I don’t think any poem can really bear the comparison. I completely understand the impulse to take the Apollinaire quote and imagine it into being—and yet, the poem can’t live up to the suggestion of the quote. In everything it leaves unsaid, the Apollinaire allows for some kind of hugeness that unfortunately the Strand didn’t quite have—Strand’s poem in comparison was “a mere bagatelle.” Cranky? I love Mark Strand. I will continue to love Mark Strand. I apologise for being cranky.

Charles Wright was great. I loved his southern accent. I didn’t take in a lot at the time—so tired, so hungry—but, after the fact, it seems it did sink in, and is now starting to resurface. Thank god! I may have been cranky, but it didn’t mar the transmission.

Yesterday, recuperation in earnest. Unfortunately, my body just wouldn’t get up after only 6 hours of sleep, so I missed the dawn service. Only the second in several years. I feel bad about it—I think it would have been wonderful to attend it in DC. I suppose there’s always next year… But I did tell all the lovely folks at Baked and Wired that it was Anzac Day, and I like to think that Meg made my caffe latte with extra love. I read Daniel Deronda for a while, and then, on a whim went to see a film.

Two films, actually. I snuck into the second. I also got invited to a free preview screening of a new Spike Lee film on Tuesday night. Score!

I saw In Bruges first. In a way, it seemed like two—or maybe even three—films to me—first this drifting film that was beautifully shot, and explored the morality of two very different hitmen. Contrary to Anthony Lane of the New Yorker (! I like to take on the New Yorker when I can…) I found both Colin Farrell—at least in the first hour or so—really did match Brendan Gleeson, and that lingering over their faces, the minutiae of their reactions was beautiful - almost mesmerising. Then turned into a slightly surreal midget comedy, and tightly choreographed cat-and-mouse carnage. That first section, where the two characters are wandering around Bruges, having their very different reactions to the city, as the viewer is trying to come to terms with the morality of the two, sold me. The rest—well, really quite engaging to watch once, but I feel no need to watch it again. Still, some of it will linger.

Then—Smart People. I was disappointed—well, except for when Ellen Page was on screen. (I find it very difficult to be disappointed by Page.) The developments were okay, but there wasn’t enough justification for any of it. The relationship between the two main characters—I don’t understand the why of it. Besides the weird thrall of a former professor. Thomas Hayden Church was worth watching, besides Page. But—huh? Even the professor’s son, a very underdeveloped character—out of the blue he sells a poem to the New Yorker? Um. Okay. It was extreme-lite The Squid and the Whale. I loved The Squid and the Whale. This, not so much. Plus, they didn't seem so smart.

The rest of this weekend really revolves around Daniel Deronda. I just finished the penultimate book of the novel. I am taking some time before jumping into the rest of it—it’s hit me with such an extreme force. I both dread writing my final paper, and can’t wait to jump into it. How to touch this monument?

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!

I've got one paper (Milton) fully drafted, but really need to get to work on the other. (I feel like I'm cheering myself on.) I don't think I'll touch my second paper until tomorrow, though, as I also have a lot of Daniel Deronda left to read before 4pm tomorrow. I think I got excited about the prospect of reading whatever I wanted in the summer a little early... My brain is not allowed to switch off for a few more weeks. There are still things to juggle before I get to lie still.

A friend I correspond with is in Chile at the moment. Though he doesn't have time to go to the Atacama desert (the desert I most want to visit) I'm still very jealous. He's near the Atacama. It's got me dreaming of nomadism. Another friend is about to go to Europe for seven weeks. While her trip sounds a little too whirlwind for me (I like to travel slow, talk with people, do a little bit of wandering, a little bit of gazing at artistic things, a little bit of relaxing...) I am hungry to get out of town for a bit. But just writing "Atacama" makes my mind rove... Panama draws closer by the day.

I want to read the New Yorker, do crosswords and drink coffee. Not much longer!

I haven’t figured out the dates, but I am definitely going somewhere when I hand in my final paper. I also haven’t figured out the place. In fact, nothing is figured, but that I have itchy feet, and want to throw myself into someplace different before I come back to Georgetown for the teaching I’ll be doing in July. I won’t have all the time up til July free, because I’ll need to be in DC to develop the syllabus and I should be working in the writing center in the summer too (assuming it does open again this summer… it all feels a little un-pinned down.) Also, my friend Helen needs to leave the US to come back in on a tourist visa now when her studies at Georgetown finish, in order do a Melbourne University art history class in New York, which may mean a joint trip. Though I think, after a particular place in Mexico’s San Luis Potosi that she wants to go to, she’s more interested in desert islands than deserts.

Candidates? Well:

-Fly into Costa Rica and then go down to Panama.

-Fly in Mexico or Guatemala (a cheaper flight) and then go in search of a surrealist park that Helen wants to see.

-Fly into El Paso and then enter Mexico via Ciudad Juarez, and maybe head down to the Copper Canyon region.

-Live the dream I dreamt for Spring Break—a bit of Texas (desert-y Texas), New Mexico, Utah, and maybe some Arizona and Colorado too.

Going up to areas of Canada I don’t already know is also a cheap-ish possibility.

They’re my primary interests right now. I’ll probably have about three weeks I can afford to be away. How strange! Tomorrow I should stop by the health service and find out what shots cost, in case Panama wins the day. (Yellow Fever shot… also precautionary anti-Malarial medication.)

In the mean time: studies. It all continues.

I’ll find time later to write a few words about a poetry reading I attended Sunday night, but at the moment my mind is firmly ensconced in: Anne Carson, Carolyn Forché, George Eliot and Milton. I read Book X of Paradise Lost earlier today and I’m thinking my way through the short paper I’ll write on it for tomorrow, about the sounds associated with the punishment both of the denizens of hell (I just like the word denizens) and of Adam and Eve.

I spoke to Professor Ragussis yesterday, and he’s very happy for me to work on the epigraphs in George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda—I’m so glad. I remember being fascinated by the epigraphs in Middlemarch—and the opening epigraph of Daniel Deronda is a doozy—and Eliot-authored. (It reminds me in its quite sweeping address of the opening paragraph of Middlemarch, and due to its length it almost seems like more of a first paragraph and an epigraph.) So, I have to read Bakhtin and some other bits and pieces, find embedded quotations within chapters, and see how the dialogue between these and the epigraphs works. As Cher in Clueless would say with a squeak, “Ooh! Project!” Yes, I realise that I really do know how to bring the tone down again. It’s not all lofty heights in my mind…

I’m excited by a new anthology from Graywolf Press, New European Poets. (Also, incidentally, the press publishing Monica Youn, who I saw read at the Library of Congress a while ago.) The book has an amazing array of poets, and covers (I think) all the countries of Europe except those tiny enclaves San Marino, Andorra and Monaco. (I don’t entirely know what’s going to happen when I get to these places in the Independence Day Project. I don’t want to admit defeat!) The only thing that I do find a little depressing is its design. The cover looks like a green “European Poetry for Dummies” or a computer manual. I’m going to solve this for my own copy by covering it in plain brown paper and then decorating. (I wonder if I have tape in this apartment?)

I’m in love, recently, with the art project 20 x 200. Limited edition prints (beautiful quality) of arts of work for $20. Well, $28.50 once you add in the postage etc. Which, though it increases the price by almost 50 percent, doesn’t make it less of a bargain.

Early this afternoon, along with Paradise Lost, I read a book about deserts—another desolate landscape, so I suppose I could connect the two by more than their happening to dovetail in my reading. Terry Tempest Williams. I’ve long wanted to read more of her work. Perhaps in the summer. Though I was thinking, when I go away, I may just take something ancient with me. I’m thinking of following Kapuściński’s example and going with Herodotus. How very English Patient of me.

Oh, and some good news from home. I’ll have a couple of poems coming out in ALR soon. Lovely.

I’ve just spent quite a bit of time—and quite a lot of words—writing about lines 68-69 of Ezra Pound’s Canto I: after sticking to Book 11 of the Odyssey thus far Pound interrupts the poem to write:





"Lie quiet Divus. I mean, that is Andreas Divus.
In officina Wecheli, 1538, out of Homer."

Turns out that—shame on him (yes, I’ve read your ABC of Reading, Ezzie)—Pound has been using Divus’s sixteenth century translation of Homer into Latin instead of the original ancient Greek. How could he live with himself?

It also turns out I was able to write a whole page on just those two lines, and what they do to the poem. I know Ezra was a bad man, and then recanted via psychobabble his fascism in a quite pathetic manner, but, well, I like his poetry. Though these days I like his pronouncements in books like How to Read more. I keep meaning to go to St Elizabeth’s and see where he lived for all those years.

I’m one hundred pages into Daniel Deronda—one eighth of the way through—and Deronda himself appeared only in the first chapter and has since gone away. (There was a hint he may have participated in the action of Chapter 2, but he wasn’t, so to speak, on stage.) In the mean time, Eliot gives us Gwendolen Harleth. She fascinates me—largely because, in spite of her arrogance and almost banal wish to be different, she has the most interesting reaction when she receives an avowal of love:

“Gwendolen herself could not have foreseen that she should feel this way. It was all a sudden, new experience to her. The day before she had been quite aware that her cousin was in love with her—she did not mind how much, so that he said nothing about it; and if any one had asked her why she objected to love-making speeches, she would have said laughingly, ‘Oh, I am tired of them all in the books.’ But now the life of passion had begun negatively in her. She felt passionately averse to this volunteered love.”

Later she is reduced to uncontrollable sobbing—which, yes, is oh so nineteenth century, but also seems right. She cannot bear to be loved. And I suppose a heroine who cannot bear to be loved is not so interesting in the twenty-first century landscape, but in the nineteenth century, I do find it rather striking. Especially as its not (overall) satirical (Eliot does have a wicked tongue—pen—at times) like, for instance Vanity Fair. She certainly has a dose of Becky Sharp in her—but what else is there? See? Eliot’s got me hooked. Jolly old Mary Ann Evans.

(Which reminds me, too, of a letter Mrs Elizabeth Gaskell sent her—praising one of her novels, but rounding off with the sentiment: “But I wish—oh! how I wish—that you were Mrs Lewes.)

(Which, in turn, reminds me that George Henry Lewes wrote a rather scathing bit about the character of Esther in Bleak House.)

(And you don’t want to know where musings on Dickens, Esther and Bleak House could take me.)

So, I’ve started knitting again. Some of friends have seen the blanket I made, sewing together patches I had knitted while travelling around North America and Europe in 2003. I have two friends here, Marie and Rebecca, who do a lot of knitting, and watching them has given me an urge to start again myself. So, I found the nearest yarn store and bought needles and a small selection of yarns. The 2003 blanket was colourful—in each country I bought wool that was a colour that for me represented the country: the pale blue of a still-snowy Montreal spring; the lush green of Cambridge’s fields, as on a walk to Grandchester, the shiraz-pink sunset of Corsica, the tomato-red and dazzling yellow of Italy… Well, this is an American blanket, and so there will be reds, whites and blues—but not the normal reds whites and blues of the flag. I want to play with it a little. This is, too, inspired by Lisa Blas’s exhibition “Meet me at the Mason Dixon,” which was also a patchwork derived from nomadism. I’m hoping that I will be able to travel more, and as I go to buy wool (and, a rule, only real—not synthetic—yarns this time) as I go. I think I’ll have to play with the often-jingoistic aspect of American patriotism. And I think it will be calming, for the moments I’m not buried in reading.

One day I’d like to knit a large desert blanket, with all the desert colours. Another year.

The Li-Young Lee quotes, if you are wondering, come from the fact that I’ve been reading the book of interviews while sitting at Barnes and Noble, not buying it. And an awareness that one of the things this hotchpotch of a blog is for me is a notebook. My notebooks are full of quotes. So—apparently a blog of all things. Or simply a blog of the chaos (the secret city?) of my mind.

A brief respite from Independence Days—after Iran today, it’s Senegal this Friday, and then a whole week off. The first half of the year is comparatively light when it comes to National Days. September—with 29—will keep me on my toes.

I’m trying to make some plans for getting out of DC in the summer—I had a slightly crazy notion of going to Costa Rica or Panama as soon as my final paper is in, before I come back to Georgetown to teach in the summer, but I don’t think I’ll have quite enough time to organise it—though Central America will happen before I go home. I feel it. Instead, I’m really thinking about the Four Corners area. Dreaming, really. As usual, I’ve got deserts on my mind.

I think I will start Daniel Deronda tonight. Though I will treat myself to some Lorca first, most likely. Have been reading more Bruce Chatwin too. It seems strange to me that it’s taken so long for me to really fall in love with travel writing—though I think I was always seeking out a very specific kind of travel writing, that is almost anthropological in its scope. Or just plain magical, like the Travels of Sir John Mandeville.

An art exhibition Saturday at the Meat Market Gallery in Dupont—Lisa Blas’s “Meet Me at the Mason Dixon.” It was small, but reasonably varied as Blas works in different media—it consisted of four paintings, about eight prints and an “installation” wall: a collage, a kind of large workbook that leads her through what she’s thinking about. While I really enjoyed hearing the artist talk about the exhibition, I was struck by a sense that without this wall of material, the exhibition would feel adrift. And though Blas now feels that the wall collage is “finished” it’s the one piece not for sale. I sometimes wonder about these types of installation pieces, because to move them involves a disassembly—without even going into the conservation nightmare (practical impossibility?) involved with the handful of newspaper clippings. But then, even as a “finished” piece, it’s transitory nature is what makes it so charming, and fascinating. She had a few pieces of text—on in particular, braiding biographical details of three historical figures whose lives had led them to areas around the Mason-Dixon line. This braiding as a form struck me as useful—both for thinking about the structure of the exhibition, but also potentially as something to explore for myself. (Good poets borrow, great poets…) I’m sure my father would be pleased that I chose an exhibition with Civil War associations rather than just any old exhibition!

I vanquished Sir Walter Scott last night, which leads me—delightedly—to George Eliot and Daniel Deronda. This last book of the semester for National Identity and the Nineteenth Century Novel. It is one I haven’t read before, though I am crazy for George Eliot. Somehow, I just didn’t get there. So—it’s a treat, although it will also be fairly intense reading loading with that alongside study for the final papers for Milton and Contemporary Poetry (or, as I more often think of latter, “Gewanter”). Reading poetry in my spare time—Lorca. Beautiful.