Back from Maryland—pleasant but tiring. Emily's new niece and nephew, Talia and Jacob, are less than 5 lbs. each. I held Talia! Didn't get to see my friend Chris who lives in DC, which was kind of a bummer. But I did make it to a surprisingly good used bookstore in Bethesda where I acquired a number of interesting items: Ed Barrett's Sheepshead Bay (what with reading the Joe LeSueur book and Ron Padgett's Joe, I am currently immersed in first gen NY Schoolness); Ann Lauterbach's Clamor (a 1991 out of print title from Viking; a lovely hardback); a first edition paperback of Allan Grossman's Of the Great House; the City Lights edition of Baudelaire's Intimate Journals (including Mon Coeur Mis a Nu; a beautiful little Sun & Moon book of Barbara Guest's, Defensive Rapture; and most excitingly, Robert Kelly's The Mill of Particulars. They had a fistful of Kelly, actually, but one book was all I could afford. How such a mightily prolific, various, and talented poet should be as obscure as Kelly seems to be is beyond me. It was perhaps his misfortune to be almost exclusively a Black Sparrow author, but I hope someone will at least produce a new Selected Poems one of these days.

Off to work, more later as inspiration and free time dictate.