Next in the Seemingly Endless Series of Poems About the Winter of 2006

January 20, 2006
Been thinking a lot lately about

following a train of thought through one’s reading
tracing ideas
preoccupations
from one book to the next

For instance
I would not be doing this writing thing
whatever the hell it is
had I not read A Box of Matches by Nicholson Baker

which somehow in turn lead to
E.M. Delafield
May Sarton
Monica Dickens
Ruth Reichl
Sarah Orne Jewett
Julie Powell
Alice Thomas Ellis
Betty MacDonald
Virginia Woolf

Any attentive observer would notice
what I didn’t till just now
that all of these authors' works
like the Baker book
are intensely domestic
and of course also all are by women

But here’s the thing
domesticity was not the thread I was consciously following through them
rather I thought I was looking for authors
who closely observed the minutia of daily life
and yet there it is
clear as a pale blue sky
a big old subject matter shared in common
by a dozen volumes if not more

Begging me to ask the question
what’s the connection
between women’s life in the home
and the mundane beauty I’ve been looking for?

image source is here