TGIF

I finished Irving Layton's memoir, Waiting for the Messiah, while taking the train from New York to New Haven. It offers a glimpse into the mind of a man who injected much vinegar and excitement into ho-hum Canadian poetics back in a time when Canuck poetry solely meant verses dealing with forests, snow, igloos, and so on.

I also found a couple of books by David Lehman at a used book store in town: The Evening Sun and a signed copy of his first book, An Alternative to Speech. Poetry doesn't need to be read from cover to cover so I can pick one of those up whenever I need a break. Now that I've read Layton's memoir, however, I have to start a number of books for school.

Speaking of which, I survived day #2 of classes and I ended up choosing subjects and professors that seem really informative and entertaining. Two of the courses I chose originally didn't seem like the right fit on Tuesday so I'm glad I did a bit of shuffling to figure things out. I also don't have school on Fridays so it's nice to be able to take it easy at home after spending such a long day in New York.

This afternoon I went to Yale's Sterling Library with Maryn and got my library privileges. I already took out a couple of books I need for Columbia so I guess the next thing on my to-do-list is to gain access to Beinecke, Yale's rare book and manuscript library. I'm salivating at the prospect of being able to research their modernism collection, containing the papers of T.S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, H.D., William Carlos Williams, Gertrude Stein, and many more.