Busy day getting practical stuff sorted out. Kids squabbling in the car. Had lunch in the incredibly busy restaurant in Walt Whitman mall.

Enjoyable evening -- got MJ to read American poetry to me in her American Lady's voice. Jack sitting nearby playing Runescape on the computer and half listening in. Discussing the greatness of Sylvia Plath and the mysteriously good reputation of Robert Creeley. I was underwhelmed by him once in Leamington Spa when I was a student, in an audience swollen by sycophantic lecturers from my University.

Talking about poetry made us both want to get down to writing again. Also I have never read much of Emily Dickinson, and she read me a couple of her favourites that I really liked, like this one, which is one of her favourites:

There's a certain slant of light
Of winter afternoons
That oppresses, like the heft
Of cathedral tunes.

Heavenly hurt it gives us
We can find no scar,
But internal difference
Where meanings are

None may teach it anything
'Tis the seal, despair, -
An imperial affliction
Sent us of the air.

When it comes, the landscape listens,
Shadows hold their breath;
When it goes, 'tis like the distance
On the look of death.