I think I may have found my car yesterday, though we haven't yet had the final discussion about how I should move ahead. It's a 2022 Mazda CX-30 with 32,000 miles on the odometer, still under warranty for the big things (engine, transmission, and such) and with a fairly modest trim package, which is keeping the price sort of reasonable (not that reasonable is actually a word one can associate with car pricing). So I'll likely be spending my day in sales/credit union/insurance purgatory, and of course I got almost no sleep last night because of worrying about car stuff, meaning that I'm in prime shape for such a thrilling day.

But better to just get it done. I'll be relieved to have this over: to park the replacement car in the driveway, get the junker car towed to its final destination, and return the borrowed car with gratitude and a full tank of gas.

Otherwise, what's new? It's hard to recall, given that my brain and my hours have mostly been sucked up into the horrible car vortex. I met with Teresa yesterday afternoon to talk about Aurora Leigh and her lovely poetry manuscript, so that was a respite. I did some editing, and I did some housework. I dealt with an invasion of ants into Chuck's chow dish. (He was disappointed I got rid of them; he enjoyed the ants.) I've been working on poem drafts, though I don't much like where they're going. Still, better to be writing than not writing, even if the results are disappointing.

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.

We did venture out to a dealership yesterday, where I drove a used Mazda CX-30 that is probably too expensive for us, but I did like the car and how it handled, so at least I learned something. It's not going to be easy to find a car with 50,000 miles or less that has all-wheel drive and a reputation for reliability. I've had to give up my hopes of a used hybrid AWD: they're completely out of our price range. But a Mazda seems like a possibility, if we can find one that's a little cheaper than the one I drove . . . or, I suppose, if we can dicker the price down, though that is not a talent that either one of us possesses. Here's where my older son would come in handy: he is the family fast-talker; the rest of us just stand back and marvel. But unfortunately he is too far away to muscle in as our agent.

Once we gritted our way through the dealership ordeal, the day returned to being a regular summer Saturday. I weeded the front gardens, mowed the front and back yards, listened to the Sox win, made pizza, texted with my boys, sat in the shade and read my Drabble novel. In the evening I watched some of the Knicks game while Tom checked out a garage-band show at the VFW.

Now the house is draped in Sunday-morning peace. Cool air floats through the open windows. Chuck, full of breakfast, crouches at the screen door listening to robin song. Upstairs, T clanks his coffee cup against his saucer. Sunlight streaks the walls. A passing crow complains.

I might spread mulch this morning. I might wash windows. I might go for a bike ride. It feels nice to not care too much, one way or the other. Anything could change my mind.

The novel I'm rereading, The Red Queen, is set in the Korean royal court in the late 1700s. It overflows with repression and protocol and madness and disaster. The book is a sorrowful companion, yet the voice of the Crown Princess, the central character, is so very sane in the midst of insanity. I won't say that her voice is helpful to me, here in our own insane historical moment. But it is clarifying.

I always enjoy plundering the local free library boxes during my morning walks, and yesterday I was pleased to find two nearly mint-condition copies of Life from 1969: one a special issue about the moon landing, the other titled "The Incredible Year '68." Both contain many cigarette and cheap liquor ads. One encourages me to buy a Toyota because it comes with "backup lights." Both, oddly, include long poems by James Dickey. But in my view, the piece-de-resistance is a poetry review by someone named Charles Elliott, which opens like this:

When Judgment Day arrives in the seminars of Elysium, Elizabeth Bishop stands a pretty fair chance of being put down as a minor poet.

It then touches on the superiorities of Robert Lowell, Randall Jarrell, and Marianne Moore before spending two columns grudgingly admitting that EB has something going for her, though it can't possibly be lasting.

It's the oddest review--one essentially saying "Here's a book I like but I refuse to believe that people in the future will care about such things," as if legacy should be the prime mover in any discussion of art, as if simple present-tense pleasure is a lesser experience.

Of course the comedy, nearly 60 years later, lies in the Judgment Day that's already arrived: in our own fashionable pantheon, Bishop's star floats higher than any of the other names that Elliott chose to taunt her with. Lowell has been reduced to "crazy guy," Moore to "technician," Jarrell to nothing at all . . . who remembers Jarrell? This is just as unfair as Elliott's original review was, but so go "the seminars of Elysium."

**

Sea fog rolled into the little northern city last night, and it lingers this morning. The neighborhood is green and misty and freighted with wet, and the air smells of brine. But the air, though humid, is pleasantly cool, and I am wrapped in my red bathrobe by the open window, happy to be drinking hot black coffee, happy to be listening to a robin who seems to be pretending to be a thrush--those long liquid sad remarks, the music of a forest evening suddenly reenacted on a city morning.

I worked on a couple of poem drafts yesterday, finished the Erdrich novel, started rereading Margaret Drabble's The Red Queen, made garlicky pappardelle with shrimp, scallions, and chard, listened to some of the Sox game, stared out into the fog. Next week I'll start the move back into work life . . . it's time, and I'm ready, but my little early summer hiatus has been sweet, and I'll miss it.

Meanwhile today I suppose we'll do something or other about car shopping. The credit union still hasn't decided how much money to lend us, and T has been working out various scenarios which he has yet to share with me, but Saturday is our only window to visit a dealership, so I expect we will gird on our swords and stride into the fray at some point today. (Though why aren't dealerships open on Sundays? That seems like a stupid decision for a capitalist to make.)

T doesn't like air conditioning, so I only turn it on when conditions have reached the brutal stage, which wasn't quite the case last night. Still, even with a fan running, the bedroom air was sticky and hot, and I did not expect to immediately tumble into the sleep of a satisfied boulder. But somehow I did, and this morning I'm blinky and groggy and squinty, as if I've just rolled out of a winter's hibernation. . . .

I break off this dozy commentary to report that my tiny street is suddenly full of firetrucks. Something seems to be happening on Saunders Street, the next block over, something that involves five trucks and ten or so men walking around casually in their gear and blocking all traffic, if there were any traffic. But now two of the trucks have driven away, leaving the rest of the guys to deal with whatever non-emergency this is, and now the remaining trucks are leaving as well, all of them choosing to drive the wrong way down our narrow one-way street . . . a brief and exciting (and apparently benign) interlude, suspenseful chiefly because firetrucks are the vehicle version of our giant maples, which is to say they are way too big for the situation and seem likely to roll over houses and cars without noticing, but magically never do.

Okay, well, that's over now. Back to whatever I was talking about before . . . I think I was maundering on about being dozy, but there's nothing like five firetrucks strobing their lights across the front yard to wake a person up.

It's Friday, and I'm expecting an editing project to reappear on my desk at some point today, and maybe we'll get news about the car loan, and I have to drive to the post office and I have to haul recycling to the curb and maybe mow grass in the backyard, and I think I'll make something with shrimp in it for dinner, and I'm worried that something bad is about to happen to one of the characters in the Erdrich novel I'm reading. As you can see from this sentence, my day could unfold in any number of ways, but at least I'm pretty sure that none of my neighbors is on fire.

I had a fun visit with the printer yesterday, who turns out to have one of T's photos hanging in his house, which certainly increases my happiness about hiring him to do this job. He showed me some other poetry broadsides he's done--one for Richard Blanco was especially beautiful--and now I'm very much looking forward to seeing what he'll do with my poem. T and I are getting excited about this wedding--both of us working on our gifts, both of us having fun planning our outfits. T acquired his suit and shirt this week; I've got a dress and shoes but need to figure out earrings and a necklace. "Dress up in favorite bright colors" is what the kids asked for, so that is what we will do.

Today I hope the credit union will finally have collected enough paperwork to make a decision about the car loan. Otherwise, I'm not too sure what the day will hold. Thunderstorms rolled through last night, and the weather will continue to be unsettled today. The air is foggy and humid, my hair has suddenly become curly, and the sodden peonies are a sloppy beautiful mess. I'm looking forward to a morning walk in this lush, wet world, but I doubt it will be a day for yardwork. So I'll focus on inside tasks: read Louise Erdrich's disturbing but extremely well written novel The Round House; continue to gather together conference materials; tinker with a poem draft; think about my manuscript; polish the dining room table; do some dusting; bake for my poetry group . . . Tomorrow I'm expecting an editing project to come back to me, and next week will be filled with meetings and obligations. The summer bubble is about to burst. But not quite yet.

It was a warm night, and today we've got thunderstorms forecast for the late afternoon, though daytime temperatures will be a bit cooler than they were yesterday. I might get out to mow the front yard, if the sun isn't glaring. I've never had much stamina for working in a full blaze, though I've frequently forced myself to do so. But I'm over that idiot habit now.

This morning I need to drive into town to meet with a letterpress printer who may be working on a project for me--a wedding present for my son and his fiancee. And I need to continue dealing with auto-loan application stuff. Being a freelancer means that applying for anything financial always involves a stupid amount of paperwork: there's no such thing as a simple weekly paystub in my life.

Otherwise the day will be quiet. Now that I've finished my Poetry Kitchen syllabus, I'm going through my conference plans: tweaking materials, discussions, prompts; creating packets for photocopying; double-checking the daily schedule. Today I'll start pulling together the materials I'll be traveling with: books for the display table, poems for share-a-poem night. I travel heavy, so let's hope I'll have a car to carry this stuff.

Yesterday was primary day in Maine, so that will be another distraction for the day. There are no clear winners in the governor's race, meaning that Democrats will need to be sorted out via ranked-choice voting. I will likely have to write an occasional poem for whichever candidate eventually gets inaugurated (likely to be a Democrat, but who knows), so I've got an odd sort of stake in the matter. What will I write, for whom, and how?