This morning will be all bustle-around-and-batten-the-hatches as T and I are heading to Vermont as soon as he gets home from work. Garden and yard stuff first; then packing and house stuff; then lug the Big Kitten to the cat kennel. Not a poem-filled day, but I've had a pack of them lately so that's probably just as well.

I've started rereading Austen's Persuasion, and it will be a good travel book: familiar but demanding--my favorite sort of comfort reading. I have little patience with milquetoast prose, even when I'm in need of rest. It's no relaxation to spend time with sloppily conceived characters, mechanized plots, and tone-deaf sentence style. When I read these kinds of books--and I do sometimes, for exploratory reasons--I'm at work: I'm paying attention to what I don't want to replicate in my writing or encourage in my teaching. I'm not resting.

For me, reading is often a joy, often a comfort, often a mystery, often a challenge. But it is never an escape.