February 24, 1985

The Senate voted today to confirm Edwin Meese 3d as Attorney General, more than a year after he was first nominated by President Reagan. The 63 to 31 vote came after five days of filibustering by Farm Belt senators who had delayed action on Mr. Meese's nomination in an attempt to extract pledges from the Administration of emergency credit relief for the nation's farmers. All those voting against Mr. Meese's confirmation were Democrats. A smiling Mr. Meese, flanked by his wife, Ursula, and their daughter, Dana, met with reporters on the White House lawn immediately after the confirmation vote. ''I'm not bitter at all,'' he said. ''I think a number of people had questions. We answered those questions. Right now I'm just glad it's over.''

A battle- weary Senate finally resolved one acrimonious dispute today over farm credit measures, but the lawmakers set the stage for another skirmish over the same issue next week. The agreement reached today ended a week-long filibuster against the confirmation of Edwin Meese 3d, who was then approved as Attorney General by a vote of 63 to 31. The farm credit compromise, approved by the Senate leadership, provides that members from both parties can offer proposals for additional aid to hard-pressed farmers who are seeking financing to start spring planting. The proposals, four from each party, would be offered as amendments to an African famine relief bill that is scheduled for floor action on Monday. Reagan Talk on Farm Issue President Reagan, who previously criticized the linking of the credit proposals to the Meese vote, said today in his weekly radio broadcast that only a minority of farmers were in severe financial distress and that the taxpayers must not be asked to save every farmer. (Page 26.)

SOME years ago the poet David Antin stopped writing poems and began talking. He would go into a public space, turn on his tape recorder and to all appearances talk off the top of his head. Mr. Antin has an interesting and capacious mind, and his talking was pretty lively. These ''talk pieces,'' as he calls them, belong somewhere among a standup comedian's rap, a storyteller's fable and a formal lecture. Mr. Antin's manner is relaxed and the progress of his talk seemingly random. I say ''seemingly'' because his casual manner belies a more serious intent. That intent has something to do with the nature of audience expectations - the way we expect a poet to read his poems, a lecturer to follow a reasoned argument, a performance artist to ''do'' something. Mr. Antin defeats all these expectations and provides something else, and as anyone who has witnessed one of his talks can testify, the experience can be stimulating in all sorts of ways that poetry readings, lectures and performances seldom are.

IN the last seven years, Edith and Henry W. Engel of Larchmont have seen their two grandchildren twice. In 1981, they caught a brief glimpse of them in a courtroom. Another time, the couple watched unobserved from a parked car as the children walked home from school. The Engels lost contact with their grandchildren in 1978, shortly after their daughter and the children's father were divorced. The father, who has custody, refuses to allow their visits.

In the final minutes, the ball always seems to wind up in Otis Birdsong's hands, even when he would prefer not to have it. Birdsong said he was battling a case of the flu tonight, that his head had been stuffy for three days and that he really wanted to crawl between the bedsheets and fall asleep. Instead, he made two key jump shots in the final 2 minutes as the Nets slipped past the Detroit Pistons, 111- 103, before a crowd of 20,276 at the Silverdome. ''For three days,'' Birdsong said afterward, ''I've felt like I was in a fog. Right now, I just want to go to bed.''