I had planned to attend In Your Ear today . . . Catherine Daly and Leslie Bumstead were scheduled to read. But when it came time to venture out, I found I was suffering from a severe lack of willpower. DC's weather these past two days has been extremely windy, so much so that random passersby appear to be doing mime acts instead of just walking. I spent all of yesterday out and about in the wind, and I just couldn't face it again today.
Lots of new books in the pile:
John Ashbery -- Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror
Samuel Beckett -- Poems in English
Gregory Corso -- The Vestal Lady on Brattle
James Dickey -- Buckdancer's Choice
T.S. Eliot -- Four Quartets
David Kirby -- The Ha Ha
Denise Levertov -- The Jacob's Ladder
Nathaniel Mackey -- Whatsaid Serif
William Meredith -- The Open Sea
George Oppen -- Collected Poems
Lee Ann Roripaugh -- Beyond Heart Mountain
Ann Sexton -- The Death Notebooks
John Yau -- Ing Grish
In addition to which, books comprising lectures and inverviews with W.H. Auden, Jack Spicer, and "Six San Francisco Poets," among them Gary Snyder and Philip Whalen.
I finished handbinding a book! Actually, I never finished the first one. After covering the boards, I realized I hadn't been all that careful about measuring and attaching them, with the result that the book is kind of wonky and won't stand up straight, as the spine and covers are all out of alignment. So I started over, and in the second book, made some refinements: end papers, three tapes instead of two, trimmed pages. I just finished it this afternoon, and it looks pretty good. I give it an A-. There are a couple of small aesthetic concerns, but they're minor, and the book is completely even. Hooray!
I'm going to try to get some poems out to magazines with the rest of the long weekend, but in reality, I'll probably just end up editing and writing. I hate sending poems out. I get enough paperwork at the office.
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