this is my favorite kind of day. just a couple of degrees too warm, enough so that breezes are welcome and so that you want to throw yourself dramatically to the ground and not get up. i’ve only gotten a chance to do a little bit of the latter: i had the first of my last classes to get through first. that went well and now it’s over, like, ososoon, so many things will be.
i’m trying to put together the set of ten poems i’m submitting for the english department’s approval. that means both revising new things like mad and going through old things, considering them. personal poems that reflect on an experience or situation that’s no longer applicable i dismiss out of hand. but what about old-favorites like 5’1″? should i keep everything recent so that the tone/style is consistent? is stuff that’s been published automatically preferable to stuff that hasn’t?
i don’t envy people who have serious work to do at this time of year. that’s a strong argument against the honors program, in case you’re looking for one, or for being rich and indolent. i bonded with my friend adam this morning over our shared opinion that we could have done well having been born in the late 1800s. if you’re rich, of course, you can do well virtually any place or time, unless you’re hit by unavoidable grandscale miseries like plagues or reality television. but to be well-to-do and of-age in the ‘tens and ‘twenties, to be able to flit between berlin, paris, and new york, to trailblaze by drinking highballs, wearing short skirts, and writing verse that occasionally rhymed and occasionally did not … ah, that’s the life.
then, to die, dressed to the nines, cocktail in hand, in a car crash in the spring of 1929.