To assume that narcissississism of having a work of one's own. Two books of poetry, one in Spanish and the other in English, recently put together out of several years of writing. It feels quite different from having one's work in the academic sense ("my work"). Validation for a scholarly career came rather easily to me, and didn't feel particularly narcissist. What a different emotion it is to send poems to a publisher. The only tone I could adopt was apologetic!

I must read Pasternak. What a huge gap in my education. At least I've read Soseki.

Julia's glasses are missing again. Of course, I can't look for them because I am not at home.

***

Update: glasses are found, underneath the couch.

This war is radicalizing me beyond where I thought I would go. I've never been one to preach politics: my politics are those of my professional class: by default and upbringing, academic liberal. Surely torture-gate is worse than watergate. (Not to say Nixon didn't have torture on his record too.) Mercenary. What a chilling word, even if called independent contractor.

Just found this for $6 at the Dusty Bookshelf here in Lawrence, KS.

I got this book Ordinary Language Criticism. Inspired by Cavell and Wittgenstein. Part of the claim of the book is that it is written in something called "ordinary language," though I noticed a lot of English-Deparment-speak in some of the contributions. There's not enough here to start a new critical movement. Sure, I enjoy jargon-free prose, but I also enjoy theoretical inventiveness and jargon-heavy prose. I haven't read the articles by Bruns and Altieri yet.

I don't enjoy Cavell's writing very much, and an article about him in this volume didn't help. Too much of the "Aren't Emerson and Thoreau great" tone without anything specific about what we can learn from them. We should just worship at their altar, apparently.

The Burning Mystery of Anna in 1951 is a great title, for example. Who could forget that? The Age of Huts. Epistemology of the Closet. The Harbormaster of Hong Kong. Are there advantages to more forgettable titles?

Another genre of titles: those that are deliberately misleading. Like The Art and Craft of Playwriting, if it were the title of a book of poems.

As I look through the list of books I read during my recent reading frenzy, I notice some titles that are eminently forgettable. Not that the books themselves are forgettable, but the titles do not stick. One word titles like Sun or Noon, for example.

NO ROOM ON MY SHELVES
NO ROOM ON MY SHELVES
NO ROOM ON MY SHELVES
NO ROOM ON MY SHELVES
NO ROOM ON MY SHELVES
NO ROOM ON MY SHELVES.

I had a nice conversation yesterday afternoon with David Shapiro about my book Minor Poets of the New York School. We debated whether I should keep the title or not.

***

Did some work recently for Northwestern UP. Today I got my books that I ordered in lieu of money. Mostly from their Modernisn & Avant-Garde Series. McCaffery, Lazer, Bok, Waldrop, Andrews.

Congratulations to Corey on his second book prize. This one from Spineless Press.

Elizabeth Bishop: from coterie to canon by Dana Gioia

"The mid-century generation includes at least a dozen figures besides Bishop for whom one might claim major status—Theodore Roethke, Robert Lowell, Robert Hayden, Weldon Kees, Randall Jarrell, Gwendolyn Brooks, John Berryman, William Stafford, Robert Duncan, Charles Olson, Kenneth Rexroth, and Thomas McGrath. To this list others might add Karl Shapiro, Delmore Schwartz, Muriel Rukeyser, John Ciardi, Josephine Miles, William Jay Smith, May Swenson, and William Everson. Among such worthy company, how did Bishop come to her current preeminence?"

I hate the idea of "major" poets. It almost always sounds ridiculous. Writers whom noone in her right mind would call major (McGrath), or writers with vastly inflated reputations (Roethke) or wonderful poets who are only done a disservice by the "major" label (Kees). Who are those "others" who would add William Jay Smith to the list of major poets? Doesn't a list like this damage the truly talented poets, like Robert Hayden, included here?

Overlap: Drew Gardner's Blog: "My most cynical read on this is the possibility that this kind of statement is intentionally picking out some Iowa workshop / Jorie Graham imitators (work which actually IS confessional poetry with spray-on coating of Language Poetry) and ingenuously saying _look the kids aren't any good, we're the real deal_ as a generational PR move, ignoring the interesting younger writers. Lazer may actually not know about the existence of much writing by poets 20-40. "

I love that "spray-on coating" crack. That is hilarious.

Here's a new Kansas poetry blog: particle spin.