I found Carruth’s For You & From Snow and Rock, From Chaos in a used book store in Seattle in 1974 & read & reread it while sitting in the projection booth of the Apple Theater on Boren Street showing dirty movies to the down & out. I had recognized his name because I head the anthology he had edited, The Voice that is Great Within Us, but no one had ever talked about him in any poetry class I’d ever taken & I’d taken a few. In many ways, Carruth’s work educated me as a poet. It remains central & indispensable to me.

Hutchinson says much of what I would say about Carruth. I was surprised to see that we had both come from Blake’s poems to our modern master. Also, it has been Carruth’s existentialism that hs kept me coming back to him. People look at you funny — I know — if you tell them you’re an existentialist, but that’s what I am. Carruth’s humanity & that his poetry emerged fiercely from love have struck me all over again as I have read through the volume of longer poems over the last few months.

The poet Reginal Shepherd has died after a heroic battal against cnacer during which he continued to write poems and weblong entries. I only met him once. Both on the page & in person, his commitment to honesty, clarity, & beauty are what I will remember. He was, truly, one of the makers. [See also this, from people who knew him well.]

Didn’t get a lot of writing done during my second week, but I read a great deal & thought about what I was reading, which is often the way I feed the work. I like the semi-solitude here, but a month of it will be enough. As with most arts colonies, one is able to participate as much or as little in group activities. I tend to be a loaner, though I do enjoy the dinner conversations.

Beautiful weather today — nearly cloudless sky, a little cool this morning but promising warmth by afternoon. The forcast says the next couple of days will be the same. I haven’t really minded the rainy days we’ve had since I’m not a big hiker, boater or swimmer (I’m a walker); but the sparkling lake this morning is a joy.

Reading: Hayden Carruth’s Collected Shorter Poems, John Dewey’s Art as Experience, William Barrett’s The Illusion of Technique, Marshall Berman’s All that is Solid Melts into Air, & John Ashbery’s Notes from the Air. About half of this is new reading, half things I’ve read before. Naturally, in my reading & in my own work I’m still fussing with the relationship between word & thing, mind & world. I’ve been fussing at these issues since I was eighteen, so why should I stop now? This is certainly a lovely place for such fussing.