saving email

I've been saving email to a Word file because my yahoo account is at 99%. I think it's at 98% now.

If these were paper letters they'd be dropped into a box. And would I ever look at them again? Oh, I don't know.

From what would the "Selected Letters" book be culled?

I've never read a collection of letters. Not all the way through. I've picked them up and read a paragraph here and there. Mostly they're pretty dull. Somebody must be reading these books. I find published journals dull, too. I find my own journals dull.

When I spent a semester in London my English teacher had us read Boswell's London journal. I can remember almost nothing about it. Except that it was dull. The teacher assigned us journals of our own. A great souvenir, he said. I actually kept two journals. One in which I wrote what I thought, a censored one for class. Teacher said he greatly enjoyed the one I turned in and wished someday he'd have the opportunity to read the other.

I understand Anne Frank wrote then rewrote her diaries.

Diaries are life without the story. We try to make the story as we go along. The autobiography (or the biography) sees the life as a whole and chooses from the past what is remembered, what there is record of, and what helps the story along.

I keep a diary. I don't write daily. I probably write less frequently in the diary than in the poetry notebook. There have been gaps in diarykeeping of months. I don't think that's happened with the poetry. Oh I've attempted fiction and that has taken the poetry energy. Maybe for months once or twice.

I tried once to construct a work out of my mother's letters. Part of my mistake there was showing her and expecting encouragement. She did not much like rereading her letters, nor did she like it when I edited them. Mom is not a storyteller. Neither am I, really. Not that either of us incapable of narrative. But I saw material to rework and she saw telling the truth about her life and the truth is not something you mess around with to get a better story. Not that I was trying to get a better story. Story wasn't it. I was trying to make an art object. I liked her lunch menus, for instance. Her weather reports.

I may yet go back to that. It's one of the projects. So many projects. Few will get done. Most will simply cease being worked on.