bronze_ribbons. from Jane Hirshfield's "The Poet" (Reply)

Let her have time, and silence,
enough paper to make mistakes and go on.

(Cross-quoted at Vary the Line, which I am tugging out of hibernation bit by bit as I resume some semblance of writing and revising. Other recent posts there:

photos of Shakespeare and Company, and a bit of Yeats in French

Monika Transformer's purchase of piano literature for the left hand)

Also updated the front page of my website, in lieu of enclosing Christmas letters to my relatives and non-journal-reading friends. ;-) Need to do more work with the internal pages, but that won't happen (as with many other things) until after Epiphany. (On the upside, I just purchased two signature editions [On Cloud 285 and Common Symptoms...] with my Folded Word royalties, which goes to show that even the little pieces can lead to rewards. *cheshire grin*)

Also, from Brad Leithauser's review of Sondheim's latest:

...his care and punctiliousness are steadily inspiring. Here he is discussing a rhyme from Follies:

"I had a similar moment when I paired 'soul-stirring' and 'bolstering.' The rhyme is not perfect, of course -- the equal accents on 'soul' and 'stir' don't quite match the heavy accent on 'bol' and the lighter one on 'ster,' but I tried to mask that by leaping the melody up on each '-ing' to distract the ear."

In fact, I can't imagine how serious craftsmen in any field wouldn't find both books inspiring. The quilt maker fussing over which shade of red to employ as a highlight; the cook experimenting on how most appetizingly to glaze a plate of scallops; the automobile designer sketching a streamlined new speedometer -- all such people should experience a sense of kinship when reading Sondheim debating whether, when seeking a rhyme, he might fairly use "wood" rather than "woods":

"What justification was there to use 'wood' here (and in the 'Finale') and 'woods' everywhere else? I finally hit on an explanation: 'wood' sounded statelier and therefore suited a lyric sung by someone outside the action."