When I was a bit of glittering dust I was preparing for Robert Louis Stevenson

Evidence is mounting. The tide as if first page of a new chapter, as if the enamored sensing enamoree's presence, as if ingrained impulse permitting movements of restructure is turning. In selecting poems I read in my twenties for postings—twenty years before I ventured to write poetry—I realize I have always loved poetry.

When I was a bit of glittering dust in the wide beyond I liked poetry. A little bit of the glittering dust glittered in me and glitters still. It's a good feeling, knowing I am who I am, that decisions which seemed so foolish weren't. Okay, could have been handled in a differently but curvatures of space and time emphasize illusions of hindsight.

I had three different copies of A Child Garden's of Verses by Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) as a kid. Each book had different illustrators, different illustrators. RLS inspires.

I look forward to the day he inspires illustrators and publishers of all nationalities or at least all nationalities impacted by colonialism and all nationalities whose children read RLS.

My Kingdom

Down by a shining water well
I found a very little dell,
No higher than my head.
The heather and the gorse about
In summer bloom were coming out,
Some yellow and some red.

I called the little pool a sea;
The little hills were big to me;
For I am very small.
I made a boat, I made a town,
I searched the caverns up and down,
And named them one and all.

And all about was mine, I said,
The little sparrows overhead,
The little minnows too.
This was the world and I was king;
For me the bees came by to sing,
For me the swallows flew.

I played there were no deeper seas,
Nor any wider plains than these,
Nor other kings than me.
At last I heard my mother call
Out from the house at evenfall,
To call me home to tea.

And I must rise and leave my dell,
And leave my dimpled water well,
And leave my heather blooms.
Alas! and as my home I neared,
How very big my nurse appeared.
How great and cool the rooms!

___________
Robert Louis Stevenson, A Child's Garden of Verses

A little more on Helen Vendler, CLC, and then I'm over it

I drank twenty ounces of water today in one slurp after a walk to the library in the 100-degree weather. I needed City air conditioning to bolster my research on Helen Vendler, Controversial Literary Critic.

Yesterday I posed a question concerning artists and God's ear--do we poets have a divine Talleyrand helping open diplomatic channels or special angels trumpeting our needs? Vendler thinks not.

Having read my post, two poets, socially networked, duked it out. Female-pro-Vendler; male-against. Leigh was enthusiastic about Ms. Vendler's appreciation of prosody; Jason found her limited. "Conservative hack" is what he wrote.

I'd wondered if Ms. Vendler hadn't been cowed by the academy, given the entrenched maleness of the Ivies in the late forties and early fifties. I found an interview on an NEH site.

Yes, a male academic told her point blank she wasn't welcome in Harvard graduate studies. Her childhood was high culture, no surprise, and I didn't get the feeling she ever rebelled--not against the culture, but the psychic knee jerk against mother and father and Mother and Father. She was raised Catholic. No word on her husband or son.

For whatever reasons, she accepted the received form of Who Is Worthwhile in Contemporary Literature. It's as though she chose to review only Oscar nominees instead of going risky and searching out art house. That is not necessarily her fault. She didn't have a teacher to show her the freaky.

She's no Elaine Showalter, über feminist, when it comes to daring. I mentally note Read More Showalter. A freshman comp. class I taught a few years ago was delighted with Showalter's essay on homoeroticism in Jekyll/Hyde.

I don't know that Vendler claims to be more than she is, well read and interested in poetry. She is absolutely a pioneer and each generation of freaky women should be grateful. I know I am.