Delightful, Will. I'd forgotten about Plath and Sexton being briefly in the same class. And Lowell - some of his best poems were written in Mcleans. That dry, flat, sardonic voice: 'Abramowitz ... so vegetarian / he wore rope shoes and preferred fallen fruit'.
It's mid-summer here in New Zealand. But it's also an El Nino, which means cloudy skies more often. On Friday morning, I was going to set my alarm to get up at 5 am, so I could take a look at the conjunction of Mars and Venus in the eastern sky. Mercifully I accidentally woke early the day before and took a look at the almost-conjunction around 5 am, because on the Big Day, the nor'wester was blowing early, bringing clouds, and the conjunction was hidden behind a raft of thick cloud. The Moon sailed on regardless, looking (I have to say) a bit smug behind the flying clouds in the north-western sky.
All this visible from the comfort of my own living-room!
Thinking about Lowell, Plath, Sexton, and all the people struggling with their lives – I've done a poetic version of a couple of verses from the Book of Job, Ch 7 (which started out as my Latin homework, since I worked from the Latin of the Vulgate). I especially liked the metaphor of the shuttle and the loom (such a homely image), but Job's use of it is arresting. It's here, on Substack: Anne's Newsletter 'The shuttle and the thread'.
Hope your health is better, dear Will! Thank you for this month's essay.
Thinking of you from the other side of the planet, where the Moon is the right way up
Anne
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