Saturday, June 7th

EVERY NOW AND THEN I stop to think about this strange year when I have been dealing almost entirely with the past because of so many deaths on the one hand and on the other the book of portraits I am now working at. Not by accident in this context I spend a half hour every morning after my breakfast in bed, reading piles of Rosalind Greene’s poems and short prose pieces (she had asked me to be her literary executor sometime ago—how could I refuse?)

I think of her generosity toward me in the theatre days, how she fought for us when we rented a house in Dublin and the summer residents looked askance at what appeared to them a group of hippies (though that was long before the word “hippie” had come into circulation). What a supportive friend she has always been!

I knew it would be painful to go over hundreds of her poems, and it is. She was talented but she did not learn anything over the years. The poetry is too abstract and generalized. She never discovered the power of a strong metaphor to lead her to the truth. So what remains is a little theatrical and a little self-indulgent and makes me very sad and at the same time cluttered up. Poetry is revolting unless it is good poetry. “I too dislike it,” as Marianne Moore said. But I am hoping to winnow out perhaps fifty that could be privately printed for the grandchildren.

At the same time what is constantly in my heart is that these poems do not do Rosalind justice. She was grand and complex, courageous, passionate … everything except self-aware … and the poems are dim beside her light as a person. What would they mean to someone who had not known her sapphire eyes, the lift of her chin, her theatrical Bostonian way of speaking, the “Brahmin” personified, though she came from Philadelphia?

While I am doing this, I am also beginning the portrait of Céline Limbosch, and have been startled to realize how alike these two great women were, though at first glance so different. Céline too had illusions about her powers as a writer and found comfort in her very old age in writing extremely bad poetry. Perhaps they were both actors, unaware that they were playing a role, and in each case this characteristic destroyed any natural relationship with their daughters. I can hear the violence with which sometimes these daughters spoke of their mothers—actual hatred. Céline was much more obviously dominating and possessive, but each as a mother marked her children with a deep and deeply resented mark. Each had an ingrained sense of superiority—Rosalind’s the classic noblesse oblige and Céline’s a kind of moral superiority as well as intellectual pretentiousness. I see all this clearly; yet I loved both these women, and because I was not a child of either, our relationships were truly nourishing and life-giving. In very different households they gave me, each of them, family life as a child when this was what I craved—to be part of a real “family.”

Because I am thinking so much about the past these days I have come to see that the past is always changing, is never static, never “placed” forever like a book on a shelf. As we grow and change, we understand things and the people who have influenced us in new ways.

Only very recently have I come to see and to accept that Louise Bogan really never believed in my work as poet or as novelist. I couldn’t face this even a few years ago, and never did while I knew her, for I always hoped for the saving word then. Now I can accept it, partly because I have a firmer hold on my work and far more self-assurance than I did. And perhaps it was harder for Louise to accept or praise me than it is for me now to accept that she could not.

Also, we understand more about old age and about the fears and problems of the aging artist or person than we did when they were alive—we stand in their shoes. For example, it never occurred to me for an instant that when over sixty I might cease to write poems. I never imagined that river could go dry—yet it has.

Today, gentle roar of the sea after a big storm yesterday … it is pale blue, with points sparkling here and there, over the green field, as green as a field in a dream.

I had an adventure yesterday at the height of the storm, for when I started the car up after doing the weekly shopping in Kittery, the windshield wipers did not work, and I drove the whole way home, about fifteen miles along a very winding road, peering through a sort of waterfall. It was interesting to discover that this can be done.

I have had a wild hope that Juliette Huxley, who is in New York for a memorial service for Julian, might come here for a few days. At once the beauties of this place became vivid to me. I walked around in love with the house, the view, the formal garden, and the delightful rooms, imagining how Juliette would walk around and be happy she had decided to come. But she telephoned to say it was impossible. Then I realized how very very rarely I can share what I have here with anyone whom I can wait for with that joyous expectation that makes life thrilling again.

But I am finding real joy in gardening, now that I am well. I put in early cabbages and twenty-four miniature glads just before the storm, and, thank goodness, Raymond came that day and cut the front lawn. It all looks as it should now, almost for the first time this spring.