Possum Pouch has a review of the Jaime Saenz translation by Johnson and Gander. I'm still waiting for my review copy of this book, Kent.

Pierre Poujade, Who Rallied France's Rightists, Dies at 82. This is the figure that is the object of so much of Barthes' scorn in "Mythologies." I had assumed that Poujade--mentor to Jean-Marie Le Pen--had died ages ago.

You heard it here first. Louise Gluck is new poet laureate. I liked it better when we just had a poetry consultant to the Library of Congress.

Back to the office after dinner, presumably to write my sabbatical application and print out my c.v. Can I trick myself into actually doing so?

Michaux is most interested in normal states of consciousness. Abnormal states of consciousness, whether szchizophrenic [spelling?] or drug-induced, serve to bring the NORMAL mechanisms of thought, of which we have a very incomplete idea, into sharper focus. For Michaud, consciousness cannot be immediately available to itself; it cannot be made an easy and unproblematic object of self-consciousness. ("The stomach cannot digest itself") But coming back from a "trip" allows him to discover what it means to think rationally. A surrealist revision of Descartes and Bergson? His insistence on rationality is very Cartesian. (Les grandes épreuves de l'esprit.)

Language Hat on language poetry. He's a fan of Kit Robinson.

Did Blanchot create the canon [a certain canon] of modern European poetry by linking Mallarmé and the symbolist tradition with Holderlin (as read by Heidegger)? Or did he simply represent the educated consensus of the epoch? I am inclined to believe that this canon took shape for the first time in his essays, but I don't know enough about what other critics might have influenced him at an early date. He often quotes someone named "Brice Parain" in his early essays. Maybe Brice Parain is the proto-Blanchot.

I've never liked the term creative writing because it seemed to be a romantic cliché bundled with an "English department" bureaucratic denomination. I remember (somewhat rudely I'm sure) correcting someone in an English department who referred to a mutual acquaintance as "a creative writer." I said, "No, he is a poet." I'm not sure why the phrase bothers me so much--an arbitrary prejudice, no doubt. Why not call it "writing"?

languagehat on ERROR.

The art critic Morris in Mathew's "Cigarettes" writes the phrase "The fish begins to rot at the head." I had seen this phrase recently in Roland Barthes' "Mythologies," where it is attributed to French fascist politician Poujade: a Fascist condemnation of intellectuals. A good proportion of Barthes' book is a frontal attack on Poujadisme. The reader of the English translation, though, has only 28 of the 54 original articles, and misses a good deal of that political context, perhaps without even knowing he or or she is reading an incomplete text. Did Mathew's pull the phrase from Barthes?

My Buddy - A Four Act Passion Play. Thanks to Herb Levy for this link.

A spirited defense of the Grenier "JOE / JOE" poem this morning over at Silliman's Blog. John E. had asked "Did Silliman honestly praise a two word poem yesterday, and both of those words were Joe?"

I've been working on this one-word poem for some time:

CIRCUM

AMBU

LA

TORI

NESS
LESS

For the full effect, you must print each line on a separate page (except for the last two lines). It is thus a six-line, five page poem, but one consisting of only one *word*. If I had written this in 1955 I would be a genius. Writing it in 2003 makes me frankly derivative.

I find I need a linear narrative to concentrate on reading late at night. I am re-reading Harry Mathews' "Cigarettes," for maybe the 4th or 5th time. I am fascinated by the intricate mechanics of the plotting, but in the dark as to what Oulipean device underlies it all. The artifice laid bare is in productive tension with the "realist novel" aspect of the text. Next I will re-read "The Journalist."

***

I have a gift card from Border's from my mom. I just bought Roy Haynes' "Birds of a Feather" yesterday evening. I have less of a handle on Haynes, in a technical sense, than others of his cohort -- Philly Joe, Max, Art Blakey. He is poised half-way between them and the Tony/Elvin revolution.

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