Email me at jmayhew at ku dot edu
"The very existence of poetry should make us laugh. What is it all about? What is it for?"
--Kenneth Koch
“El subtítulo ‘Modelo para armar’ podría llevar a creer que las
diferentes partes del relato, separadas por blancos, se proponen como piezas permutables.”
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13 feb 2009
About 99.999% of my daily anger has to do with the internet, where someone always seems to be mistaken in some profoundly malicious and disingenuous way.
Some do, some don't. Edwin Honig, back in the 60s, hosted him at his big rambling house, in Providence, on the shore, near the Yacht Club (where I once barged in, when he - Honig - was in Boston, & insisted his wife let me shuffle through his papers, looking for the poems I had written about A. Hamilton & A. Burr, which I needed very badly to destroy. I thought they were evil). But Honig had something against Borges. Probably the conservative gaucho element (Honig was dogged by the FBI for decades, for leftist Spanish-recolutionary sympathies).
Anyway, maybe the internet is some kind of Boregsian mirror for your anger, Jonathan. A Mayhew-Gouldian thing? Your mother? (Stephen Dedalus' mother's name was May Goulding.)
I am a devoted Borgesian. Within context Latin American politics, there is resistance to him because of political reasons, but that has softened to some degree. Bolaño loved Borges too, though paroding himn mercillessly in "El gaucho insufrible."
The whole group of American poets who fell in love with Lorca and Neruda didn't really get into Borges in the same way. Honig is one who anticipates and paves the way for that later generation of Bly, Rothenberg, Spicer... The first book on Lorca in English was by Honig. I have no insights into why he wouldn't have liked Borges, except for the obvious political ones.
Norman Mailer: I think Borges and Márquez are the two most important writers in the world today.
Interviewer: Why Borges? In political terms he is a reactionary, is he not?
Mailer: Well, he is a conservative, but . . . I detest having to think of a writer by his politics first. It's like thinking of people by way of their anus.
(From Jeffrey Van Davis' documentary Norman Mailer: The Sanction to Write. The transcript is excerpted in Pieces & Pontifications, p. 157)
You must be a near-completely un-angerable driver, then.
ResponderEliminarDo you like Borges?
ResponderEliminarSome do, some don't. Edwin Honig, back in the 60s, hosted him at his big rambling house, in Providence, on the shore, near the Yacht Club (where I once barged in, when he - Honig - was in Boston, & insisted his wife let me shuffle through his papers, looking for the poems I had written about A. Hamilton & A. Burr, which I needed very badly to destroy. I thought they were evil). But Honig had something against Borges. Probably the conservative gaucho element (Honig was dogged by the FBI for decades, for leftist Spanish-recolutionary sympathies).
Anyway, maybe the internet is some kind of Boregsian mirror for your anger, Jonathan. A Mayhew-Gouldian thing? Your mother? (Stephen Dedalus' mother's name was May Goulding.)
I am a devoted Borgesian. Within context Latin American politics, there is resistance to him because of political reasons, but that has softened to some degree. Bolaño loved Borges too, though paroding himn mercillessly in "El gaucho insufrible."
ResponderEliminarThe whole group of American poets who fell in love with Lorca and Neruda didn't really get into Borges in the same way. Honig is one who anticipates and paves the way for that later generation of Bly, Rothenberg, Spicer... The first book on Lorca in English was by Honig. I have no insights into why he wouldn't have liked Borges, except for the obvious political ones.
I may have mentioned this before:
ResponderEliminarNorman Mailer: I think Borges and Márquez are the two most important writers in the world today.
Interviewer: Why Borges? In political terms he is a reactionary, is he not?
Mailer: Well, he is a conservative, but . . . I detest having to think of a writer by his politics first. It's like thinking of people by way of their anus.
(From Jeffrey Van Davis' documentary Norman Mailer: The Sanction to Write. The transcript is excerpted in
Pieces & Pontifications, p. 157)