Words into Air

Yesterday, I finished Words Into Air, the Complete Correspondence Between Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell. A fascinating book, with more plot and suspense and more of history's pageant than any recently read novel. Beyond the history, the elections and coups and assassinations and protests, are the portraits of the writers of their day, from "that Catholic girl fiction writer," Flannery O'Conner, to Randall Jarrell, Marianne Moore, Robert Frost, Ezra Pound, WC Williams, Allen Tate, Dylan Thomas, Mary McCarthy, Auden, Plath, Sexton, Bidart, Rexroth … and more. For shoptalk alone (criticism of each other's work) the book was wonderful. Okay, I didn't buy it; I have it from the library and renewed it three times — it's 800 pages! But well worth the time.

In other news: dreamed last night I went downtown for a haircut and encountered a lingerie fashion show for brides — you know, all that naughty stuff. And I couldn't get the haircut because all the men who were there for the show were getting shaves and haircuts (2 bits) and nose hairs trimmed as well.