I am so happy to say that, finally, poet Meg Kearney and I will be reading together again. We first laid eyes on each other when we shared a reading but have never read together since. And now, once again, we'll get to share a bill. Meg is a fine and emotionally driven poet, also comic, also heartbreaking; and we are almost exactly the same age, and we will have so much fun. We'll be part of next winter's Bates College visiting writers' series, and there better not be a blizzard that night.

In other cheerful news, today Tom and I are going on a date to the sea. Take that, you overgrown lawn. Go ahead: grow some more; see what I care.

Two poems about the same old story.

Adam Lay Ibounden

Anonymous (15th century)

Adam lay ibounden,

Bounden in a bond,

Foure thousand winter

Thoght he not too long;

And al was for an appil,

An appil that he tok,

As clerkes finden

Wreten in here bok.

Ne hadded the appil take ben,

The appil taken ben,

Ne hadde never our lady

A ben hevene quene;

Blessed be the time

That appil take was!

Therfore we moun singen

"Deo gracias."

Eve’s Dream

Dawn Potter

Not of your sweet wandering hands, nor even

of yesterday’s seed or tomorrow’s green pear,

but of crime and trouble, yes, offenses that never

crossed my fancy before this wretched night:

for in my dreams a quiet voice at my ear

coaxed me awake; and I thought it was you

cajoling me into the pleasant shadows,

cool and silent, save when silence yields

to cricket scratch or throaty owl,

white moon-face waxing gibbous

and all the Heavens awake in their glory

though none else to revel in them but ourselves;

and I rose and walked out into the night,

but where were you? I called your name,

then ventured, restive, into the lunar

garden I knew so well by day, yet here

I lost myself in white light and black hole,

I staggered through puddles, over stones;

and I heard, in my heartbeat,

an invisible horror, I heard it tease me,

chase me, catch me; and I ran, I ran,

weeping I ran; until, under moonglow,

I saw my own pale hands stretch before me

toward the Tree that blocked my way;

I saw my hands embrace it, caress its satin skin.

And in return, the Tree kissed my captive lips

with its feathery leaves, as if a twist of wind

had leagued us suddenly together;

for it gleamed strange and terrible,

this great rooted flower,

plying me so gently with Knowledge:

though my lips, parched and ravenous,

begged, now, for a rougher, a crueler dram.

[from How the Crimes Happened (CavanKerry Press, 2010)]

Statistical update: Yesterday this blog had 50 visitors. The day before it had 100. Usually it has about 30. Sometimes it has 8.

Garden update: An invisible hungry something is eating holes in my scarlet runner beans. This is unfortunate because each plant has only 2 leaves.

Boy update: Sleeping.

Book update: I am taking a weekend break from western Pennsylvania history and am reading Ford Madox Ford's Fifth Queen trilogy for the twentieth time. Note to my friends who are infatuated by stories with excellent language control and characterization (Mr. Hill, I'm speaking to you in particular): you'll want to take a look at this one and get back to me. This a spoiler, but I suppose you ought to know that the heroine gets her head chopped off. Still, if a woman agrees to marry Henry VIII, she can't really be all that surprised about such a turn of events.

Cooking update: I have baby rhubarb. I have new-laid eggs. Soon I will have a rhubarb custard pie.

Writing update: I finished a poem in the voice of old George Washington on a landlord tour of his Pennsylvania properties. That was an odd exercise. You should try it sometime. Or maybe try something even harder . . . like, say, impersonating Millard Fillmore. Go on: I dare you.

Yesterday's post was cranky. Today's is less cranky.

Friday was Spring Fling at my son's high school and, among other amusements, the students got to watch a teacher-made video of the faculty and staff wearing silly hats and dancing among the tools of their trade, all to the tune of Taio Cruz's "Dynamite." (If you live with a 13-year-old, you know all about this song, and you take every opportunity to annoy him by saying that it features on Top of the Pops as if you hadn't grown up with American Top 40 your very own self.)

One of my son's friends posted the video on his Facebook page, which is how I happened to see it. There's no reason for me to attach a link here: if you can't identify these particular teachers and the school, it will mean nothing to you. What interested me more than the video itself were the comments that appeared under it. Clearly, the students were completely charmed by the sight of their chunky, balding, middle-aged teachers having so much fun. One girl said, "This is proof that our school is awesome." Other students agreed.

So, all you tired teachers, here's a little something to hold on to during your summer vacation and to keep as a magical tonic for next year's bad moments: your students love watching you love your job. You are the proof that your school is awesome.

A Small Response to V. S. Naipaul

First, read this article.

Now, read this:

V. S. Naipaul's novel A House for Mr. Biswas has always been important to me. At times in my life I have admired it extravagantly . . . despite the fact that, from the first few words, I could tell that it had been written by a non-Anglo-Saxon man raised in a hot-weather British colony.

I am determined to continue caring about A House for Mr. Biswas. After all, I am interested in characters and settings that require me to look outside myself. This is one of the gifts of literature. Or so I have always thought.

Being a writer and a reader who "is not a complete master of a house," I have endeavored to spend some time in those mysterious rooms and passageways beyond my ken: John Milton's, for instance. I find them instructive. I think Milton might have found my rooms and passageways instructive as well. Also surprising. Also alarming.

Sentimentality is a handy generalization, useful to call upon when one wants to label a woman as an inferior life form because (1) she finds it interesting to love babies, horses, handsome young men, her mother, an aging baldster, or anyone else she happens to care about in affectionate and tragicomic detail or (2) she finds it painful to lose that baby, horse, handsome young man, mother, or aging baldster, whether by death or indifference. Surprisingly enough, however, some people feel that close attention to such reactions and emotions is integral to the experience of being human.

If, in Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen could create a character as memorable as Mr. Collins, imagine what she could do with a character such as V. S. Naipaul.

Aphorisms: Paradise Lost was written down by women. Kitchen drawers hide sharp knives. Virginia Woolf's novels are better than V. S. Naipaul's. Scrub your own fucking floor, you asshole.

Violent thunderstorms, hail, tornado warnings and watches into the night . . . why was I the only member of my family who was petrified? Everyone else idled by the windows and commented genially on the whipping forest and the strange antifreeze-green of the sky.

Now the sky is cloudy blue, the jays are squawking, and the vigorous peonies are still standing tall. So maybe those cool-headed boys were right, or maybe they were just lucky not to be living in Springfield, Massachusetts. Who knows? It is true that fear is not a reliable narrator.

Spent time yesterday with Frost, Akhmatova, Rilke. It felt good to read poems, after all my immersion in history. The Frost poem that Baron has chosen for the opening day of the teaching conference is wonderful/appalling, but I won't wreck the surprise by telling you what it is.

So, happy first day of June to you. To celebrate the season, Tom and I are discussing house painting. Since we both dislike house painting, this is not much of a celebration. Still, it does presume that the temperature is now likely to stay above the frost line, which is a gala of sorts.

What would Milton say? Apparently, he would say, "He from Heav'n's highth / All these motions vain, sees and derides." Sometimes that man really pisses me off.