I've spent the last three days in bed thanks to whatever seasonal bug is felling professors at the University of Washington.  I am falling further and further behind on my to-do list.  I have, however, been able to read a little.

My relationship to poetry took a sharp turn for the worse the day I learned that Emily Dickinson's poetry could be recited to the tune of the "Yellow Rose of Texas."  (This observation is far from original, and there are scores of other tunes that work as well for the Dickinsonian canon for reasons that are well explained elsewhere, but the moment in which this unfortunate coupling occurred to me was nonetheless a shock to my system.)