Palais de Justice, Conciergerie

I love the bells, right now church bells ringing at noon on Sunday. Perhaps it's the end of the mass? If the wind is right I can hear 3 different sets of bells sometimes. And I don't worry if I go out without my wristwatch, because there is always a clock or a bell to tell me what time it is.

It has been raining steadily for the last week, though with breaks, during which we go out and walk, mostly along the Right Bank of the Seine which has a good long stretch of quai now reserved for walkers, bikes, roller-bladers. Yesterday we went over to St Gervais, Couperin's church, behind the City Hall in the Marais, for an organ concert. Took a bus over, walked home along the Seine which is very high. Boats--barges--can go upriver past the Pont Neuf on the western tip of the Isle de la Cite. The water is brown and moving very fast, and the quai is closed after the Pont Neuf, because it is flooded.

Last week I was heading to the Centre Pompidou and got sidetracked by the Palais de Justice, partly because the line was short. Wandered in and all around, then out and into the Conciergerie next door, all this inspired by reading Balzac's Courtesans over Christmas.

And now to lunch. Putting the last touches on my new Ms, The Hotel Eden, for Carcanet.

Poems in the Manchester Review

Here's a little self-promotion, with 4 poems in the latest issue of The Manchester Review, which also has some poems by my Canadian friend Evan Jones and an interview between Evan and the Western Canadian poet Robert Bringhurst.

Happy New Year! Bonne Année!

We returned to Paris on New Year's Eve afternoon after two weeks in the Vaucluse with the whole family and a number of our cousins. By and large, the weather was perfect, sometimes cold and clear, occasionally rainy, though I think we managed to get out for walks or bike rides most afternoons. In October the hills were full of colour; at this time of year they are more monotone, blacks and browns of vineyards and fruit trees, and the grey-greens of olive trees, and groundcover like thyme and rosemary. It's different but also beautiful.

We had the whole family, including cousins, for the traditional Provencal 13 desserts: two buches, various sweets, plus fruits and nuts and champagne, on Christmas late afternoon. My sister-in-law collected everyone at their house the following afternoon, and another cousin had a smaller group (without the kids, tired of socialising by then) the following day. Then our children began to trickle off back to Paris and England or the US, and for the last couple of days we were alone again, with a heap of laundry and a collection of leftovers, and our books and walks. One day it was sunny and windy and the sheets dried in no time (only ours, the kids had done theirs).

Back in Paris, where it is wet, though yesterday we got out for a long walk along the Right Bank Quai. I've just finished reading a very long Balzac novel (Splendeurs et Miseres des Courtisanes), whose last book or two take place in the Conciergerie, the old prison (where Marie-Antoinette and Sade were held) on the Isle de la Cite. Balzac gives a detailed explanation of the French Justice system of the period, and describes the prison from the inside and I wanted to stare at it from the banks. I probably should revisit it, but not this trip. The last time I read Balzac, a lot of Balzac, was a long time ago and we were living in Marseille. It is quite a different experience when you know the city well and appreciate how much Balzac had to know to write the book--not just about the physical city and its institutions, but also, of course, about every level of society, from thugs to princes.

My favourite sort of week

with almost nothing on the agenda, or nothing but whatever turns up at the last minute. Yesterday I meant to have lunch in Montparnasse with a friend, but we got our wires crossed and I ended up eating by myself in a sunny (yes, there was sun) window table-for-two, and felt very grown-up. Today it is pouring rain (again), the church roof is wet wet wet, the stones are black-wet, I am working in bed (on top of the covers) with my feet on a hot water bottle. Rereading some Helen Vendler essays and discovering other, more recent ones, online. Tonight we're having dinner in the restaurant around the corner, which, always charming, but not always extra-good for the food, changed ownership and is now serving excellent food, along with the charm. I'll probably go to the gym, read some more. I think I may at last have got into 100 Years of Solitude, which is suggested reading for a class I hope to audit after Christmas when we're back in Stanford.

Thanks to something Vendler said I added a new/old poem to the Ms, whose deadline is rapidly approaching. It seems to fit, but really you need time to assimilate corrections, and time is what you don't have with deadlines approaching. Ideally the editor will tell me that x poems are crap and should be junked. Ideally.

Lunchtime. We leave for the south in a few days so it's cleaning out the fridge time. Two sets of kids arriving after our departure and spending a couple days before they join us, but they either eat out or have finicky diets.

Oh, and note here that the Cafe de la Mairie has expanded into the storefront next door on the Place St Sulpice and will be renovating. They promise they will not turn into the Deux Magots: "The Cafe de la Mairie has its own tradition." Yes. But they can redo the WC.

Sunday afternoon

A walk along the Seine, Right Bank, partly in the rain, partly a walk that turned into a bike ride, when we came across a Velib station and I used my card for the first time. Not many people out. Christmas shopping in full swing. The river high with all the rain and brown, swans being washed on the swell of peniches, gulls arriving from both ends of the river to fight over bread crumbs being scattered by a thin man in a hooded white parka. Tea on the way home in the almost unfindable Mariage Freres tea shop on the Rue des Grands Augustin, it too quiet and though expensive filled with ordinary-looking people speaking quietly, tended by waiters expert in the hundreds, thousands of teas on offer. Back out in the pouring rain to come home and skip dinner, or almost.

Valery, Degas

in 'Degas Danse Dessin': 'At seventy, he [Degas] tells Ernest Rouart: "Il faut avoir une haute idée, non pas de ce qu'on fait, mais de ce qu'on pourra faire un jour: sans quoi, ce n'est pas la peine de travailler.[You have to have a lofty idea, not of what you do, but of what you will be able one day to do: otherwise there's no point in going on working."'

Degas Danse Dessin is the current exhibit at the Musée d'Orsay. My favourites are still the women bathing and the women ironing: they feel so strongly attached to the earth. The ballerinas are lovely, of course, but airy, and looking to lift off, to transcend their earthiness.

Crows

Yesterday my neighbour, who lives in an apartment on the roof of the church across the street, put a chicken bone out on the flattish zinc roof for the crows. I suppose the crows are the same crows, usually two flying over, keeping an eye on things, sitting on the buttresses, fun to watch. Anyway one crow let the other crow (dominant?) peck at the bone, as if it, the second, unfed, crow were keeping watch. The second crow, while I was watching at least, didn't get much to eat. Today the bone--which looks clean now--is still there and right now there's a crow sitting on some stones higher up, looking undecided about whether to come down or not.

I've been working on my Ms, which is due at the beginning of January, reading poems I admire, tweaking. It's hard to stay objective about your own--or someone else's poems--you know them too well, so one thing I do, is read others, then look at my own stuff. For half an hour or so I can see my own work as an outsider might see it, then it is again over-familiar, and I need to stop working. When you have time to forget about things for a while, then you can come back to them, but I'm too close to the deadline for this book to let go of them.

Lunchtime. Maybe try to see the Degas exhibit this afternoon--if there aren't lines?

Rubens

It's turned cold here, around freezing, with a bit of snow in the air, but nothing on the ground. The church had its all-night vigil, so it was earplugs and window barely open (but open nonetheless). Yesterday sat and read the paper in the park until the guardians whistled everyone out at 4:30 pm, as the birds (lots of parakeets around the persimmon tree--apparently they are becoming a nuisance, saw lots in London along the Regent's Canal towpath, too), then stopped in at the Rubens (royal portraits) show, which was warm and cosy and full of people. I thought the most interesting paintings were a self-portrait, the last painting on the way out, and a Valasquez life-size painting of Philippe 4th in hunting attire--all warm shades of brown--with a wonderfully painted dog. I recall from the Prado how much Valasquez likes dogs--better than kings, one suspects.

Lunchtime. Been reading Ashbery, Houseboat Days. Am on last year of Woolf's Diaries and dawdling. Sinead Morrissey, Douglas Dunn, still. Bonnefoy's interviews about poetry and painting.