The ads over Stephanie's blog today say "Get Rid of Squirrels Now" and "Kill Rodents Now." What is the common denominator between Stephanie, squirrels, and rodents? The NOW.

Wonder how Richard's reading went at 21 Grand in SF last night.

I'm on my way back toward serious blogging, I can feel it. After I recover from a week with my in-laws (well, Emily and I aren't married, so her family) and before Emily and I shack up together a week from today, I want to say something intelligent about Veronic Forrest-Thomson, whose Poetic Artifice I've been dipping into. She says some things about my man Wallace Stevens that give me pause.

In the meantime here's a grotestuqe bit of Milton which William Empson says, in its evasive use of language, "has the squalid gelatinous effect of ectoplasm in a flashlight photograph":

         The aggregated Soyle
Death with his Mace petrific, cold and dry,
As with a Trident smote, and fix't as firm
As Delos floating once; the rest his look
Bound with Gorgonian rigor not to move
And with Asphaltic slime; broad as the Gate,
Deep to the Roots of Hell the gather'd beach
They fasten'd.