Windchimes

toot toot and glow

Well, the term is all over except for one final exam and some final writing projects, all due by the end of next week. I'll be a writing fool next week. Tonight, I just feel like savoring the glow. My proudest accomplishment this semester: memorizing all of Robert Lowell's "A Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket." Seven verses, each 20-24 lines long. The fifth verse fills the mouth the most, with lines like "The fat flukes arch and whack about the ears, the death lance churns into the sanctuary, heaving like a flail, and tears the gun-blue swingle." I can't remember where the line breaks are, but if you've got ten minutes, and want to spend them listening to a long poem, I'm your girl. Any takers? ...yeah, that's what I thought. Still, I'm happy to have it milling around my mind, and it's cool to recite it to myself in the shower, since singing doesn't work as well as it used to, cause I can't hit the high notes so well anymore. I believe I'll try to keep memorizing poetry. What's the old saying? "Garbage in, garbage out." Any other noun you substitute should work too, right? I've memorized Dean Young's "So the Grasses Grow," and I think my next memorization project will be Marilyn Hacker's "Migraine Sonnets." Or maybe a French poem.

I've just come from the English department's end-of-year potluck, so many students and professors milling around the house of two of our professors who are a couple. It was so much fun, so energetic, so many interesting conversations happening all over the place. I was behind my poetry professor in the line. He's such a card, held out a paper plate, said, "here ya go," and held on to it. My professor from last semester's Bishop class was there too, with his fiancée, and I got to sit and talk with both of them for a few minutes. There was so much food there. Robert Phillips, who read some of his poetry last night, stayed in town long enough to attend this evening's soirée as well, and I got another chance to talk with him. One of the only two people to ever interview Philip Larkin.

Constance came along with me to the party, and met some of my English-major friends and English professors. I think she understands even better now, why I had to add English as a second major. She said she really enjoyed the evening a lot, was glad she went. There are so many talented and outstanding individuals.

Changing the subject a little, our poetry professor collected poems for a chapbook from each of the eight students in our poetry class, and three of the students worked really hard putting together fifty copies, and on linen-weave bond paper, with crisp looking fonts. They did such beautiful job. So now we each have five copies of the chapbook, each chapbook has our email addresses so we can keep up with each other, and we each signed each other's books. The books were numbered 1-50, so Dr. D made sure we all got one of the ones numbered 1-8, and those are the ones we all signed for each other. We all talk of wanting to continue our Wednesday evening get-togethers, and have even discussed various titles for our little group, one of which is "The Wednesday Night Limelight Society." There's a story there, too.

So, yeah, I'm feeling pretty mellow on this Friday night, and Cliff's coming home tomorrow. I think I'm about done writing for the moment, but next time I come here, I need to write about running into the retired librarian from my kids' high school after the party tonight. What a hoot that was!

J.H. Larrew
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