We're forecast to get our first actual snow this afternoon--by which I mean an accumulating inch rather than a vague, barely glimpsed flurry. An inch isn't much snow, but my new boots and I are looking forward to taking a walk among the cold and swirling flakes.

I spent much of yesterday reading Sappho's fragments (in Anne Carson's translation), then copying out certain ones and experimenting with drafts that both filled in around her pauses and created new ones. Writing via fragment is an interesting task, one that requires me to rethink, among other things, grammatical expectations. And rethinking grammar, of course, means rethinking intent . . . or, rather, allowing intent to blossom unexpectedly.

I'm trying to treat this week as a writing retreat, with some house/job responsibilities thrown in around the edges, and so far it's been productive: two days in, two keeper drafts; chunks of time spent with difficult books; plenty of spacious idleness. The alternation between Dante and Sappho has been particularly instructive. Dante is all about the long, logical sentence as route into his imagined world, whereas Sappho's fragments are like bits of glitter on a dark rug.