Not only did I write my 4th poem as an adult today, but I picked up the booklets I had special services bind for my "workshop" today. Yes, this afternoon I am giving the next installment of the English for Professionals with Degrees Far More Advanced Than My Own series and am really quite excited. This afternoon's session is billed as a lesson in letter writing - proper and common phrasing, establishing a professional tone and so on. Over the past couple of weeks however I have been compiling all sorts of material related to the writing of letters, my favorite being Emily Post’s chapters on Notes, and Long Letters from the 1922 edition of Etiquette. Post's writings were one of the first things that came up in my search, and despite the severely elitist and out of tempo nature of her advice, she is still pretty right on about a lot of things. In Long Letters, she gives us a general discussion of what makes a good letter - a letter that the recipient looks forward to reading - and breaks apart some common tendencies into several accurate to life categories. Of course, I could really care less about what she is advising about, as I am sure most of in the 21st century don't feel pressed to use the proper envelope. But, she's a sharp writer and it was fun to think of ways to cite her as an example for a group of scientists who are less than hip to America's cultural legacy.
It came out to be about 50 pages of essays (some HL Mencken in there) and advice on style and form (Strunk, of course too). Selfish, yes, but I am still excited to get to lead a little, if weak, discussion on the joys of correspondence. I have also wedged in there a letter Einstein’s daddy wrote to Albert's professor pleading with the man to give his son a job. Some WWII letters also. I may have to bribe people to show up with cookies, but it will be worth it for the fun I am going to have playing teacher.

And on the 4th poem? Well, it feels like wearing something that's tailored wrong. Not that it doesn't fit, but more like the seams don't match up where they're supposed to. Something about the way I spaced the phrases seemed affected, but then without the spacing, the sound wasn't right. I had a particularly tough time with the word because in the beginning of two stanzas: I really want it to be read the way one uses the word as an explanation - the emphasis on the words around it and not the word because. But, I also wanted it to be at the beginning of the line, and not say, at the end of the previous line - a crude sense of rhythm even for me.