Now I learn, four years late, that he died. I feared that news, but expected it would arrive soon enough thereafter not to be old. Perhaps it’s fitting that old about old sustain yet warn the old that it’s ultimately all for nought, except things others may make of it in memory and memorial.

The honesty, cutting thru all the usual crap, is bound to be fortifying.

But the nightmare vision—while awake—not keeping it corked & unconsidered—will require all the fortification delivered, to behold it, again & again.

Since it’s necessary to consider what is mostly hidden from, but real & essential—otherwise all else is false for the dishonesty—including results of doing—that’s a good deal.

Not really like anyone else’s work, or like anyone else, is it, or was he?

He managed to be himself.

I wish he’d managed more—I don’t like his “What can one do but write…?”—tho surely that’s often true, maybe most often true—probably—but being yourself among all the poses for sale off the rack, cheap, is quite an accomplishment.

Thanks for Carruth. There is something of this in “Prepare”–especially the last lines.

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed,
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature’s changing course untrimmed:
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st,
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.