One of my "lost books" is a complete set of issues of the literary magazine Locus Solus, edited, I believe, by Harry Mathews, and including work by many of the New York poets. I remember reading it in library once, never having owned it. Over twenty years ago I am sure. It must have been the U.C. Davis library.

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I have often rejected the category of "understanding" poetry. The source of so much resistance--"I don't understand it." If this problem can be bypassed... When I think of understanding a poem by Clark Coolidge, I mean that I can justify it to myself aesthetically, not that I can provide a paraphrase. Brooks and Warren's new critical textbook "Understanding Poetry" seems quite incompetent to me, in my hazy memory of it. I remember a rather inept scansion of a Yeats' line, a condescending comment about WCW.

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The students in my translation class are studying poetry without realizing it. By deflecting their attention onto the problematics of translation, they are freed up to read a poem. I invited Stan Lombardo, master translator of Homer, to speak to my class last week. What was most impressive was his approach to Homer as a POET.