"And another debt I owed to Jonathan, then I abandoned these
Servitudes and they marked off their contempt for translation.
I loved you, René, and each basket is a song."

Having been mentioned thus in these lines of a poem by David Shapiro that he sent me privately, I am now officially incorporated into the New York School of Poetry. I have a folder in my e-mail progam with 25 messages from David that I don't want to discard, because they are filled with this sort of treasure.

The Jewish relationship to jazz has been remarked to me in recent (and not so recent emails) from Herb Levy and David Shapiro. It is a complex one. Herb had some good suggestions for my pseudo-Blanchotian essay on Buddy Rich.

Now that the semester has started and students will be required to read this blog for their courses . . . (but not MY students, who will be reading Yépez instead).