Many thanks to those who have enquired about my well-being: I have been obscenely busy and then even more anxious. I am still suspended, though less hopefully than yesterday. But I'm OK.
I've read little or no poetry, but I did finally start over and finish Azar Nafisi's astonishing Reading Lolita in Tehran, which led me to re-read—and read for the first time—much of Austen and James (Fitzgerald's Gatsby and all of Nabakov are yet to appear in Project Gutenberg). Pride and Prejudice, in pdf format, literally kept me awake till dawn last night.
There is a wonderful piece of conversation early on in that book:
[Mrs. Bennet]"When [Jane] was only fifteen, there was a man at my
brother Gardiner's in town so much in love with her that my sister-in-
law was sure he would make her an offer before we came away. But,
however, he did not. Perhaps he thought her too young. However, he
wrote some verses on her, and very pretty they were."
"And so ended his affection," said Elizabeth impatiently. "There
has been many a one, I fancy, overcome in the same way. I wonder
who first discovered the efficacy of poetry in driving away love!"
"I have been used to consider poetry as the food of love," said Darcy.
"Of a fine, stout, healthy love it may. Everything nourishes what is
strong already. But if it be only a slight, thin sort of inclination, I am convinced that one good sonnet will starve it entirely away."
I'm off to the CaLifornia desert on business tomorrow. Back Saturday.
8:20:49 PM 
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