Right now, I can’t imagine beyond snow. It’s been falling all day again, though this time, not to much effect. Deer tracks run everywhere: they veer toward the hemlock, then, foiled by the fencing, veer back to open ground. The paths break into ragged patches where deer scraped through to get at grass.
I’ve been troubled by computer problems and an inconstant internet these past few days. I had to remind myself there was a time when such things were not only unnecessary, but not even available. I had to think: what, then, were the things I used to use?
I no longer own a typewriter, so I looked around for a notebook and a pen. I found them foreign objects, and inefficient. I looked for a dictionary, but had only a small paperback that didn’t contain what I required. I wanted confirmation of something I’d been told: that the etymological root of the word “poet” was “maker.” Without my usual tools to search, I was thrown back on my own experience for proof.
Our poet-friend came visiting, The New York Review of Books in hand, with Dan Chiasson’s review of the new Selected Poems by Wallace Stevens. We pored over the review, trying to find in poems the things Chiasson said were there to see. I felt I had tiptoed up behind a group of elders, Helen Vendler and Harold Bloom chief among them, peaking over their shoulders for a glimpse of Susanna.
