More MLA notes:

I had some high quality conversation at the MLA with Kasey and Michael (Magee). We had some coffee after the Marjorie Perloff session on metonymy was cancelled. Others I met in San Diego and might not have mentioned yet were David Larsen, Patrick Durgin, Walter Lew, and Juliana Spahr. Nick Lolordo is an intense, brilliant guy; we talked after the mega-reading and again after the Haryette Mullen reading/q and a the night after. I really enjoyed the Mullen event, by the way. She combines low-brow and high-brow sensibilities in a refreshing way that by-passes the middle.

I really liked the poem Joshua Clover read at the mega-reading at the art museum. Members of the audience, including David Larsen and Brent Cunningham, read contrapuntal voices in a totally unexpected way. Antin and Rothenberg did not impress me much in this setting. I maybe expected a more "performative" dimension to their reading.

Thankfully noone from the bloggers came to my own session. I don't think it went well at all, since the point I was trying to get across was interpreted in more simplistic terms. Not that I was saying anything all that complex! I realize my understanding of Spanish poetry is way "out there," compared to that of anyone/everyone else. I was critiquing certain aspects of the high/late modernist movement in contemporary Spain. I contextualized it by saying that I identified with the fundamental tenets of the movement. What some people came away with was this contextualization, not the imbedded critique.