Torn

I finished my read-through of the Ted Hughes: Collected Poems yesterday, which means I now need to choose the next chunky volume of poetry on my shelves to sequentially apply myself to. It had been my intention when embarking on the Hughes to get back to the 1939 - 1962 volume of William Carlos Williams, and I feel a bit of a yearning in that direction. But there's fierce competition from the two hefty volumes of The Complete Poems of A.R. Ammons exerting quite a siren call. In fact, I couldn't stop myself from reading Helen Vendler's introductory essay to the first volume of Archie's stuff, which makes it almost inevitable that the handsome Volume 1 will be occupying me soon.

I say 'soon' since I'm putting all new reading on hold until I've completed the books and magazines that I've been engaged with one way or another since the beginning of the year. This is my way of imposing some vague discipline on myself to combat my tendency to get overly interested in everything at once at the expense of some kind of reasonable focus.