Читать книгу Letters from Max - Sarah Ruhl - Страница 29

FEBRUARY 26

Sarah:

A proper note.

Melancholy Play in this song form is confusing and beautiful—the bricolage of musical intonations gives it a dizzy interpersonal body. It’s like how I imagine people engaged with opera when it was part of daily life. (I can’t follow operas the way I imagine they deserve to be followed, and this makes me feel like I get an opera-like experience—free from the overconventionalization of musicals but complicated in a register I can intuitively relate to.) Please send me more, and more poems. (Still love your poems best.)

The stomach holds up today, the flu seems to be in check. I don’t even want to talk about my physical health if I’m able to focus on anything else for two seconds in a row. I sense a wall from D. and I can’t blame her, I haven’t spoken to her in years, and all of a sudden I’m barging very suddenly and cancerily into her presence. We had a meal where she seemed to be obliging me. She called me “dude” at one point. Sarah, can you imagine anyone referring to me as “dude”? Urgh.

I am writing fairly good poems. More exciting has been the editing. Opacity is fear. I’m editing with that in mind. I’m noticing the poems are humbler than I thought they were, but that they have a sincere wit and imagination that is just fine on its own, even if I can’t live up to the crazily inflated diction of a Stevens. Opacity is fear. Embrace my voice and mind.

Love,

Max