ABSTRACT
It is a Friday afternoon in mid-November when the sky glows like gold to airy thinness beat. Ignoring my protests that 1 must work, my friend Ruth surprises me in the Purdue University library where I sit mechanically taking notes for my proposed dissertation on Hopkins, Van Gogh, and the Victorian sacramental representation of nature, and ushers me outside to her car where on the back seat two bottles of Asti Spumante clink against each other in a small ice chest and a wicker hamper holds roast chicken, asparagus, and a deluxe bag of Doritos nacho cheese-flavored corn chips. After hours of breathing the dry mustiness of the library's stacks, 1 feel an incredible expansiveness to be driving out of the city into the Indiana countryside. The world is suddenly golden, every leaf and dust mote vibrating in Emily Dickinson's "certain slant of light."
