Finally I finished that du Maurier essay, which also turned out to be about James Baldwin, Virginia Woolf, and Mrs. E.D.E.N. Southworth; and now I'm worrying that the potential publisher will hate all my meandering tangents and I'll have to erase the file and start all over again. But I won't think about that until I have to.

Today, along with coddling my poor mono-ridden son (Jell-O in all its many alarming hues is now a staple of our diet), I've managed to write a few lines of my fairy-tale poem and also to spend some time with the terza rima styles of Frost in "Acquainted with the Night" and Shelley in "The Triumph of Life." Shelley's most famous terza rima poem is "Ode to the West Wind"; but when I read Ed Hirsch's assertion that "The Triumph of Life" is the best terza rima poem ever written, I thought perhaps I should try to figure out why he's making such a claim. It's a long poem to copy out (almost 20 pages in my edition), so I cannot advance any opinion yet. I will say that it's good, however, and that contrasting Frost's management of line breaks with Shelley's has been a worthwhile occupation. As much as I like Frost, Shelley clearly has him beat in terms of sinuous control of the form.

Here's just a bit of the Shelley:

As in that trance of wondrous thought I lay,

This was the tenour of my waking dream:--

Methought I sate beside a public way

Thick strewn with summer dust, and a great stream

Of people there was hurrying to and fro,

Numerous as gnats upon the evening gleam,

All hastening onward, yet known seemed to know

Whither he went, or whence he came, or why

He made one of the multitude, and so

Was borne amid the crowd, as though the sky

One of the million leaves of summer's bier;

Old age and youth, manhood and infancy,

Mixed in one might torrent did appear,

Some flying from the thing they feared, and some

Seeking the object of another's fear; . . .

You can see how difficult it is to find a place to stop: the lines are so interwoven, the sentences so long and eventful. Now here's a bit of Frost's "Acquainted with the Night," a very different poem indeed:

I have been one acquainted with the night.

I have walked out in rain--and back in rain.

I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.

I have passed by the watchman on his beat

And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

Probably you can see now why I got so interested in line breaks. Someone could write a treatise, and no doubt has.

Dinner tonight: squishy food.