At just around the same time I attended the Brodsky reading I scored one of my greatest undergraduate triumphs, in a class on a subject a bit hard to explain today, but which seemed to make perfect sense in that era: the central text was Huezinga's Homo Ludens, but the syllabus extended all over the map. Anyway--evening class, brooding young Associate Professor stalking catlike back and forth, no doubt attempting to impress that class of undergraduates some still called "coeds": "Fearful symmetry," he hissed. "Fearful symmetry? Somebody tell me what Blake meant, what's so fearful about symmetry?" "Waal," I drawled insolently, bluffing, since the young prof had finished up by pointing at me in our small class, "I personally wouldn't care to walk through a symmetry at midnight." "Exactly! he roared. "Exactly!" I was damned pleased with myself and savor the memory, as you see, three decades later.

cordially.