Found a profile of someone whose work I greatly admire, but know next to nothing about. That's often the case. Kay Ryan's a poet living in CA, and I stumbled across her in an issue of The New Yorker, which has introduced me to more than a few people over the years. Her A Hundred Bolts of Satin floored me, and went from the magazine to my wallet to a wall in my bedroom.

I need to read the article, and think about her a bit more, but this can go up now. Urgent's a favorite word of mine, concise is another. She's both, and quite often


Hope

What's the use
of something
as unstable
and diffuse as hope -
the almost-twin
of making-do,
the isotope
of going on:
what isn't in
the envelope
just before
it isn't:
the always tabled
righting of the present.

With Abby this weekend, walking a familiar and welcome stretch up Henry Street in the Heights, we passed a church -- we always pass churches -- and I read a quote by Andrew Young, another person I'd never heard of.

"Wishing, of all strategies, is the worst."

And they both have a point, of course. Hoping, wishing, both with their place in this world, each something useful and the opposite of useful, to the extent they get us to make things happen or keep us inactive.

From Becker to VanGogh to Steinbeck to Winterson to these people, I find myself coming back to that again and again. "Your best chances are the once you take," Robin reminds me, daily.

and from some intelligent cow:

"A wish is a desire without an attempt."

-- Farmer Digest