Translating Góngora and Quevedo with David Shapiro. That would be a wonderful experience.

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I'm afraid to read Simic on Kenneth Koch in the NYRB. It pisses me off a bit that the NYRB had to wait until he was dead to dignify him with a review. When has the NYRB cared about contemporary poetry? Ashbery is the only poet that they have ever published whom I also respect. I used to read the NYRB when I was young more than twenty years ago. The funny thing is they still have the same people writing for it now.

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Simic, Tate, Strand, Merwin. The soft underbelly of American "surrealism." I hate it that such poets are associated with Spanish or Latin American poetry. I'm not even mentioning Bly because he is far inferior to these four.

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I had Spicer reading "Billy the Kid" on my computer, mixed in with my music playing in random order. Whenever he came to the line about the "Jew amethyst salesman" I winced in pain. It's one thing to see it on the page, but to hear the voice of the poet speaking the line is disturbing on a different level. Why should I be surprised? Maybe because this is not seen as a "problem" the way Pound's antisemitism is.

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In Spain the word for ghostwriter is "negro." As in, "All the plagiarism in my book is the fault of 'mi negro.'" Needless to say, the ghostwriters in question are never actually "negros." The Nobel prize winner Camilo José Cela stole plots from other writers or hired ghostwriters, since he was a fine stylist who didn't have much of a talent for narrative.