For I am every dead thing / In whom love wrought new alchemy

Oh, hello blog. I kind of forgot you still existed. I'm not sure why I still write here, or whom I'm writing for, as my posts have become infrequent, semiannual. I think you are kind of dead. Or comatose.  I suppose now that I'm writing today, you are more of a revenant, you are re-begot. I will now dispense with the folly and creepiness of addressing my blog in the second person.

There's something about the space of a barely-anonymous blog, though, that allows me to express myself more freely than I would on other social media. Sometimes it takes longer for me to figure out what I'm saying, or what I really want to say, and sometimes I wouldn't want to say it anywhere else. And there is a burden to be clever and witty on Facebook. I'm almost always editing my Facebook posts to make sure they are appropriately wry, silly, smart. Here, on the other hand, I don't have to be clever. I can be remarkably shallow and just describe my sentiments without trying to impress anyone or to live up to an artificial persona. There are still things I can't (and wouldn't) say here or anywhere. But maybe I can capture a mood instead.

I'm up for tenure and my book is coming out in September. I'm also nine months married and moving into a new house in five days.  All cause for celebration, but I'm full of uncertainty. It is probably impossible for me to feel one thing without also feeling its opposite (I'm Petrarchan that way). I think my life is moving too fast. I haven't had any time to stop and think about how all these changes will affect my life until recently, and they are affecting it in all sorts of wonderful ways but also in confusing ways I hadn't anticipated. Without giving me any time to reflect, life deluded me into thinking it was easy.

I spent a month at one of my favorite archives early this summer. It carried the same accelerated, almost juvenile emotional tumult as summer camp: for the first week I was homesick and miserable, missing my husband and cat, hating the delay of moving into the new house, counting the days, having trouble getting focused in my research and finishing an overdue book review. Then friends arrived, I finished the review, found my footing, embraced the research with delight, became infatuated with the scholarly life again, and began to enjoy temporarily living on my own. I saw old friends, went out every night with new ones, gave a well attended research presentation, and wandered around the neighborhood smelling the gorgeous flowers and admiring the lush, overflowing gardens, serendipitously bumping into friends, falling into sync with one another. Then it was time to leave. I am relieved to be home with the cat waiting for the husband to return and the moving to start, but surprised to feel melancholy too, missing my scholarly paradise where time moved at a different pace and life stood still.

There is probably something Petrarchan about all this. And here I don't mean Petrarchan poetic style (the anatomizing and fragmentation of the unattainable beloved; the oxymorons) but Petrarch's constant state of dislocation. When Petrarch is climbing a mountain in the countryside, he misses the hum of the city. When he's stuck in the clamorous, noisome city, he profoundly misses the peace of country. And all the time he wishes he were living in ancient Rome, conversing with Cicero. He's like a quintessential New Yorker: miserable in his current location, but he wouldn't want to be anywhere else. I wasn't prepared to feel anything at all during my month-long fellowship this summer--other than the satisfaction of getting stuff done--and so when I did it took me by surprise.

I shouldn't have been surprised. I always get attached to this place and the books and people in it (witness this post from three years ago). Archives in summer are magical, atemporal spaces where the burdens of teaching and administrative work and constant deadlines are diminished and postponed, and the other people there get you, your love for obscure Renaissance things, and your unquenchable need to fill your head with bad poems about hair bracelets, or hilarious manuscript miscellanies, or bizarre Renaissance philosophies of matter, or Italian mythological dictionaries for six hours a day, followed, ideally, by carousing, five or six days a week. The fact that it will end and all of us go back to our ordinary lives might explain why we appreciate it so when it is happening. So that sense of timelessness is paradoxically brought on by a keen awareness that the time we have is finite. That sounds terribly trite and naive, but what I'm trying to say is that even when we spend most of our lives dedicated to our work and teaching, it can still feel seductively good to be at a place where everyone is brilliant and automatically understands that field-specific love of scholarship viscerally and scholarly sparks start to fly. It reconstituted me, jolted me awake. It makes returning to an empty small college town and everyday life a bit deflating.

 I am on leave until January, to write as much of my second book as I can. There is more archival work in my near future, but there's something about the summer archive experience that stands apart. Here's to life slowing down a little more, at least enough for me to enjoy its passage, its surprises and maybe even to learn to appreciate its unanticipated frustrations.

Grievances Forgone

Almost exactly four years ago, I thought my life had changed dramatically for the worse. Of course, I was wrong. Ultimately, I think what was and felt at the time a horrible thing was the outset of a series of exciting, good, and necessary changes. And I am grateful for the experience despite the unnecessary suffering it caused me, because I have gained dear friends, knowledge, perspective, and strength.

Nevertheless, I commemorate this experience annually by reading a poem. Today's is Shakespeare's Sonnet 30:

When to the sessions of sweet silent thought


I summon up remembrance of things past, 


I sigh the lack of many a thing I sought, 


And with old woes new wail my dear time's waste:


Then can I drown an eye, unused to flow, 


For precious friends hid in death's dateless night,


And weep afresh love's long since cancell'd woe, 


And moan the expense of many a vanish'd sight: 


Then can I grieve at grievances foregone, 


And heavily from woe to woe tell o'er 


The sad account of fore-bemoaned moan, 


Which I new pay as if not paid before. 


But if the while I think on thee, dear friend,


All losses are restored and sorrows end.




Who is my "dear friend"? Perhaps it would be better to ask who isn't? Right now I am thinking of three: one is a "precious friend hid in death's dateless night," a dear close friend I lost the same year I thought I had lost myself. This man remains one of the kindest, most generous people I have ever met, a scholar whose mind and personality shone bright and strong. He died far too young. Another is my adorable beau, now my husband, who first showed me his strength when helping me through these troubles (and we had only been dating for a couple of months). And the third is my dear best colleague/friend Veralinda, who gave me a stern talking to when it seemed I would drown the world with tears and it was time to shut up and move on. These days, we're happily collaborating, kvetching, and congratulating one another on our many accomplishments in work and life.


I don't mull over that year very often, perhaps only around its anniversary. Lately, I think about this experience fondly, proud of how I overcame my fear and feelings of inadequacy, glad of my current situation. But honestly, I rarely think of it at all. Which is as it should be.

Book Contract!

So much for all those tears. My book has been approved by both editorial boards and the contract is in the mail.

I am over the moon.

I have a lot of revising to do over the next two months, plus subvention grants to apply for to help pay for those thirteen half-tone images. 

But now we're talking publishing-speak: half-tones, word count, permissions. Delightful! I can't wait to talk cover images.

These will be the happiest revisions I've ever done. Even the index (I say that now, but...Oh come on, can't I just be happy today?). Yes, even the index! (I will now start accepting suggestions of professional indexers).

Ad Unguem

So I continue to hope, and with a slightly larger shred this time.

I've received my fourth and final reader's report from this press, and am delighted with the results. My initially skeptical and challenging reader was really won over by my revisions, and now enthusiastically recommends my book for publication, though not without a fair amount of fine tuning. This report is excellent: it pays close attention to the argument and is scrupulous in its attention to clarity and style, making several pointed suggestions for further stylistic improvements. The reader felt the book's argument was a bit speculative, but now believes strongly that the book should be published because it's still important to speculate about the things I've speculated about, and I seem to have speculated quite well. I kind of disagree, but I like that this reader readily admits that she (or he) can disagree with me but still appreciate my work and want to see it in print.

Thus I must write one more response--to this report, and the others, detailing what I've already done, and how I would prepare the book for publication--and even if it's really good, the editor tells me that it's not by any means a shoo-in with the press's internal board and its faculty editorial board because the readers still want a bit more polishing. But it sounds like I might be allowed to foster a bit more cautious optimism than I had before. I mean, come on: would it even be possible for this reader to recommend a book for publication without suggesting more edits and changes? This reader pays attention to everything. And that's a good thing because it means that this book will be polished ad unguem (to the fingertips. Horace, Ars Poetica 294). Everything plus an updated CV is due Monday.

Happy fourth-of-July weekend response-writing to me. This is my third to this particular press, by the way. And I still want them to take my book. (Please).

That said, I am relieved and a bit elated because my toughest and most critical reader appreciated and liked my revisions. Her (or his) comments were much friendlier, even a little bit chatty, while at the same time detailed and precise, noting everything I'd done in direct response to her (or his) notes, and even adding several positive comments about other changes I'd made. And despite the many critical suggestions for final draft polishing, it is clear that this reader is now invested in the project and convinced of its merits. More importantly, many of the comments seemed to be engaging in a kind of dialogue with me, something I really feel I have earned. I'm sure over the next two weeks I'll care whether this press takes my book, but right now, what suffices is knowing that my revisions worked, not only for me, but for my most critical reader.

Ah, Loiterer!

From George Herbert, The Temple (1633):

¶   Hope.

I Gave to Hope a watch of mine: but he An anchor gave to me. Then an old prayer-book I did present: And he an optick sent. With that I have a viall full of tears: But he a few green eares. Ah Loyterer! I’le no more, no more I’le bring: I did expect a ring.

It has been exactly a year since I last wrote something in this space. Since then in my first book's trajectory, I have responded to two readers reports (one positive, one asking for revision), majorly revised my book, and waited while it was sent back to the second reader, and out to a new third reader. Here at work, I  received extremely strong and positive comments on my book manuscript from the senior colleagues in my field, passing my third-year review here with no criticisms and a unanimous vote. The entire manuscript review process, from when I first sent out the manuscript's first draft (August 2011) to receiving the final report on the revision, which ought to happen next week, but seems to be less and less likely to be positive, has taken eighteen months.

I want my watch, tears, and book back.

Partly this is because my second reader had the first draft of the manuscript for ten months, and then the revised manuscript for five. The third reader also took five months to read the revision, possibly not knowing that no more revisions were allowed. And now, because the new reader's largely positive and helpful report recommends publication but nevertheless raises doubts about the argument--many of which are nice points that can be clarified in the book, none of which actually change my argument--I am given the chance to write a totally convincing but gracious and non-defensive rebuttal of these doubts, which, if convincing, will be taken to the press's editorial board. But if the second reader decides the revision isn't good enough for publication, this exercise may be futile. I have this tiny shred of hope left that this will work. But it's really tiny, because the editor--who has been kind and supportive throughout this process--has finally conceded that it would be prudent for me to query other presses. And I need to do that now because this whole process took almost two years, and I've only got another two years at most before my tenure review. Which I am lucky to have only because this is my second tenure-track job. Still, I need a book under contract (ideally in proof stage) to get tenure here. I don't exactly have ample amounts of time.

If you are a reader of early modern English poetry like I am, then you know not to trust Hope very much at all. And part of me really wishes I could rewind the clock, travel back in time to a year ago, withdraw my book, and send it to a different press, averting the copious weeping I've done over this, especially in the last twenty-four hours.

Therefore, I want my watch, tears, and book back.

Back to the Drawing Board

Oh, hullo first book manuscript. Yes, it's been almost a year. Welcome to open heart surgery. I'll just take the anesthetic myself, though if you don't mind. I need it more than you.

Well hello, there.

Good god, it's been a long time since I've written anything in this space. I imagine it gathering virtual dust-bunnies and feeling somewhat sticky.

I'm not ready to give it up just yet, though, because I went back and re-read that post I did almost a year ago about time and realized that I might be able to work some of the ideas into a new piece I am writing about lyric atemporality for my second book project. Which means that blogging is actually good for me as a writer and as a scholar, and I should do more of it.

Yes, that's right, a second book project.  Did I mention I finished my book and sent it out to the editor? And got a thumbs up from the first reader? That was back in December, 2011. The second reader's report should arrive any day now. Any day now. Cue sound of crickets chirping. More chirping, and a large tumbleweed drifts across the somewhat less dusty blogscape.

So in the meantime, while I'm waiting, I've started working on my second book project. I got the idea very early in the morning on my walk to work and immediately texted Veralinda because I was worried it was too sexy or trendy and not scholarly enough, but she reassured me that I'd give it the solid, scholarly, classical treatment because she is that good a friend and colleague, so she knew exactly what I was on about and what my angle would be. So I started plotting it out and writing research proposals, and managed to score some funding from my university for a six week trip to the UK to do some research on the first three chapters. I've already written about fifteen pages of one of them, so I'm really excited to get to the British Library, V&A, Warburg Institute and Bodleian to start looking at dead things that move around in early modern literature. Yes, dead things: mummies, corpses on judgement day, rejunvenated bodies rising from Medea's cauldron, eunuchs (you'll have to read the unwritten chapter to understand exactly how these are dead things), and hopefully zombies and vampires, too, once I can find some (perhaps I will venture into Shakespearean appropriation in popular culture, a la Twelfth Night of the Living Dead). Or maybe I'll just write about some good old metempsychosis.

In a little over two weeks, I shall travel across the pond to share a gorgeous Victorian house (with a patio and a garden and a piano!) with two friends and colleagues in London (Veralinda and let's call her Margaret), where we will keep one another motivated to get serious work done during the day, and go out and see plays like The Duchess of Malfi and have pints and glasses of prosecco at night.

Unless, of course, I receive my second reader's report first. Then I'll be revising. And the dead can wait.

Voici venir les temps . . .

It's my last full day in the reading room at my favorite library, and I'm trying desperately to see all the rare books I need to see, and to consult all the sources at my fingertips before I have to go home, put the final touches on my manuscript and send it out. Oh, and I start teaching again in a month, so there's that grad course syllabus to prepare (Note to colleagues: Do NOT open an email from a student in the summer if the subject line is "Reading List." It will make you very unhappy).

I've just returned a wonderful, very rare manuscript bound in vellum and created by the Goldsmith's Company. It's in two books, the first dealing with weights and measures, assaying gold and silver and the mint. The second, which is more along my lines of research, lists precious stones, and describes where they are found and how they are valued. This was very helpful for a few references in my chapter on pearls, but also for the piece I hope to write on Jessica's turquoise ring in The Merchant of Venice.

The book ends with descriptions of some hard substances that are decidedly not precious stones, but were also of great value in the East and were traded as currency: lack and indigo (red and blue pigments), ambergris, musk, and civet (animal excretions used in perfumes and aphrodisiacs). These things interested me the most, in part because what are dyes, perfumes and aphrodisiacs doing in a book whose title is ye knowledge of all sortes of Gemmes or Praetious Stones, describing the Places wheare they growe, their Names, Coullors, Vertues & Valewes, According as they are bought from Marchant to Marchant worthy their Studie, which profess themselues Iuellers or are desirous to be made acquainted with those Secrets of Nature? In other words, how is indigo a precious stone? Yet from an early modern sensibility, the inclusion of pigments and perfuming materials with gems makes perfect sense, as all of these objects were traded, along with spices, "from Marchant to Marchant" in the East Indies, Persia and the Ottoman empire, and all of these items were employed together with sugar and spices and mummia (mummy) by apothecaries in the early modern pharmaceutical industry (if you can call it that).

I learned a lot from this manuscript, and because it's my last day at this beloved archive, was sorry to have to say goodbye to it, just as I'm sorry to have to say goodbye to my new friends.

I'm feeling melancholy and out of sorts today in general, as when anything stimulating and inspiring--not to mention frequently frustrating--comes to an end. We had our last seminar yesterday, and I am very grateful for the new colleagues and friends I've made, but oddly sad that it's over.

Despite all of the work I have to do today, I'm finding it rather challenging to concentrate, feeling a little distracted. I move around as if I were under a spell, or as if I had taken some powerful drug, my heart beating a little faster than usual. (It doesn't help that I've been reading about early modern aphrodisiacs and Sonnet 119 is thrumming through my head). I will be relieved to return to the regularity of daily life at home. But today everything is triste et beau comme une grande reposoir.

Blogging about the New Media

So I've been in a summer seminar for the past month, at my favorite library. This is what we academics do in the summer: when we're not teaching as many summer school classes as we can manage in order to afford home repair, or churning out another manuscript or set of articles, we get paid to go back to graduate school. Except that it's like one of those accelerated summer-school classes that we teach, only grad-school style. This means 4-6 hours a day, 4 days a week, with a nightly reading list that far exceeds the weekly reading list I had from some of my most demanding professors back at Quill & Stylus. And if you're also trying to get a manuscript ready for a preliminary review, then farewell liberty.

Still, it's been a wonderful, stimulating and engaging experience. The seminar seems to span time, space, and dimension. It's too broad to describe here, and since I'm still writing under the gossamer veil of anonymity-ish-ness, I won't bore you with the details. But it's nearing its end, and the last two days have been devoted to readings, explorations, and discussions of The New Media, led by a brilliant pair of guest scholars.

We talked about film, database, archive and virtual space. We all created avatars and jumped around virtually on the Globe in Second Life (well, some people did. I couldn't figure out how to get off the roof of the balcony). We looked at a number of interactive on-line learning communities. But we haven't yet talked about blogs. A colleague mentioned blogs in an email message addressed to seminar participants today. The gist seemed to be "So, folks, what about blogs? Do they participate in the curatorial function of databases?" (We established last time that archives and databases kind of do have an author function and even an argument, even though many present themselves as being objective and all encompassing). Anyway, this made me think about my almost-defunct blog, and how only a couple of years ago everyone seemed to be participating in the academic blogosphere and now, well, notsomuch. That said there are still some wonderful academic blogs that I read regularly and for which I am grateful (shout-out to Flavia, and In The Middle!) I have to remind myself to blog, in a way that I never did before facebook, or twitter, or smartphones. Obviously blogs aren't just curated archives. I'm not sure they are archival at all, but they do participate in the collaborative thinking that goes along with new media. And what about blogs that are no longer active, like Blogging the Renaissance? Do people still read "dead" or "dormant" blogs, when there is no activity there any more? Or are they kind of like virtual archival materials themselves?

What will people think of blogs in times to come? What would Herzog's mutant albino crocodiles think of blogs?

A Delectable Discovery

When I'm spending so much time writing and researching, I like to escape now and then to a good novel on my kindle. When I'm not reading Spenser, Milton, and Donne, of course. My favorite historical novelists tend to be those that absorb the literary stylistic touches of their periods, like John Barth and Allison Fell, or who adopt a (post)modern style all their own, like Hilary Mantel and James Morrow. To give you broader a sense of my escapist reading tastes, the last few novels I've read have included medieval mysteries by Ariana Franklin, historical fiction by David Mitchell, Michel Faber, Ronan Bennett, Geraldine Brooks, Sarah Waters, James Morrow, and the early modern young adult fantasies of my friend and colleague Marie Rutkoski. Not to mention the literary fiction of my adorable beau, who likes to tease me when he sees me reading something fun by calling it a "trashy novel." This time, when he asked me what my "trashy novel" was about, I immediately called it rarebookporn, which left him a bit confused.

As fate would have it, I chose A Discovery of Witches, and finished it (579pp) in two days. Anyone who loves reading historical novels, fantasy, research, and early modern rare books ought to be aware that the talented historian Deborah Harkness, author of the remarkable book The Jewel House: Elizabethan London and the Scientific Revolution (New Haven: Yale UP 2007), has written this, and though by no means high art, it is still a fantasty romp that is nearly impossible to put down. I kind of felt as if it had been written just for me (and not simply because it ends with quotations from the two poets who feature in the final chapter of my book). If you mix what's seriously cool about material textual research with Buffy (and I realize that may already be a redundancy to those familiar with Joss Whedon's series, since in the Buffyverse a fair amount of strategizing takes place in rare book rooms and Latin and Aramaic are living languages), Brooks's People of the Book, Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell and Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials series, you might come a bit closer to what was so pleasurable about this book, but basically reading it felt like a vacation filled with magic and illuminated manuscripts and tiny pointing manicules and emblems and Giordano Bruno and sexy vampires in Duke Humfrey's library.

I am even more contented by the knowledge that there's going to be an Elizabethan sequel. Now, back to my manuscript. With the new chapter completed, it's off to thinking about language and the body politic in Poetaster. And I've got almost no time to lose, as I've seen the syllabus for my summer seminar, and it's more reading per day than I had in grad school per week at Quill & Stylus, which was kind of known for overloading its courses.

Procrastination can be Fun (and debilitating)

Speaking of time . . .

In a little under 2 weeks I will head to our nation's capitol, where I will spend 6 weeks doing some work at my favorite library in the whole world and participating in a summer seminar with a reading list as long as my bibliography.

I promised an editor that I would send him my book manuscript at the beginning of the summer as it was nearly completed when we met in January. Then I got sick (pneumonia--don't try this at home). Then I got better, and wrote to him, and we agreed that I needed more time. Then I got the brilliant idea of scrapping about 50 pages from one of my chapters and rewriting it based on a brief paper I recently gave at MLA. Then I got the second brilliant idea of turning my introduction into a separate chapter, and writing a new, short introduction to the book.

The work has been going well, though not exactly as quickly as I would like. I am not entirely sure I will be done in time to send the manuscript off by the end of June, though I sincerely hope I will. I'm about 90% finished with the sweet new chapter and I'm really happy with it. Then on to the intro-spin off chapter, which needs about 15 pages on Jonson's Poetaster, which will be smooth sailing and loads of fun to write. Then back to the new, shorter intro to give it an update on recent theory and scholarship. Then I shall double-check my intros and conclusions to all the other chapters, and set it free, only about 3 months late.

Since I clearly have this all planned out, and have been writing on average about 6 pages a day, every day, no days off, this should be no problem whatsoever, correct?

WRONG! For some reason unless I am at my desk during the school-year stealing a few hard-earned non-student-filled hours, or in the middle of an archival reading room surrounded by other scholars more diligent than me, heads bent dutifully over books and laptops, I am unable to stay focused for long stretches of time.

After two hours at the computer I feel great because I'm clearly, honest-to-god WRITING. So still feeling pleased with myself, I wander outside and pet the porch kitty (more on him later), water the plants, sweep the porch, swiffer the floors, make tea, go for a walk. Then I go back to work and carefully write another four to six paragraphs. Then I fiddle around adding footnotes and images and pulling quotes in. Then it is too late to do any more work at all because it is time to go to the gym, where I lift weights and do cardio intervals on the elliptical thingy without falling off, so I actually feel like I'm getting stuff done, and then I get to sit in the sauna or steam room and feel good about myself because I am being HEALTHY and getting THINNER, so yay! Then it is time for dinner and because it is now summer we get to cook and prepare yummy fresh things from the farmer's market, like salade nicoise or chilled pea soup or gazpacho and then have minted honeydew popsicles for dessert (adorable beau is a popsicle addict so we make them every week). Then it's time to maybe watch a movie and/or to read the New Yorker in bed with my adorable beau and our cat, so yay!

Then I fall asleep and dream dreadful anxiety dreams about putting a 20page manuscript in the mail, or about the apartment flooding and the landlord trippling the rent, or about losing everything I've ever written, or losing the ability to write or see or think or about going up for tenure suddenly tomorrow (by the way, I can totally control when I go up for tenure at this new job, meaning I can go up as soon as I get a book contract, or wait a few years, which is awesome, but also might be slowing me down a little bit). When I wake up, I rush to the computer to make things right. In other words, I only manage to get things done if I do them half-assedly and then put them off enough to cause me to fret and worry about it unconsciously to the point of waking up in a cold sweat, shaking with apprehension. My cycle looks a lot like this and this.

I recently started blogging again in the hopes that it would help me stay focused on finishing my manuscript. I'm not sure if it's working, but it certainly beats making tea or going for a walk. And hey, at least I'm writing stuff.

Keeping Time

Because I write about poetry and antiquity, I am always keenly aware of the way that time seems to keep us guessing. The lyric mode can suspend, extend, and rewind time. Just look at Marvell's "To His Coy Mistress," which moves from the longest length of time imaginable (apocalyptic), "vaster than empires and yet more slow," to the grave, where worms consort with his mistress's corpse, to the pounding heart beats of the last few lines. Or look at Shakespeare's sonnet 59, which imagines that time itself is revolutionary; all of this has happened before, all of it will happen again. The poet imagines encountering an illuminated miniature of his beloved in a medieval book, centuries before the young man was born. Or else he's imagining projecting an early modern book containing a portrait of his lover into the future, perhaps our future:

Show me your image in some antique book

Since mind at first in character was done

That I might see what the old world would say

To this composed wonder of your frame

Whether we are mended, or whether better they

Or whether revolution be the same

And then there's the way that music itself transports us into a different time-scape, one in which time seems to stop, or move at a different pace from normal life. It doesn't always happen, but when it does it can be sublime for the audience and for the performer. I remember distinctly that it happened one spring when I performed the Chopin Barcarole at Oxford, during graduate school. I went into a trance and it really felt as if the music was doing something to the fabric of time, stretching it, unwinding it, repairing it, folding and pleating it.

There's an excellent article by Burckhard Bilger in The New Yorker that came out last month, in which Bilger anatomizes David Eagleman, a neuroscientist and author who is fascinated by the way that the brain registers time differently depending on the situation. The brain can appear to stretch time, for instance, during a near-death experience. Eagleman has begun studying musicians. I'm more interested in what happens to our perception when we feel like we have somehow walked outside of time. You feel it in the early stages of a romance, when you stay up all night and the night seems to go on forever and ever and then suddenly it's daylight and whoops, it didn't go on forever and your romance grinds to a bumpy halt (cue Romeo and Juliet 3.5).

There's also the weird sensation we get when we remember and try to relive those moments. For me, they are all connected to music. When I play a certain piece, like Schubert's G flat major impromptu, or listen to one, like Beethoven's A Minor quartet Op. 132, I am again transported by memory to that place where (when?) time stood still. Only instead you can't get it to stand still again, and the experience is somehow cheapened. That's why we sometimes cry, because we know we can't rewind. And of course the experience of loss is heightened when it's Schubert or Beethoven, because somehow in their music, they both seem to yearn for the same thing and yet remain profoundly aware of its futility. When adolescence hit me like a giant blow to the head, I would listen to my favorite childhood record, Mary Martin in Peter Pan, over and over again, tears streaming down my face as I mourned my lost innocence. Ovid was right: change is the only constant. But sometimes I think I feel it a little too powerfully.

I recently learned that an old boyfriend, now a friend, has gotten married. I am happy for this old boyfriend, and very happy in my current relationship. I also have very powerful and intense memories of my time with the o.b. (old boyfriend), and most of these memories are strengthened by their association with music. Listening to him play the last movement of the Beethoven Op. 109 and trying not to look at his facial contortions, crashing through the fugue of the Schubert F minor fantasy together, lying side by side on his tiny bed staring at the ceiling and trying not to move, listening to recordings of the Beethoven trio Op. 70, No. 2, and to Op. 132.

We went our separate ways. We parted amicably (in fact it was the most amicable and satisfying break-up I have ever experienced). We dated other people, we stayed in touch as friends. We saw one another once in a while, and when we did, we went to musical performances, and it was not without awkwardness, confusion and nostalgia. I know people always select which memories to retain and then we edit and modify them, usually unconscious of what we are doing. Maybe the o.b. remembers things differently, or different things.

A small part of me wants to believe in revolutionary time. Not that everything repeats itself exactly, but that the past is still animated, that these old memories are somehow alive and ongoing. A part of me really wants those two young people listening to that quartet on the floor of that tiny Oxford room six years ago to go on listening to it and to go on thinking that time is standing still.

Returning to the Blog

I'm tickled. I really, really am. A few weeks ago, at an important early modernist conference on the West Coast, more than one person I admire (including the inimitable Bardolph, of the currently catatonic Blogging the Renaissance) said they missed reading my blog. As did Veralinda, in comments on the last entry. I always succumb to flatterers (and I don't mean it in the Renaissance, negative sense).

I've been so busy with the move and with my book I had forgotten about this space. I was also pretending to be trendy and acting like blogs were so ten minutes ago.

But now I find myself back here. Partly because I miss writing in this free, public-yet-intimate way, and partly because I read somewhere that if you stop blogging then blogger deletes your account and everything is lost. So much for posterity!

So I'm back. Still in the South, still finding it quirky, still marveling at life, writing, scholarship and early modern studies. Please stay tuned.

It's been a while

I'm afraid I've let this blog atrophy, but I've been finishing my book and undergoing a number of big changes, some unexpected, some expected, and all welcome.

Expected: I moved. I had an excellent first job, but as I eventually discovered, it was not for me (nor I for it). I went on the market extremely late in the season, applied to a very small number of jobs, made the short list on all of them. This time around, nerve-wracking though it was, I had all positive and confidence-boosting experiences. Even the job I didn't get, which was an interdisciplinary position at a very important ny institution and went to a tenured scholar whose work I admire, was still kind of a dream moment in my career: just to have come that far and allowed myself to fantasize about teaching there, living in the Village, and taking my students to exhibits at the Met, was loads of fun. But the right job chose me, in the end. I had always wanted to be at a research institution, and now I am at an excellent State R1 with a fine doctoral program, a large faculty (about 50 of us), and an Oxford program which is coincidentally down the road from my old college (go Keble!).

Unexpected: I moved further South! I am now in one of the so-called "deep south" states, a state that at the moment (well, since the '80s) is very conservative. I never expected this to happen.

Also unexpected: I love it here! My little college town, sometimes referred to as a "brain bubble" is full of over-educated, arty hipsters and vegans and yogis and local foodies and indie rockers.

Also unexpected: my adorable beau moved down here (from Brooklyn) and now we are trying our hands at co-habitation and domestic bliss. He seems to like it here, too. Also, I haven't seen anyone go so quickly from criticizing me for indulging the cat ("you're such a Jewish mother to her!") to outdoing me in spoiling her ("can I give her this yogurt?"). To be fair, he also trained her not to wake us up in the morning, a feat I have never been able to accomplish on my own.

Also unexpected: my students are smart and inquisitive and bursting with intellectual curiosity. They like me! They don't need to be told what questions to ask, they are already asking them. They stay after class to talk about poetry. They are also diverse and quirky and, well, not all that homogeneous a group. Okay, so this wasn't exactly unexpected at all, of course my students are awesome. But sometimes when one moves from an expensive private institution to a big, affordable state one (in the poorest county in the state), one doesn't know what to expect (perhaps also because expensive institutions tend to have somewhat inflated senses of their importance).

Expected: my colleagues are awesome. My department is, well, an English department (each messed up in its own way, pace Tolstoy). But mine's actually a functional one, with a tremendous amount of support for, and protection of junior faculty. Tenure rules are clear and specific. Procedures are followed, and a sense of democracy achieved. It's also a big department: I'm one of five practicing early modernists (the other four are senior faculty). My senior colleagues are strong and supportive and collaborative. In particular, they have of late been very encouraging and helpful in navigating the uneasy waters of academic book publishing.

Anyway, I'm thinking back to a year ago, when I felt unhappy and bitter. I'm kind of overwhelmed by how quickly things seemed to turn themselves around.

I don't post very often on this blog, in part because I'm finishing my book, and in part because I fear I've lost my audience. But for some reason I felt like I needed to finish telling the story it was telling last year. It's not the end, but at least it's finally happy.

Dinah Washington: I Don't Hurt Anymore

It's been a while since I've posted on this blog. It's been a crazy year, very busy, very up-and-down, and yet it seems that as the semester draws to a close, I've actually come out on top, rather than underneath. Or maybe that's just growth or something. Anyway, this song was in my head and I thought I'd post it here.

Musical Signs

I am not one for spiritual signs. But if I were, they would have to do with music.

I should explain about "The Theme." When I was in High School, I spent my summers at a large arts camp in the Midwest. Even though I never got a big role in any of the Shakespeare productions, or won the concerto competition, I loved it there. And at the end of every musical performance, the performers had to play the camp's theme. And the rule was no clapping. You were supposed to walk out humming it. And the camp's theme happens to be a beautiful little motif from Howard Hanson's Symphony No. 2 ("The Romantic). It is like a sigh. When there is a vocal performance, the singers sing it in harmony, to the syllable of "lu" (Lu lu lu lu lu lu lu, etc) . And when little children perform it, it is always followed by "Sssshhhhhhhh" as they tell one another not to clap.

Even though The Theme is famous at my arts camp, and Howard Hanson's Symphony No. 2 well known, I have only heard The Theme on the radio twice.

The first time I was 17 and heading to one of my two top choice colleges for an interview and campus visit. At the time I didn't think I would get in, and the place seemed out of my league. Of course that made me want to go there even more. Anyway, as we drove up to campus in my grandmother's old toyota, suddenly The Theme came on to the radio. It was stunning. Right as we were pulling into the parking lot, there it was. We all sat in the car until it was finished. When I closed the car door and walked up into the sunshine, I knew it that no matter what happened, I would be okay. Of course I got in, though I ended up going to my other top choice, which was bigger and artsier, but that is a different story.

The second time I heard The Theme was the day before I was to depart for New York this January. I was feeling all sorts of stressed out about my move, wondering if I would be able to finish my book in New York, feeling sad about leaving a few good friends, feeling sick and congested and anxious about the future. I think I was driving to the tailors to pick up a shirt for a late season job interview (reader, I got the campus visit. Just not the job). I was on the exit ramp from 40 business, turning onto Knollwood St. to get to Stratford Road, and there was the theme. It was calming and peaceful and yet I found myself in tears. I could say that it triggered a memory of youth and innocence and happier times, but that wouldn't be true: my experiences at summer camp were just as emotionally complex as my experiences are now. All I know is that it was the right time for me to hear The Theme again. And that it brought me some sense of closure and peace of mind. Of course I remembered the other time I had heard it, and was hopeful.

The second musical sign came a few weeks ago. A dear friend (and an exboyfriend) was visiting for the first time from the UK and we made plans to hear a chamber music concert in Manhattan. We saw the Takacs Quartet at Town Hall on a Sunday afternoon. We didn't know what they would be playing, only that we hoped it would be late Beethoven since that is what they are known for. Lo and behold, the last piece on the program was Beethoven's Quartet Op. 132, with the incredibly gorgeous and ethereal third movement called Heiliger Dankgesang, "The Invalid's Prayer of Thanksgiving."

This was something we used to listen to together in Oxford. In fact, the first time I heard this piece was on my friend's stereo in his tiny rooms on Banbury Road. Hearing and seeing it live far transcended any experience of Beethoven quartets I have ever had. By last strain, I was in tears and the violist had to pause to wipe her eyes before starting the last movement. It amazed me that she could demonstrate such control over her playing and yet cry all the way through it, because it was so beautiful. It was good to share this music, at this time in my life, with a good friend. I felt like I was the invalid recovering from an illness. I have so much to be thankful for.

34

It's been a while since I posted on this blog. The move to Brooklyn for the semester plus the sinus-infection-that-would-not-go-away have seriously limited the amount of free time I have to spend musing about myself on the internets.

But I do have some thoughts, having recently turned 34.

33 was rollercoasterish. It was rough and confusing and uplifting, not all at once but in succession, and I am grateful for all of this in the end, because it reminds me that I am living, that this is experience.

In the beginning of 2010 I lost a dear friend, too early--much to early--to cancer. He was one of my closest friends and colleagues, arrived at my institution right when I did, in 2006, to start a tenure track job in another department. I miss him horribly, and am still only just beginning to understand what a life without him means. But oddly, here in Brooklyn, I keep remembering him and it's kind of like being haunted by someone in a good way. He came here to spend his 4th year leave with his partner this year, and in the end, to rest from his illness. I can't help feeling like his memories are part of this place.

I turned 34 two days ago. I've been fighting this awful upper respiratory infection for 3 months that has left me fatigued and frustrated. My biggest fear is that I won't be able to finish this book and get the manuscript ready to be reviewed. Thankfully, writing doesn't take up that much physical energy, but I'm hoping that this year I'll get better. Perhaps some of the frustrations of last semester weakened my immune system enough for this malicious infection to work its way inside. Though if that were the case, then the recent spate of good luck I've been having would have strengthened it. But I still have a lot to be thankful for: an adorable and witty beau who extolls me in verse, two healthy and wonderful parents (kinne hurra) and a growing number of friends and supportive colleagues the world over.

My year in fortune cookies

From 2009:

"You have a natural grace and great consideration for others."

Not so sure. Since I stopped taking dance lessons seven years ago I've started stumbling around and bumping into things a lot. I also have a big problem with interrupting people and talking too much. And as for being considerate of others, well, not exactly according to my most recent group of students. I can be tough, critical, abrasive. I let them know when they are wrong and say things in class like "where's the textual evidence for that claim?" I need to relax and be gentler with my kids in class. I think I should treat this fortune as something to work towards, not something that is already true.

"You find beauty in ordinary things, do not lose this ability."

Okay, I'll try not to. And I think this is probably true. Nothing thrills me more than a perfect fried egg staring up at me from a turquoise china plate. Or a simple lit window glimpsed from the dark street.

"Prepare yourself for a big change of events in your personal life."

Well, I guess it depends how one defines "personal life," but, yeah. There have been some big changes in 2009.

"Your name will be famous in the future."

But not in this life, apparently.

"Do not display your treasures or people will become envious."

Sound advice, and words I frequently need to hear. I get so excited about the things I love, I often forget that others have not been as fortunate, or might not see things from my perspective.

"Accept the next proposal that comes your way."

Okey-dokey. So long as it's something nice.

And the first one from 2010:

"You are working very hard."

MLA Bound

I am, once again, MLA bound next week. Off to snowy Philadelphia to deliver a paper, see old friends, and horse around in a place I used to live.

I'm dreading and looking forward to it. Dreading it because MLA still fills me with residual dread. It's just so huge. Sometimes it's really hard just to locate one's friends in the midst of all the posturing and networking and nervous job candidates and competitive colleagues. And dreading it because the economy's so bad, there are few jobs available for anyone, and even my alma mater has canceled its annual party. It's a dark, dark time.

But let's face it, I'm a nerd. I totally love the work that we do, and so I am looking forward to it because part of me cannot wait to give my talk, and meet the important person who agreed to chair our panel, and reconnect with scholars whose work I admire.

But if you're one of my friends and you'll be there, and you're also feeling overwhelmed by the massiveness that is MLA, please get in touch with me and let's arrange to meet up. In advance.

JUDY GARLAND: 'MEET ME IN ST LOUIS'. 'HAVE YOURSELF A MERRY LITTLE CHRISTMAS' WITH SNOWMAN CLIP.

Maybe it's me, but I find most pop songy holiday music as irritating as it is inescapable this time of year. So I'm always glad when a little jazz standard by Irving Berlin ("White Christmas") or Mel Tormé ("Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire") comes out over the loudspeakers, only partly because both composers were Jews who knew that Christmas sells. They were also elegant composers who knew the thrill and complexity of a long, drawn out musical phrase.

Another Jew who capitalized on Christmas was Yip Harburg, who wrote the lyrics to my favorite Christmas song of all time, "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas." I like it because the original lyrics are so dark and ironic and uncertain.

Meet Me in St. Louis was one of my favorite movies as a little girl. And this scene in particular. Have yourself a merry little Christmas indeed. Then run outside and smash all the snowmen, because you have to move to New York.