'My' Baudelaire

An appreciative review of Invitation to the Voyage in Chicago Review of Books on December 4th.

The book will be published by Seagull Books on the first of January 2020.

At noon today

Rain is falling steadily, and since we are under the roof, I am loving the sound of it. Yesterday we squeezed in a bike ride between downpours and made it to the top of Alpine Road in Portola Valley along Corte Madera Creek, which was happily filling and burbling down along the San Andreas fault. Any houses up here are pretty well hidden so it’s one of my favourite bike routes.

Meanwhile our creek, the one that is dry at least six months of the year these days, is also filling up. Apparently folks on the other side of the creek, which is in Menlo Park, has spotted steelhead in it and the occasional coyote and fox visits their back yard. Sometimes it threatens to flood its banks, but that’s been pretty rare lately.

Thanksgiving

I admit to being ‘bah, humbug’ about holidays. And I don’t know much, beyond a children’s book retelling about the history of Thanksgiving. But why on earth did the ‘pilgrims’ put their feast so close to Christmas? Who wants to plan a Big Family Meal exactly one month before another Big Family Meal? And eat turkey when you still have the parched leftovers from the first bird still hanging around? And then there’s the problem of pumpkin pie, the candle-wax-and-smoke-infused flesh of the poor jack-o-lantern. I love pumpkin soup and pumpkin gratin, but pumpkin pie?

Canada, as is often the case, is much more sensible, celebrating its (copycat?) Thanksgiving on a Monday in early October, before the Christmas decorations are up and the travel problems due to weather are too acute. Less hoopla and less shopping too. Understatement is a Canadian strength.

Tuesday 26 November

It’s raining! The first rain we have seen, if I’m not mistaken, since we returned to California in late June. It was grey and leaden when we got up this morning, but usually the sky clears by midday and the afternoons have been brilliantly sunny, including yesterday when I met a friend on campus to talk about poetry over coffee outside Green Library and we were able to sit outside in the sun until it went down, when we moved into the library.

At 2 we headed for the hills on our bikes, got halfway up Sandhill, felt a few drops, went further, to Santa Cruz, by which time the drops were closer-spaced, reconnoitered the horizon—somewhat menacing—and turned back. Car wipers were coming on. As we walked into our apartment, it began to pour, and it has continued to pour. Love the sound of the rain on the roof. Love knowing we can stop worrying about tinder-dry conditions all around us. Of course, I’d also like it not to go on too long…but for now, we’re happy.

Kincade Fire

There is a smoke haze over the coastal hills, whose line we see from our northwest-facing deck, this morning. It was already there yesterday. Once you get up into the hills, as we did on a bike ride yesterday afternoon, you can see that the haze also covers the lowlands towards the east, and the Bay. It makes your eyes prick if you stay outside; I came back from our ride with a sore throat, so perhaps it was foolish to head out, but once you started uphill under the redwoods the air felt, at least, cleaner, as if the smoke were trapped high up in the treetops.

So far we haven’t lost power, though our county is on the list of those threatened with cut-offs. Since we live along a dry creek-bed, despite some recent cleaning out of the brushwood, we do think of fire. It doesn’t take much to start one in this parched environment.

6 pm: Strong smell of smoke when I step outside; the coast hills are pretty much hidden by the smoke and it is visibly hanging in the air. It’s become windy here.

Quake

An earthquake last night, the second recently, and a good jolt (4.5), though the epicenter was in the East Bay towards Walnut Creek. I happened just as i was dozing off, around 10:30 and I leapt out of bed, grabbed my robe and prepared to flee, if necessary, though it is really hard to decide whether to stay put and let the building collapse under you, or run into the street and get hit by debris. Still, if we had to get out, I needed some clothes. But nothing more happened and I went back to bed.

A Good Ride

I am about to get my bike off the balcony, get into my biking shorts (etc.) and take a ride. Weather sunny, but cooler than yesterday. Maybe I’m going to have another go at the bottom half of Old La Honda, maybe as far as the narrow passage between the redwood trees. It’s not the prettiest ride around, because it’s house after house most of the way up, but it is the most challenging, and at some point I want to be able to say I made it to the top: Skyline, the ridge, whence the roads go down to the ocean. I won’t be going down to the ocean because then I’d have to ride back up, and in my books a good hike or ride is always uphill, then downhill.

I borrowed a novel by the Polish Nobel prize, Olga Tokarszuk: House of Day, House of Night. It’s lovely, I highly recommend it, though it’s probably not going to be everyone’s cup of tea. Still reading Pessoa, Tabbuchi. The reals estate agent who sold us this apartment managed to tamp down my enthusiasm for visiting a new apartment. Of course, I know she’s right; not a good idea to move, but I do love my nesting dreams, new rooms to arrange. My daughter sent me a funny story about buying greengages in the fruit and vegetable shop in the Vaucluse, and it makes a good poem. I think I’ve nailed the one about—again—bedsheets.

Apples!

I had two to-me-unexpected responses to my poem ‘April Thieves’ which appeared in the New Yorker earlier this year. Both were from West Coast fruit-growing societies, one in Oregon and one in Washington, both asking to reprint the poem in their newsletters.

Bob Baines, of the Western Washington Fruit Growing Society, told me in his email how he happened to come across my poem:

‘I am currently president of this organization, We are dedicated to supporting research and educating the public about the special fruit growing practices and concerns of our Pacific Northwest region. Most of our activity centers around management and maintenance of our 6 acre temperate zone fruit display orchard.

 ‘This morning, I was sitting in the waiting room of my sports medicine doctor and on the table next to me were two issues of “New Yorker” magazine from earlier this year. I picked one up and glanced through the list of articles not seeing anything remotely of interest to me until I saw the entry “Apple Thieves” … ah, some hope. I have been involved in growing fruit in public places for nearly 40 years and quickly recalled several different lines of thought on that topic. Let’s see, I thought, where the poet takes this.

‘Expecting a whimsical treatment, I quickly realized that this was someone who understood the essence of fruit gardening. I read on, enjoying the knowledgeable treatment of my favorite subject.

‘But with the gentle revelation of the last line, you sprung open the door to an infinite number of lines of positive thought beginning with gardening and encompassing life and love and time.’

Well, that is as a good a review as I’ve ever had, and I asked Bob if I could pass it on, and he kindly agreed.