Hi Darling Ones,

Aside from giving a humongous presentation on a project I spent the past threeish weeks building, I’ve spent the past two days alternately napping, reading a biography of e.e. cummings, and having meals with various members of my family (Chinese with The Olds last night, Popeye’s with Maxwell this afternoon).

The cummings’ biography was a sad disappointment. He’s a genius poet but a fart-noise of a human. This would break my heart more were I not a woman alive for forty-eight years by the year 2021. I’ve grown accustomed to men whose art I love being rapists, dirtbags, and fart-noises.

I vaguely knew about the anti-semitism (everyone was anti-semetic, author Susan Cheever pretty much says) and his problematic poems (again the author dismisses this as him being a product of his time), but vaguely knowing and reading it are two different things. I’m also super annoyed because cummings and his ilk (I’m tossing Hemingway and Fitzgerald in with him too) thought they were these grand hedonists and artistic revolutionaries, which is really easy to do when you have a wife to take care of the mundane tasks of being alive and wealthy relatives who will give you money whenever you need it.

I’d probably be an artistic genius if I had someone to fix dinner and do my laundry.

The biography was a huge disappointment, not just because cummings is a fart-noise, but it was poorly written, weirdly argued, and frankly kinda boring. I wanted more “this is what he was thinking about when he wrote maggie milly molly and may” and less “he felt emasculated by his wife’s sexuality.” Barf.

And yet, I will probably always love his poetry. I’m not usually one to separate the art from the artist, but damnit so much of his work is carved into my heart and has been for thirty years.

In other news, after years, literally years, of searching I finally found a new light fixture for my dining room. It sparked joy in my heart the moment I saw it. My brother-in-law is going to install it when he’s here at the end of June. I cannot wait.

Rattling like a fragment of angry candy myself,
Jodi