The David Shapiro New and Selected Poems is unbelievably good, though I fear that if I looked through some of the original books I would find poems missing. I'd love to have a Collected Poems too, but I think strategically this is a better moment for a Selected. David at 60 is still a child prodigy. When he grows up he'll be even better.

Even good university libraries might not have January or some of the early books, or even the mid-career books, and not everyone has access to a good university library anyway. This means that much of David's achievement has been virtually invisible for forty years. I think this Selected Poems will go along way to proving what some of us have already known, what Jim Jarmusch says on the blurb, "one of our greatest poets."

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Montejo's Partitura de la cigarra [title poem of the book] is also very good, if you like late modernist quiet mastery like I do.

My copy of David Shapiro's Selected Poems is in Kansas waiting for me. I am on Spring break, and will have tons of extra work waiting for me on my return--since I took a week off before Spring break to go to Santiago. So my full review of the volume will have to wait until the next weekend. I take Ron's and Jordan's word for it that it is an excllent selection.

One post below is my version of radiant pluralism, inspired by David Shapiro's talk of yesterday. It's not how he would say it, exactly, but it's my translation into Mayhewese, which I speak fluently. All opinions are strictly my own: it's my application of what he said, in my own realm.

I could never reproduce his style of talk. It's digressive, but in a meaningful way--it always gets quickly enough to the point behind the point behind the point. It is extremely allusive and citational. Quotes from others will be performed in the appropriate voices and accents. Meyer Schapiro will appear every five to ten minutes. There were a lot of references to Kenneth Koch, John Cage, DeKooning, Darwin, and about 100 other people. The seminar itself was just an hour and a half segment of the 16 hour seminar that I was privileged to see. He also educated (spontaneously) some Kansas city museum goers on Rothko and De Kooning.

GIANTS

Giants are much too beautiful
They live in a house called bigger dimensions
They never suffer from delusions of grandeur
and I have met many giants and this is always true
A giant will always pity you

Still, giants sleep with their eyes on their business
which mainly now is the killing of tourists
the flow is getting smaller since the end of the summer
the fall of leaves keeps many customers away
still, I could never say goodbye
to all my friends among the giants
and they have frightened all my enemies away.

The giants know that I'll be strong some day
for I have planned one insuperable attack
against this habit of closing my eyes when I sleep
because I want to hold on to light as long as I can
and because I want to kiss the small of your back.

--David Shapiro

There are very few poems I wish I had written. This is one of them. There is a childlike quality that is not forced, and a knowingness about this quality that is not too knowing. Children are fascinated by strong powerful things that could destroy or possibly protect them: dinosaurs, eagles, giants, tigers. This is a coming of age poem, the age being adolescence. Compare it to "There I could never be a boy." I don't think this poem suffers by the comparison at all. A line like "They never suffer from delusions of grandeur" is brilliant in its implicatures. Why don't they suffer from such delusions? They are grand creatures, thus thinking themselves grand is not a delusion. The implication, though, is that I, the speaker of the poem, do suffer from such delusions. If I know I suffer from these delusions, though, then I have also gained a certain self-knowledge, a distance from this delusion. "A giant will always pity you" is another wonderful line. I like the mixture of transparently easy lines and ones with more complex implications.

There are poems I admire greatly but have no wish to have written; that is, they don't speak to my own aesthetic aims. Poetry should not be boring.

I am enjoying my new (to me) copy of an old book, January, by D. Shapiro. It's brilliant stuff, written and published before the poet had turned 20. This sonnet for example:

First Love

I imagine you dressed up as a gowned Hasid
A blackbearded girl--a girl I might have married
A stick we take to bed and call John in bed
Later a white-breasted Protestant girl to be buried.
Who are you and what cruelty in what theater
Do you still play cello and strip for friends
Atlantic City fingers warmed by the electric-heater
Sun--a decadent iimage everybody understands.

And you smile by the chorus of a Psalm of David
Your smile twirls in the air just before I cry
"Your team is my team" and you change the bid
On your body to a strangulating price I cannot buy.
Slowly walking in Boston with a music note
Your composition stabs me like a bat.

I started Fanny Howe's "Indivisible" and "Freeing History" this week. I'm starting to see a pattern in all her novels. I also checked out from library books by Susan Schultz and Lisa Jarnot. It is a lot less expensive than purchasing each book I want to read.

More long, wonderful emails from David Shapiro. He should really have a blog; he writes more than Heriberto. First he would have to get his own computer with a spell checker.

I'll work on more ideas for audio posts for next week. Get my poetry cd together.