Sunday Confessions

It's Sunday evening and after a week filled with 19th-century sentimental fiction, I feel whimsical.

The downside of studying literature is that though you do get to fill your life with reading interesting things, it's not necessarily that the assigned reading is what interests you at that particular moment...

So I started drawing up a list of what I'd really feel like reading now (but can't because I'm reading lots of other things). On top of the list is Stevie Smith. I only ever get to read her poems online, without the drawings, and read essays that mention the drawings but never reprint them. I need to change that. (And why did I ever give up drawing? At least I'd have another way to vent...) She's fun, brief, morbid, and didn't waste her time writing lofty manifestos. (Although I don't think planning and going about your suicide is a better way to spend your time.)

I'd also like to read Elaine Dundy's The Dud Avocado (since reading this post; yes, I know I didn't exactly run to get the book asap).

And Mary Jo Bang's last (i.e. most recent) book of poems. It took me shamefully long to get it.

This children's book, which I read at least three times as a child.

Since I already got in this oddly confessional mode (because I'm drafting a paper on the confessional poetry), I might as well say that I'm pushing away reading a batch of essays on New Criticism and its impact on contemporary literary criticism (snoring already?) by contemplating whether I should make myself another mug of tea with soymilk. Soymilk is fat and so New Criticism has better dietary effects.

(Snoring already?) Off, then, from the realm of unread to the realm of reading assignments...

PS: Tea in the US deserves a separate post.