Writing again. Reading Shakespeare again.

A thrush is singing. The sun is, in fact, shining, and before my eyes this blog post is rapidly filling with "ing" words, as in "I ought to be mowing grass but instead I am sitting in a darkish room and wondering how Shakespeare came up with the line 'Making a famine where abundance lies.'"

Quote for the day, from The American Annual, 1972: An Encyclopedia of the Events of 1971, which I purchased on Tuesday at the Waterville Goodwill for $2.99, which seems rather high, don't you think?

Under the entry "Literature," subentry "British Literature," sub-sub-entry "Poetry":

British Poetry Since 1945, edited by Edward Lucie-Smith, abundantly documents the increasingly introspective nature of poetry in Great Britain. Despite its frequent display of technical adroitness and verbal wit, the volume contains little work of real interest. There is scarcely more to recommend The Young British Poets, edited by Jerome Robson. It is characterized by an odd unity--a general gloom that Peter Porter described as the natural tone of "the laureate of low spirits."

Hard to know what say to such a review, other than that I'm relieved to have been an American second-grader in 1971 rather than a representative Young British Poet.