Hacking away at my dissertation prospectus. The thing itself will likely have five chapters of at least thirty to forty pages each. Right now I'm feeling drawn strongly away from Lawrence toward Pound, which would likely de-Britishfy my thesis (not without regrets on my part), though there's always Bunting in my chapter on the Objectivists. I may end with a discussion of Lisa Robertson; my copy of Xeclogue hasn't arrived yet, but from the little I've gleaned of her work I suspect she makes the most logical end point for a discussion of writers who have discovered and exploited pastoral's capacity for disrupting centers and hierarchies. So I'm feeling cautiously optimistic that I'll have a solid framework to start fleshing out with writing and research by the time the semester ends.

In other mighty mighty good news, the sun has finally come out. Bogie and I just had an enjoyable snuffle up and down the South Hill Recreation Way, a path through the woods just a couple of blocks from our house. And tonight will be the first meeting of the Finnegans Wake reading group that I've made it to in a couple of weeks. A suitable quote from John Latta's blog: "Cox, on Finnegans Wake: “The state of mind it generally represents is more like that (not always due to alcohol) where remote references can be made with ease but simple messages get garbled, trivialities assume enormous proportions and everything appears at once inexpressibly significant and unaccountably comic.” "