Happy new year from the staff of Bemsha Swing.

I really should be at the MLA. Oh well, I'm not.

I'm on vacation, standing in a mac store in San Diego. The blog will be back in a few days.

I gave Julia Sleeping on the Wing as early Christmas present. The back cover says the book is for High School Students and beyond. Am I too pushy a parent? I told her it was also for intelligent fourth graders. It really isn't too large of a step beyond Rose, Where Did You Get That Red.

It is not every day that I receive in the mail a book of poetry designed to fit exactly into the left hand breast pocket of a classic size 44-short blue blazer, a book, by the way, whose kevlar cover would nicely deflect bullets directed at the heart, if only the book were larger (but then it would no longer fit in the pocket!--a good example of "Silliman's paradox" if ever you wanted one.) I wonder, however, whether Nathan Cremshaw's Blue Blazer Poems satisfies the "Alexander Pope" test. That is, whether the fact that it comes with the coffee stains already on it is enough to evoke the ambience of the 18th-century coffee house. These stains were at first rather puzzling; I almost complained to the distributor about them before I realized that they were part of the intertextual game. I do wonder, however, about the gender and class politics of Cremshaw's sartorial gesture: most women readers do not wear blue blazers, in this size at least, and working class men rarely wear blue blazers.

I used to watch Cremshaw writing his poems on Telegraph Avenue, in the Café Med, so the coffee-stained effect is definitely appropriate, although perhaps too "forced." I must say that my impression that he is the American poet who mostly adeptly investigates the purely pragmatic aspects of language, while maintaining the most principled animosity toward trade presses, has not dimmed with time. In fact, it is precisely the combination of these two factors that makes him perhaps the leading poet of our time who hasn't actually made his name known, until recently, to more than exactly three people: myself, Curtis Faville, and the anonymous publisher of "sawtooth press." (note the lower caps)

Change of address: if you want to send me anything during the rest of the academic year, please use my home address in St. Louis, not my University address, where I won't be. If you don't have my home address, and have something good to send me, let me know. I'd rather not publish it on the blog.

If you want to invite me to read, let me know. I have an open schedule for the next few months. NYC would be good, since I'm planning a trip there at some point.

I don't know what got into me in that last post. I'll leave it up anyway.

Dear New York Times Ethicist:

Farmer Brown often comes and takes a few of us more obese pigs for a "ride" from which no pig has ever returned. Some of us think that these pigs go to "hog heaven," a more luxurious pigsty where food is in every more plentiful supply. Others think that the missing pigs are cruelly slaughtered for human food. I myself subscribe to the "cruel slaughter" theory, but publicly advocate the "hog heaven" theory in order to encourage other pigs to gain weight faster and be taken first. Am I doing the right thing?

--Porcine Opportunist

Dear PO:

My human ethics forbid me from telling you which of these theories is "correct." I must be loyal to my species. However, you are probably familiar with "Wilbur's Bet." If you don't fatten yourself up, you will miss going to "hog heaven," if such a heaven exists. If you are wrong, you will be slaughtered and go to "hog heaven" anyway, so you can't lose either way. Publically, then, you should maintain a strictly agnostic stance.

Robert Conquest: "It might be argued that, as with the personnel of the state apparatus proper, there is now such a superfluity of the artistically and literary 'educated' class that their very number is part of the means of coping with, and employing part of, the product. "

Why someone who simply can't write feels qualified to make pronouncements on literature is incomprehensible to me. Here's the next complete paragraph from the same essay:

"There comes to a point, hard to define specifically but more or less obvious, when a regrettable general impression is unarguably convincing--well, not 'unarguably,' yet beyond serious debate. Still, an organism, or a polity, may present faults seen as lethal that are in practice comfortably contained and do not require therapy. Nor would one want there to be any implied use of power from outside institutions or individuals. "

Let's see, there is a general impression that is regrettable yet convincing, arguable yet not arguable, coming at a point in time that is obvious yet not specific. Meanwhile the patient is suffering from a lethal disease that requires no therapy! What is an "implied use of power"? And what is he talking about anyway? The words here appear to refer only to their own discursive gestures. What a platitudinous windbag! What grade would you give this in freshman comp? Maybe I can get a job as a writing coach for aging conservative cultural commentators.

The real "Blake test" would be to see whether the "platform" is integrally necessary to the reception of the poem. Sure we can read Blake without looking at his illuminated manuscripts, but we lose so much. I prefer the "Mayhew test," which is my own top secret formula for deciding the aesthetic value of any poem.

I'm trying to wrap things up today. I can't possibly anticipate what books I'm going to need for the next 8 months. I guess I'll have to make trips back here just for that.

After coming back from my sabbatical and working the requisite period I owe the university, I need to make a decision. I cannot commute to St. Louis from here the rest of my life. I need to quit this job for my health and sanity and do something else. I no longer care as much whether I am the top specialist in modern Spanish poetry in the country, about gaining or maintaining that position. I enjoy working with graduate students, and undergraduates as well. I have great colleagues. The money is not very good, in relation to years of experience and education; I am victim of typical Associate Professor salary compression. On the other hand I couldn't get a job paying the same in another field right off the bat. Adjuncting in St. Louis area would mean taking a huge cut in pay and working conditions. The reduction in expenses would only partially offset that cut. Any suggestions?

The poetics seminar yesterday: we had a nice discussion of my paper on Wittgenstein. David Perry was there, along with writer Deb Olin Unferth, new to the faculty here at Kansas, in the English Department. She said she had come here with her boyfriend, who turns out to be none other than famed Fresh Air jazz critic Kevin Whitehead!!! Unfortunately I am leaving for sabbatical on Thursday of this week, so I won't be able to take advantage of Lawrence's increased hipness quotient until I get back next August.

I was in Border's and saw a new edition of Bly's translations--a $30 hardbarck with a blurb from Merwin on the back. Also, large editions of critical prose and poetry by Richard Howard.