Spent all day yesterday in an editorial board meeting for the poetry journal I'm reading for. And one submitting poet's work did exactly what poetry should do, at least according to Dickinson's it "blows-off-the-top-of-my-head" definition. Hearing these poems read aloud was very exciting, a physical thrill . . . a moment when an emotional response became a bodily response, in the way I remember feeling on an overcast day when I was clinging to a wind-crippled tree on a mountain outcrop and looking down dizzily into a choppy bay; like the first wondrous sensation of stepping into a scalding bath after spending a subzero night on my knees in a lambing barn.

I'm getting close to beginning an essay on George Eliot's Adam Bede. Talk about a writer with a gift for kindness. She has such a patient, forgiving eye. It's humbling.