We must have had a big thunderstorm overnight because this morning the garden looks like it's been beaten up: peonies sagging, iris mashed. But the air is quiet now, and the sky is hazy but clearish, and soon I'll get myself outside to assess the day's chores.

Last night was my friend Marita O'Neill's book launch. It was such an uplifting affair--lots of friends and family and community camaraderie . . . exactly the right sort of reading and party. I don't love all parties, by any means, and I can get panicky and anxious in social settings. So it was sweet to be in a gathering that was the exact opposite of my fear. Last night, whichever way I turned, there was a person I was delighted to talk to.

As I write, the sky is brightening. Pale sun-glitter rims puddles and wet roofs. I'm looking forward to a day in the garden--weeding, mowing, pruning as the birds chatter and the neighborhood babies cackle and wail.

I spent much of yesterday reading Shelley's "Defense of Poetry," an essay I've read many times before. It's not an easy piece to get through: every time I start by thinking, "I have no idea what he's saying." And then suddenly the sentences begin to shine, suddenly I have slipped beyond, in his words, "the dull vapours of the little world of self":

A man, to be greatly good, must imagine intensively and comprehensively; he must put himself in the place of another and of many others; the pains and pleasures of his species must become his own.

Poetry is a sword of lightning, ever unsheathed, which consumes the scabbard that would contain it.

The pleasure that is in sorrow is sweeter than the pleasure of pleasure itself.