I was reading TLS (don't ask me why) and saw a review of a book on postmodernism by Jonathan Clark. As I was reading the review, I began to feel uneasy. Apparently the book is not really about postmodernism, and Clark is a Tory historian who wishes the Puritan revolution, the American revolution, and all subsequent revolutions had never occured. My uneasiness was due to the fact that there is a "Jonathan Clark" who has an office a few doors down from mine. Sure enough, I came to a sentence about how this guy was "ironically," a distinguished professor of history at the University of Kansas. Ironically because his ideal civilization is pre-revolutionary England, and the Midwestern U.S. is a place devoid of historical interest for him. Maybe that's why I've only laid eyes on him twice this semester.

Mallarmé and Roussel. Reading Melville's translation of "La vue" at the same time as Mallarmé's essays, it struck me how early Roussel, writing in 1903, was the "anti-symbolist": his meter is classical and impeccable--no free verse or prose poem for him--and his discourse is absolutely denotative. No suggestion or suggestiveness, no avoidance of direct statement. And yet ... there is a mysteriousness behind all this flat surface--the mystery of why someone would want to write like this.

Driving to work today, I realized I had written "Ariosto Furioso" instead of "Orlando Furioso" one of my lists. It is corrected now. Will they revoke my Ph.D. in Comparative Literature? Ariosto is the name of the author. It looked wrong to me when I typed it, but I couldn't quite figure out why.

Heriberto's desert lists. The Spicer is a good choice. I'm sure it will show up on my NEXT desert island list.

Desert Island Picks. All Spanish

Trilce.
Don de la ebriedad.
Soledades.
Residencia en la tierra.
Muerte de Narciso.
Desdén.
La cometa o las manos sobre el papel.
Material memoria
Libro del frio
Eglogas (Garcilaso)

Received today. Barbara Guest. Durer in the Window, Reflexions on Art. Roof, 2003.

Despite the somewhat intrusive, rather busy design by Richard Tuttle, a beautiful book. Guest is at her best when she is immersed in the art work, collaborating with it, not writing "about" it. Some early clippings from Art News. Some poems from different periods, giving a wonderful feeling of simultaneity between the 1950s and the present. Texts published elsewhere acquire a new context. An essay on Tuttle uses almost identical language as in a poem from Miniatures entitled "Noisetone." That poem can then be read as "about" Tuttle.

For Gary--some comics in collaboration with Joe Brainard.

Patrick Durgin writes: Louise Gluck is worse than Billy Collins. At least with Collins you had an auspicious imbecility one could, in rare but welcomed moments, laugh at. With Gluck, you have pure despairing introversion AND auspicious imbecility. The shift is exemplary of the "American" psyche as it turns from its global terrorism to its universalized depression. We must believe "this will hurt me as much as it hurts you" ...

Since my blog is only a week younger than Siliman's, it is also one of the longer standing poetry/poetics blogs. I was inspired by Ron to start mine. Others in that same initial group were Jordan and Gary, Heriberto's first blog, etc... A few predate this period. When I go back to my archives they say "Bemsha Swing." A falsification of history. It was "Jonathan Mayhew's Blog" in that period. I am disturbed by this. On Friday, Sept. 4, this blog will turn one year old.

***

Julia's starting 3rd grade today.

2nd Desert Island List. No "selecteds" or "collecteds" allowed. Only individual "works" of poetry.

1. Spring in the World of Poor Mutts.
2. Orlando furioso. (I've never read it, and I could learn Italian)
3. Breathturn. (In Pierre Joris translation; my German is weak)
4. The Odyssey + Greek dictionary and grammar. I once studied Ancient Greek intensively for 10 weeks, and promptly forgot every bit of it.
5. Thank You and Other Poems. Or The Duplications.
6. Fair Realism.
7. Libro de los venenos (Gamoneda)
8. Harmonium. (I know I'm plagiarizing others' lists here...)
9. Nouvelles Impressions d'Afrique
10. Something really dull that I can turn to in times of true despair. Dryden's translation of the Aeneid?

"We have been experimenting with verse."

When I read this sentence yesterday in a translation of Mallarmé's essays, the original French, from when I read the essay 20 years ago, popped into my head:

"On a touché le vers."

Mallarmé is bringing news (from France to England). The progressive mode ("We have been experimenting...") is all wrong. We need the sense of an EVENT. The verb "experimenting" is wrong in this context as well. And the personal pronoun "We" for the impersonal "on."

Sick in bed with a cold when you are supposed to be road tripping to new Mexico books.

lime tree: The Problem with Desert Islands

I'm updating my links. I don't have everyone yet, but I'm working on it.

Early Louise Gluck--her first book at least--can be quite good, with a colloquial sense of language and zany sense of humor. Since then, her poetry is written in an increasingly stiff, somewhat unreal "poetic diction." Why do poets worsen?

***

Desert islands picks:

1. J. Schuyler: Selected Poems. A beautiful selection. I like almost everything in it.

José Lezama Lima: Obras completas. The great Cuban poet is deliberately "insular," yet expansive in his references. You would need at least one inexhaustible book like this on a desert isle.

3. Coolidge: Solution Passage. A thick, dense book I have been exploring for more than ten years and haven't exhausted yet.

4. Barbara Guest. Selected Poems. A beautiful book in the physical sense; would I want to expose it to the elements on my desert isle?

5. Perec. La vie: mode d'emploi. I'd have to bring the French original, since I would have lots of time to practice my French! The encyclopedic quality of the book makes it ideal for castaways.

6. Beckett. Ill seen ill said. Short, but inexhaustible in its own way. This one I have to bring in English.

7. Góngora. Polifemo. I've always wanted to read this straight through. With enough time on my hands, I could manage it.

8. Pound. Translations. This is really two books in one. A window on "world poetry" through Pound's eyes, and a window on Pound through the eyes of the world.

9. Raymond Roussel. La vue. La source. etc... These "blank" works have always fascinated me more than his texts written according to the "procédé." to me, Roussel is a greater poet than Valéry. Must be read in the original. Can I smuggle in a LaRousse?

10. For the last selection I'd have to choose something I really hated, simply to have something always "in reserve" once I had exhausted 1-9. Nothing comes to mind at the moment, though.


No O'Hara, Ashbery, Koch, WCW? Good question. I have already absorbed these poets enough that I don't *need* to read them ever again. The same goes for Claudio Rodr?guez, Lorca. I could reconstruct many poems from memory so I wouldn't need the physical books.