Dog days at the old HG blog. Enjoying being done with Fontegaia poem. Trying to re-evaluate things, write or not-write in a different way.

Reading Christian Moevs' great book again, Metaphysics of Dante's Comedy. & Richard Farina, Been down so long it seems like up to me. I feel like I met each one of his (fictional) characters back in the 60s.

Whenever I'm in one of these transitional phases, I start thinking about Mandelstam again. My quirks & obsessions.

M's Voronezh poems at a certain time (10 yrs ago) not only gave me some ideas, "themes". Something in the tone of those poems set me free from my own hesitations, over-conceptualizing. A kind of cozy mumbling, gemutlichkeit. A sweetness. "My sadness is luminous" (Pushkin). Permission to improvise (for better & worse, I guess). That was the beginning of 10,000 quatrains.