Reading Whitman, I hear a lot of Koch there. In other words, I am reading Whitman back through the lens provided by KK's "Geography." And sometimes I hear Vicente Aleixandre of "Historia del corazón" in Whitman too.

I don't hear a lot of Ginsberg, on the other hand. Whitman is all about the balancing of phrases, the echoing patterns of sound and syntax. Ginsberg is after different effects.

Not all long lines are sloppy; not all short lines are taut. Not all long lines are inspired by Whitman.

Le temps retrouvé

All the time I have spent over the course of many years reading and thinking about Kenneth Koch, Jack Spicer, and Frank O'Hara, Jerome Rothenberg and Robert Creeley, is now miraculously converted into work. While I was doing all this it was avoiding work, since I am not an English professor; but now, since all these authors enter into my Lorca project, I have have redeemed this time. I am less lazy than I was, since all the time I wasted is now redefined retrospectively as productive time.

It is a strange concept, being paid to do research, because really, what is research and what is not? Where is the line separating work from play. Is the blog research? It is certainly part of my intellectual life, in which I have always had problems separating vocation from avocation.

Jordan found a letter I had written to Kenneth Koch in 1983, while going through some papers in order to edit the Director's Cut DVD of The Pleasures of Peace (I made that last part up.) I had forgotten completely about the fact that I had written him a letter. I'm surprised he kept it. My wife reminded me that I had sent him a poem based on Some South American Poets. I had absolutely no recollection of this, although a line Jordan quoted me from my letter rang a bell, as something I would have said.