In 1851, Charlotte Bronte and her publisher went on "an expedition . . . to visit a phrenologist in the Strand who pursued the then fashionable vogue for reading character from the bumps and indentations in the cranium." Because Bronte was a literary lion by now, they used assumed names so that she could stay incognito. Nonetheless, she received an "uncannily accurate" description of herself, including this statement: "If not a poet her sentiments are poetical or are at least imbued with that enthusiastic glow which is characteristic of poetical feeling."

I read this description last night as I was standing over the stove frying latkes, and I was taken aback. "Enthusiastic glow"! What an exact description of the poetic urge . . . and from the mouth of a phrenologist, no less. Moreover, the phrenologist, a Dr. Browne, made a clear distinction between being a poet and being under the grip of "poetical feeling." One doesn't necessarily imply the other, though they share an "enthusiastic glow."

The question, then, is: How do I know if I'm a poet or simply in the grip of the "enthusiastic glow"? I feel a need to consult Dr. Browne on this matter. I wonder what the bumps on my head might tell him.

***

I'm down to one last manuscript to copyedit, and I hope to get it off my desk today. This means that essentially I'll be done with university-press editing until mid-July (though I will see all of these books again briefly after the authors go through my changes). Next week my friend Gretchen and I will hammer out the details of the class we'll be team-teaching at the end of the month. I'll get to work on another friend's poetry manuscript. But my primary focus will be prepping for the teaching conference and dealing with my own poems.

Tonight T and I will walk down to Hadlock Field to watch the Sea Dogs play. The top prospects in the Red Sox system are currently in Portland, and I'm eager to see them before they get called up to Triple A. It should be a sweet night for baseball, balmy and clear, and I'm looking forward to an evening in the stands.

And then tomorrow I will head west.