I like to read a bit of poetry just before going to bed. Recently it's been C. P. Cavafy, a Greek poet from early last century (1862-1933). My favorite of his poems is also probably his most famous: Ithaka, which we read in High School. I think that Cavafy may be the only author other than Shakespeare who survived my English teachers with my esteem for him intact; at least I can't recall anything else that was forced on us that I could stand to look at for years afterward, and even now I'm only beginning to be able to appreciate some of the works tainted by that time (Frost, for instance). One of the interesting things about reading chunks of Cavafy at a time is how he switches from poem to poem between the modern and the ancient world, as if it were all one to him, and the events of 1903 are really no further from mind than 200 B.C., nor the café down the street from Thermypolae or Galba training his men in Spain. For me, this makes it excellent bedtime reading.
Posted by joshua at August 4, 2003 12:04 AM