Amazing ordinary sad.

 It started early. Early, cold, wet.

 I have what appears, to the naked eye, to be an infinite pile of drafts yet to respond to. I did some of that in a room full of rainy day light.

In class we talked about how you get from an idea to a poem. There are a lot of ways. Sometimes, actually, you go from the poem to the idea, for instance.

 The students had poems to workshop. I prescribed the read-aloud protocol.

 After class, after my tutorial hours in the Student Writing Center, I loaded up a box of the new chapbook into my car and went off to prepare for the launch and reading. This involved some expensive-ish groceries.

While I was out and about, I talked with my son, who told me about a friend from his high school circle who had just died. I remembered him--a hard upbringing, a really talented musician. That young, it's hard to believe.

The reading was splendid. The author, Hana, read beautifully and movingly.

We all felt so proud of her, and of the students who collectively published her book.

People talked and lingered as she signed books.

Life is full of breathtaking sadnesses pressed up against the celebrations and the moments when you're just buying grapes or preparing dinner, moments that seem ignorant of each other, almost. Tonight was a great night and a mourning night. Ordinary rain and blossom and sunlight breaking through.







couplet

Archival research, the people.

I know of no one, and I mean no one, who is better at it than my husband, known to you as The Historian, whose book is now a real thing, printed on paper and bound in cloth, with a dust jacket and dedications, historical photographs and captions, fat chapter titles, footnotes galore, and an index that his co-author did himself.

Did I mention the archival research? This meant looking at microfilms of newspapers and minutes, then searching newspapers online, not to mention looking at all manner of other dusty documents with their relevant secrets well hidden. It meant trips to Special Collections and the LDS Church History library. It meant reading more socialist writing than you can shake a stick at.

It required patience and diligence and persistence and invention. It is the completion of a many years' long task, and it tells a story that almost no one knows about.

And it is a damn book, the people, and that--that is something to celebrate.

Find out more about it here. And the authors will be at the Book Festival on Oct. 22 (more information here).

Will/won't.

When I got on the train this afternoon and opened my novel, I took this epigraph as a sign that it would be a very good one:

"Deep inside the town there open up, so to speak, double streets, doppelganger streets, mendacious and delusive streets."

(epigraph originally from Bruno Schulz, The Cinnamon Shops and Other Stories; the novel I am now reading is The City and The City, China Mieville)

And so far, 42 pages in, my guess is a good one. This guy, China Mieville, is a real thing, the people. He is awesome. (Check out this video from Amazon)

What book should I read next?

Given that I still have the following to do:

1. write a draft of the mission statement for the English Dept. Steering Committee, formerly the Five-Year Plan Committee.
2. write a draft of a new and improved mission for the College Curriculum Committee for discussion next week.
3. Finish the 2010 Assessment report.
4. Finish comments for a host of students who finished their preliminary portfolios late late late!
5. Catch up in my online class

(note: anyone who notices that these items are the same ones I have mentioned previously should just keep that thought to him/herself. I already know.)

I think, nonetheless, that it would be good to start a new book. Any suggestions? (note: the book cannot be To the Lighthouse, because I am still not in a Virginia Woolf "mood," a state which has held for decades. Also not reading Moby Dick. Not right now.)

[Today's poem is here.]