This is about to fall off the front page, so I'm risking your ire to bump it up. I like reading your good news, damn it, and I have this to report of my own.
I'm just back from a wonderful trip to the UK: two big family parties--my mother's 70th birthday and my cousin's wedding; an Eratosphere lunch; a great play at the Wanamaker; a lovely evening at Keats's house; etc.
Last night, back in California, I went to a book launch inSanta Cruz for the new book put out by the publisher who will be doing mine down the road: The Night Bridge by Wilma Marcus Chandler, Hummingbird Press, 2016. Big success and most handsome volume, so congratulations to Wilma.
But here's what I really want to tell you: in England, while browsing in Foyle's, I renewed my intention to get hold of a copy of the poems of John Clare and spend some real time with them. Limited pounds sterling and limited luggage space kept me from buying a small Selected in London, but last night I found a used Essential Clare in Santa Cruz--the perfect pocket sized paperback for my ambitions. Well, $4.80 seemed a tad steep for a dinky, aging paperback. But when I leafed through it, I found it had been signed by its editor, poet Carolyn Kizer, who had added this inscription: "for Adrienne, with love from Carolyn, the New Year 1993." Santa Cruz, remember--so this has to have been Adrienne Rich's book, right?, and sold to the shop after Rich's death... I don't know Kizer's work at all, but I'm enjoying her essay on Clare. I do like much of Rich. But I thought some of you might enjoy this adventure in marginalia, which is tickling me greatly: these poems have gone from Clare's hands to Kizer's to Rich's, and now they're all mine for less than five bucks.
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