It's a dark morning, raining steadily. I've been sleeping hard lately, for some reason, and it was sweet to swim up from depths to a slow awareness of tap and clatter against the panes.

Monday has arrived: I'll be back to editing; I need to do my weekly housework; I've got a meeting this afternoon--but the rain is a silvery gate into the day.

I'm still finishing The Red Queen, but I decided yesterday that my next novel will be Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamozov, which I haven't reread for years. I also ordered Randall Jarrell's novel Pictures at an Institution from the library, on the advice of a friend. I've been thinking about Jarrell's poems since I shared that review of Bishop with you the other day. Maybe the one poem contemporary readers might know is "The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner." But there are many other World War II-linked poems, many set beyond the war as well. His poems are lonely. His characters mostly don't know what to do in this world, other than what they have to do.

Jarrell's poems are emotional, compressed, accomplished. I don't want to forget them.