Chocolate Raisin Revision

'We reap the benefit of a more poetic point of view. A line like the charming "At Godstow, they gathered hazel on the grave of Rosamond" could be written only by a writer who was at a certain distance from his people, so that there need be no explanations.'

A charming line indeed. No explanation needed for such loveliness as gathering hazel, graves, and the romance of a dead girl named Rosamond. Thank you, as ever, for your insight Virginia.

Charm is necessary, as I have taken to crying into pages in public. At the sad things. Like babies still trying to suckle from their dead mother's breast in 'A Journal of the Plague Year'. And Mary Shelley writing in her diary 'Found my baby dead. A miserable day' as a single entry. And the love letters of Keats to Fanny. Which I should know better not to read in public by now.

And I had to shout NO to Shelley's elegy for Keats being read aloud to me. A mere word, the mere thought... The Saddest Thing [Shelley's Elegy Shelley's Elegy Shelley's Elegy Tongue Twisting Tonguetwister. Also, if said over and over SEMANTIC SATIATION]

I would rather think of Byron and his petulant distaste for Keats' 'mental masturbation', and picture myself hanging out with darling John as he wrote poetry for me and ate nectarines and I would just stare at him all day long.

And as revision is leading us down this road, strewn with flowers as it is and was for Coleridge, we should spend a little time of each day acting like Christ and Socrates. Though Socrates is more fun. Talk a great deal, receive affirmations from your very own Glaucon, drink MUCH wine, and bugger young boys. Though Madiera is the thing, now that I'm all about the Romantics. Wine to sack to Madeira.

And I know nothing of Yeats, aside from the fact that he lived in a TOWER. Which is all there is to know really. I should like to live in a tower. Or at least have an enchanted garden where we can choose orchids for our buttonholes.

And I can sing Cratylic to Blondie's 'Atomic'.