last seminar, including dinner prepped for us by our lovely unique prof, over. the night before, instead of doing catch-up reading for seminar, i wandered down to sarah’s room. she and her quad convened. somehow, and for the life of me i can’t say how this happened, elisabeth and i started bonding over poetry. (poetry! isn’t it great!)
from her room we retrieved a browning book and read the pied piper of hamelin aloud; her dorothy parker portable, a different published copy than mine; an ogden nash; a billy collins; a fran lebowitz (i don’t know the woman but elisabeth pressed her book on me, assuring me i’d fall in love); o there were thousands more. we recited and flipped furiously through pages to find the poems we were thinking of.
britta contributed, asking thought-provoking questions like “who’d you rather be locked in a room with all day, william blake or ezra pound?” and “what’s your least favorite poem?” that one took a minute. eventually i settled on “tyger, tyger” because really — no, really — i intensely dislike that and always have. i used to sit opposite a copy of it posted on my seventh grade english classroom wall and mutter curses in its direction.
last night, more pedantically, i watched secretary again. i found it even more beautiful the second time.