Rallentando

There must be other things to do. It might not be this quite as often as it has been.

Having not written a poem since The Perfect Book, somehow lost track of what by now constitutes the current state of the art form and called a halt to having the nerve to nominate what I think are the best poems of the year, it only remains to add in that I've just about used up all my available vocabulary for the consideration of music, on record or in concert, and I don't need to bother the internet with what I think.
So, it isn't over here but there is likely to be less of it.

Adding John Batchelor's biography of Tennyson to the poetry biography shelf has now caused that accommodation to overflow and the various minor re-organisations of books are no sooner achieved than another issue comes up. But it was a very good book. It confirmed Tennyson as fitting the pattern that many artists comply with, doing his best work before being famous, being famous because of it and then maintaining celebrity status with lesser efforts and/or indulging himself, not least as the archetypal 'poet', long-haired, exotic in hat and cloak, other-worldly and apparently incapable of doing anything else but write poetry. It's his sort that got poetry a bad name.
Rosa Baring, his big early infatuation, was no fool, and
confessed that all poetry in those days seemed to her mere 'jangledom'

Not much has changed beyond the possibility of adding in smartarse, chic, self-regarding and often virtue signalling. Which is not to say that, at its best, it can still sometimes claim to be the second-highest art form.
It was a pity there wasn't more about Alfred's younger brother, Septimus, who was reported to have once introduced himself as,
Septimus, the most morbid of the Tennysons.

Tennyson himself took a dim view of literary biography. Well, don't get rich and famous, then, turning down baronetcies before making it known you'd like one after all.  
Good Grief. They only demurred about giving him the peerage because they didn't think he could afford the role (but he could) and then he only voted in the Lords twice.
So, that having been immense fun, it's Mozart's letters now, yet another invasion of privacy but so far so irresistible.

Of course, having only ever been a dilettante, whether at football, cricket, cycling or any sort of writing, there can be a sort of inevitability and ungracious resignation about not doing things any more. It really doesn't matter at all but if something suggests itself as needing to be done, I'll do it. It isn't over til it's over.