My 2nd graders surprised me today, on the last day of the poetry workshop, with an acrostic, a class collaboration in about twenty different handwritings:

Joyful, juggles
Optimistic
Nice, new
Awesome, amazing
Terrific, tremendous
Happy, helpful
Active, appealing
Neat, noticeable

Magnificent, marvelous
Applaud, artistic
Yes!, youthful
Humorous, heart
Excellent, eccentric
Wow, willing

That was a very nice thing to do, I thought.

***

When I said, "imagine W.C.W. writing sonnet after sonnet," I was aware of his Keatsian beginnings. What I meant to say was imagine the modernist WCW writing mostly in the sonnet form, making the sonnet modernist. I agree also that the later Williams is (with notable exceptions) a let-down. His best period is in the 1920s and 1930s. How ironical that when he claimed to have discovered his "variable foot" was when his free verse was going slack. He was almost 40 before he really discovered his true style; there's still to much didactic posturing in Al que quiere. Let me tell you how to conduct a funeral! Listen up townspeople!

My lecture for Spain is almost complete. I end with Concha García. I do mention blogs as a phenomenon, part of the effort to write the continuous present. The influence of Samuel Pepys on Jordan Davis. Quite erudite.