The train whistle is blowing in tune with the Books track I'm listening to. It's eerily beautiful.

Also, I'm pretty excited about the James Baldwin Symposium going on on campus. Although it's been a hectic couple of weeks I've been trying to go to events. I went to part of the film festival last night and watched a biography of the writer which was quite interesting. I wish I had had time Tuesday to see Go Tell It On the Mountain, though I guess it's better to wait until I've read the book. I've only ever read the "gay novel" with which he officially came out, Giovanni's Room. Sadly, I don't think I appreciated it as much as I would now.

Today is national poem in your pocket day. I'll be carrying G.M. Hopkins' "Carrion Comfort":

Not, I'll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee;
Not untwist—slack they may be—these last strands of man
In me ór, most weary, cry I can no more. I can;
Can something, hope, wish day come, not choose not to be.
But ah, but O thou terrible, why wouldst thou rude on me
Thy wring-world right foot rock? lay a lionlimb against me? scan
With darksome devouring eyes my bruisèd bones? and fan,
O in turns of tempest, me heaped there; me frantic to avoid thee and flee? 
Why? That my chaff might fly; my grain lie, sheer and clear.
Nay in all that toil, that coil, since (seems) I kissed the rod,
Hand rather, my heart lo! lapped strength, stole joy, would laugh, chéer.
Cheer whom though? the hero whose heaven-handling flung me, fóot tród
Me? or me that fought him? O which one? is it each one? That night, that year
Of now done darkness I wretch lay wrestling with (my God!) my God.