[RCL]

Max,

I’m a pedestrian as I read both novels and poems, a byproduct of over 50 years of teaching literary fiction and poetry. Anyway, I frequently make mental or written notes as brilliant figures bob to the surface of both stories and poems. A bizarre aspect was when teaching poems one year, every poem I assigned had a single word in it that was a major clue to its meaning, consciously placed by the poets or not. I’ve been on the lookout for those keys ever since. The first taught in introductory courses was “My Papa’s Waltz.” Its key word is “countenance.”