I have until Monday to write an undergraduate course description for next semester. I can do any topic I want related to 20th-century Spain. I don't want to do exclusively poetry. I don't want a "theme." The continuity of the avant-garde tradition? The problem is that the students cannot read avant-garde texts very easily in a foreign language. I'm stymied. It can't be a course in Jonathanese, but it can't be something that's going to bore me before I even start. Women writers? That would work. I could do poets, essayists, and writers of short-stories in rapid alternation. My problem is that I'd rather learn than teach. I could do a course on short-forms: short-stories, poems, and essays. Everything but novels and longer plays, allow the "theme" to emerge by chance. This would work but would sound dumb in the course description itself.

***

I laughed out loud at some lines from J. Williams:

I saw a bank of red clay integrate with Jesuits.
I saw Bob Jones Bible University used to make baked flamingoes.

I saw the governer of Alabama join the NAACP.
I saw a black gum tree refuse to leaf and go to jail.

...

I saw "THE INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS" at the Tyger drive in.
I saw William Blake grow like a virus in the sun.

The poem I've extracted these lines for is called "Dealer's Choice and Dealer's Shufflle" and is dedicated to Burroughs. It's brilliant in a flarf (avant-la-lettre) way.