I've finished my Gamoneda article. Now I'd like to write something on Lola Velasco's "El movimiento de las flores." The text offers no critical handle or hook, no pretext for critical writing. I have nothing to say about it. 70 poems of 10 lines each, with no individual titles. An extended metaphor: the movement of the flowers = the poet's consciousness of time. A nice epigraph from Michaux, I'll translate it like this:

"I am one of those people who love movement, the movement that breaks inertia, that messes up lines, that undoes lineations, frees me from constructions. Movement, as disobedience, as remodelling."

Maybe that is my critical hook? The pure "avant-garde" consciousness wanting to break free of "alineaciones"?

But the contemporary avant-garde is obsessed by affiliation and lineage, no less so than Harold F****** Bloom. It's not a question of whether you will be traditional or not, but of which tradition you erect as the correct one.

Should be we have sacred texts? Should Frank O'H be a "sacred" writer? It would seem to go against his own spirit, in a way. He wouldn't have wanted to be defined as such, surely. He might be talismanic for some, like Reverdy was for him ("My heart is in my pocket"). Or Mayakovsky. Lineages should be lightly worn, like Lola says:

We let ourselves be worn
wisely,
like the tunics
of the ancient Greek philosophers.

The violent reactions against the "wrong" lineages. Antin against Bloom and Lowell. Well, obviously, Bloom writes someone like Antin out of the tradition completely, so it's not surprise he would react that way. I don't like that self-contratulatory "I am avant-garde" tone in some of Antin's writing. It can come off as defenseive.

This post is dedicated to Henry Gould.