Both my books are going into production at the same time. Outside readers should be getting my material soon for my promotion. At some point around the beginning of 2006 I decided I wasn't going to stand in the way of myself any more. It wasn't a question of working harder but of working smarter and assuming the responsibility of being who I really am. Those two books together give me a clam to some expertise in three separate fields: Lorca, Spanish poetry of the last two decades of the 20th century, and American poetry of the post-war era (the New American Poetry and all that). That's not even counting my first two books.

By standing in my own way I mean procrastination, mostly. That's the easiest form of self-sabotage. You don't even have to do anything, just stand by. The Twilight of the Avant-Garde book took a while to come together, and sat in the melancholy drawer for quite some time. The Lorca came together quite quickly and had no melancholy drawer time at all. There's a lesson here: even the same person can produce work in different patterns. There's no one way to write a book, but the quick and easy way is preferable.