Quote of the Day (Vladimir Nabokov, on Rain)

“How mobile is the bed on these

nights of gesticulating trees

when the rain clatters fast,

the tin-toy rain with dapper hoof

trotting upon an endless roof,

traveling into the past.”— Russian-born American novelist-memoirist-poet Vladimir Nabokov (1899-1977), “Rain,” in The Portable Nabokov, edited by Page Stegner (1971)

This has been an unusually rainy season. I can’t begin to tell you the number of times, in the wee hours of the morning, I’ve awakened to hear rain on the roof.

Nabokov—much better known, of course, for his scandalous novel Lolita—demonstrates here his facility with a different genre: poetry. I wonder how his work might have turned out if he had pursued poetry as avidly as the novel—or, for that matter, collecting and classifying butterflies?

(I took the attached photo of this rain-slicked street while on vacation nearly three months ago at the Chautauqua Institution in upstate New York.)