I woke up thinking of Ivy Compton-Burnett and her terrible, cramped youth--that Edwardian nursery packed with unhappy, half-related children; the tyrant parents downstairs. . . . I don't know why my mind was circling this tale, for I haven't been reading any of her novels lately. But I did have the strong sense that I should reread the childhood section of her biography.

I've also been working on two poems, one almost complete, one just beginning to form itself into verse; and I've been reading intensely. Since Christmas, I've finished a novel and two collections of stories and am in the midst of another novel, plus studying Plath's poems and the strange early 20th-century "learn Esperanto" textbook that Tom gave me for Christmas. Though I am not at all interested in learning Esperanto, I am very interested in the sentences that the author suggests I should want to translate into that language: for instance,  "He tore (in pieces) the book and then he threw it about in the street, because he was very angry."

Come to think of it: maybe the tone of this Esperanto text is what's making me dream of Ivy Compton-Burnet.

I have been loved.
He has been seen.
I have been paid.
She has been drowned.
You (pl.) are (about) to be deceived.