On this blog I've never detailed my career as a karaoke singer, which I hope to resume tonight. My specialties are "Sittin on the dock of the bay," "I heard it on the grapevine," and "I feel good." Other things to look forward to this next few weeks: celebrating my birthday on Sunday (one I share with Borges and Herrick), beginning classes, submitting my sabbatical request, the start of the Poetics Seminar for the year under my watchful gaze, reading Blanchot in French, the one year anniversary of this blog.

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I have a hard time putting together a "book" of my critical work. I lose confidence, not in the individual parts, but in the coherence of the whole. I've finally found a plan. If I can finish the two or three remaining parts of it quickly enough, before I change my mind, I will have a book. The trick is to write fast, before my concept changes again. My original concept was a look at Spanish poetry in its cultural context (almost from the outside). Now my idea is to collect all my articles and essays that do the opposite, looking at poetry from inside out rather than from outside in. I think I could get tenure (again!) just from the articles I haven't published, that are lying in my drawer or languishing on my hard-drive.