If one forgets one has written something, and comes on it years later, and is pleasantly surprised by how wonderful it is... A sort of non-egotistical self-admiration is the result. That is, the pretension that one is not judging the work good in terms of its relation one’s self, but “objectively,” as though it were by someone else and one just “happened” to admire it. As though the intervening act of forgetting made the work somehow not one’s own, so the ego might get a free pass.

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Are adjectives used as adverbs unacceptable in English? The new fallen snow, the fresh baked bread. Must we say, the newly fallen snow, the freshly baked bread? I think not. Go slow sounds as good as go slowly. Think different or think differently? Neither sound particularly elegant. The suffix does not improve the phrase. Speak soft or speak softly? Do not go gentle or do not go gently? Dylan Thomas preferred the first, and I happen to agree. One the other hand, you cannot say “She slapped him rude across the face.” Or if you did you would be making a point of it.

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Review of a book of poems by Adam Kirsch in the NYTBR today. The book sounds awful, from the little that was quoted, and the reviewer, Ken Tucker, whom I only know from his entertainment reviews on NPR’s Fresh Air, indicates as much. Why was such a book reviewed at all? Kirsch has become quite a prominent reviewer of poetry in The New Republic and similar venues. Recently on record advocating a return to Palgrove’s Golden Treasury.