Process 2

I would make a lousy mailman. Any and everything will keep me from my appointed rounds. There are my calls to gardening, housekeeping, preparing lessons, and my own writing before sitting down to write about another poet and his or her work. Even the order of items on that list, though true, is an embarrassment.

I suspect I don't want to engage another writer so intimately. I'm afraid of exposing how little I know, how shallow my understanding can be, how easily I can be distracted. All of which says more about me than or Wallace Stevens, James Laughlin or T. S. Eliot.

Reading James Laughlin has always been enjoyable. The first part of the reading for the essay "Much Magic, Much Death" was begun long before I even imagined beginning to blog, before I worked on the Stevens' readings and essays. The first part of the essay "Much Magic, Much Death" was drafted weeks ago, before I picked up American Hybrid and a collection of Gary Snyder's work and a used volume of Adrienne Rich, several novels. . . .