Today: make reservations for Spain; write some notes for my Concha García chapter. Send out some queries to publishers.

Tomorrow: finish revisions on the Valente/Celan/Heidegger article for Diacritics.

Language Log: The analysis of the creature: " The sonnet is obscured by the symbolic package which is formulated not by the sonnet itself but by the media through which the sonnet is transmitted, the media which the educators believe for some reason to be transparent. The new textbook, the type, the smell of the page, the classroom, the aluminum windows and the winter sky, the personality of Miss Hawkins--these media which are supposed to transmit the sonnet may only succeed in transmitting themselves. It is only the hardiest and cleverest of students who can salvage the sonnet from this many-tissued package. It is only the rarest student who knows that the sonnet must be salvaged from the package. "

--Walker Percy, via a post by Mark Liberman at Language Log.

Julia was six-for-six from the plate yesterday, socring 5 runs, after going hitless in all the previous games. I asked her how she did it, and she said the pitching machine always pitched it to the same spot. Once she figured out where that spot was, it was easy. We have another game an hour from now.

My heart goes out to Kasey on the loss of his brother under difficult circumstances, detailed in his most recent post. I'm not going to email him right away about this because I'm sure he has better things to do right now than sort through a hundred messages on his email. So sorry, Kasey! My deepest condolences.

Philip "The Jury's Still Out On" Metres suggested that this would be a good title for a poem. I hope he writes one too, although he has the disadvantage of not being named "Jonathan Mayhew." ("Metres" is a great name for a poet, though.)

A DISCOURSE CONCERNING UNLIMITED SUBMISSION AND NON-RESISTANCE TO THE HIGHER POWERS


The people at the Chinese restaurant touch my back and shoulders after seating me; I must eat there a lot.

I am myself because my little dog knows me; but I do not have a little dog.

I am not the Jonathan Mayhew who wrote "A Discourse Concerning Unlimited Submission and Non-Resistance to the Higher Powers."

Yet this statement is no longer true; now I have in fact written "A Discourse Concerning Unlimited Submission and Non-Resistance to the Higher Powers"; I am part-way through it at least!

Twenty years from now, I can write, "I remember when I wrote 'A Discourse Concerning Unlimited Submission and Non-Resistance to the Higher Powers";

my wife was in Madrid for the marriage of Prince Philip and Letizia."

Who was it that distinguished between "the author of Waverly" and "Sir Walter Scott"? Bertrand Russell, maybe?

Can we now tell the difference between "Jonathan Mayhew" and "the author of 'A Discourse Concerning Unlimited Submission and Non-Resistance to the Higher Powers'"?

Can the proposition "Jonathan Mayhew did not write 'A Discourse Concerning Unlimited Submission and Non-Resistance to the Higher Powers' be proven true or false?

What does it all mean anyway?

For some reason amazon cannot find me a copy of Kenneth Koch's book of comics. They cancelled my order! I'll have to try another source.

I found a copy of Beckett's Poems in French and English and a book by Lisa Jarnot in Subterranean books. I tried to go to Wash U library, but could not park: graduation day. I'll have to wait until Monday.

I'm home with Julia this week. Akiko is in Spain. I'm hitting the gym pretty hard. Which is surprising since I hate to sweat. Hitting the drums too. Grading the graduate papers still as they trickle in.

I cleared out my "sent message" file in my email account. I must have sent 150 to Jordan Davis in the past 5 months. Mostly involving the organization of his visit to Kansas. Signifiant, but nowhere near as many to David Shapiro, Kent Johnson, and Ron Silliman.

Elvin no exige exégetas



Las extrañas bestias de Blake andan desamparadas

hasta que Harold les ofrece cobijo

¿en pastoral albergue mal cubierto?



¿Quién si no?

***

A poet should never explicate own work, unless the explication is better than the poem. Which should be easy with this poem.

"Elvin no exige exégetas" [Elvin needs no exegetes; no exigent exegetes for Elvin! ]: A literary critic used to exegesis of difficult texts has no tools to deal with Elvin Jones' drumming. Note the snazzy alliteration.

"Las extrañas bestias de Blake andan desamparadas / hasta que Harold les ofrece cobijo" [Blake's strange beasts wander around unsheltered / unitl Harold offers them sanctuary]: William Blake's poetry does seem to require exegesis, someone like Harold Bloom to explain it. However, the tone here is ironic. The speaker prefers Elvin to Blake, in the Blake requires you to buy into a system. More snazzy alliteration.

"'en pastoral albergue mal cubierto'" [in a badly covered rustic retreat]. This line is taken from a famous Góngora sonnet. The shelter offered Blake's beasts will be inadequate.

"¿Quién si no?" [If not {him} then who?]. The speaker continues to ironize at Harold Bloom's expense!

Farewell to Elvin Jones. I rarely have emotional reaction to the death of a celebrity. However, this news hits home with me.

Writing involves, first of all, listening to an internal "speech." Not everyone's internal speech is equally interesting. Most people, in fact, are like myself: the flow of consciousness is mostly trivial. The trick is to be able to recognize and extend significant fragments, make them into something more. What makes this tricky is that significant fragments might seem merely trivial. In a way, it's not that different from writing flarf poems off google searches. Most of what turns up is seemingly without any poetic value. The poetic talent comes from recognizing it, not from producing it. What I'm calling the internal speech is itself structured, influenced, by a multitude of discourses. This is what is called "influence," in fact. I am especially susceptible to these voices. (Like Frank O'Hara's line, "So many voices in my head.") Form can be considered a sort of validation / legitimization of this internal speech. Look how Berrigan used the sonnet form to organize / legimitate the fragments. Or it can actually structure the internal speech itself, in the sense that one thinks "in" the sonnet form rather than imposing it on a previously inchoate stream. Revision is another step similar to the first: it involves listening to one's own work, selecting, eliminating, judging, negotiating with form and structure.

Maybe that's why most of my poems are so short. Going on too long seems willful to me. I am "writing" rather than "listening."

It seems inappropriate to use the word "craft" for this process. Does carving a bowl out of wood involve the same process of "listening"? Maybe it does! But in this case, the important thing is not the "craft" aspect of the process at all. In other words, we would redefine the word "craft " itself, or speak of the poetics of carving the bowl.

Poetics Seminar Schedule. Fall 2004.

Wednesday, September 15, 3:30 p.m. Denise Low, Department of English, Haskell Indian Nations University: "The Persistence of American Indian/Alaskan Native Poetics in Great Plains Writing" [Of interest to Indigenous Seminar]

Monday, October 4, 1:30 p.m. Ron Silliman, author of The Alphabet and editor of In the American Tree "Robert Duncan's Blog & My Own"

[I will also arrange poetry reading for Ron for the evening of October 4]

Wednesday, November 17, 3:30 p.m. Leslie Bayers, Spanish and Portuguese: "Inscribing Texture: Visual Performance in the Poetry of Manuel Pantigoso and Marcial Molina Richter." [Also of interest to Indigenous Seminar and Andean Seminar]

Monday, December 13, 2004, 3:30 p.m. Jonathan Mayhew, Spanish and Portuguese: "Wittgenstein and Contemporary Poetics: A Productive Misunderstanding?" [joint session with Philosophy & Literature Seminar]

All sessions will be held in the Hall Center Conference Room (University of Kansas). For more information contact Jonathan Mayhew.

He would declare and could himself believe
That the birds there in all the garden round
From having heard the daylong voice of Eve
Had added to their own an oversound,
Her tone of meaning but without the words.
Admittedly an eloquence so soft
Could only have had an influence on birds
If call or laughter carried it aloft.
Be that as may be, she was in their song.
Moreover, her voice upon their voices crossed
Had now persisted in the woods so long
That probably it never would be lost.
Never again would the birds' song be the same.
And to do this to brids was way she came

This is my second-favorite Frost poem, Never Again Would the Birds' Song be the same. It is a poem in the subjunctive mood, so to speak, the affirmation of an argument through a secondary speaker. The poetic speaker, that is to say, paraphrases the argument made by the "he" of the first line. It is a "just-so" story, explaining how the birds got their song. In keeping with this, it advances its case tentatively. Hence the importance of the meta-discursive markers and modal verbs:

"He would declare and could himself believe that... Admittedly... Could only have had ... If... Be that as may be... Moreover..."

The "just-so" story is actually a sort of piropo (elaborate poetic compliment) in disguise: "Your voice is so beautiful that..." The third-person narrative voice distances the poem from the "implied poet," making the emotion more poignant.

Prosodically, the poem is a marvel, those long, balanced sentences that cross over the boundaries of the 4-4-4-2 structure of the Shakesperian sonnet! Notice how lightly punctuated the poem is. The tone lies somewhere between the conversational and the elevated. The prosaic dimension of the poem arises from its argumentative structure, and serves to temper the fanciful lyrical conceit.

The reader of the poem hears the "oversound" (overtones?) of the woman's voice in the bird calls. Exquisite! Frost's own overtone series.

It's a poem that hasn't been spoiled by overexposure and ill-use, unlike "The Road Not Taken," "Stopping by Woods," or "Mending Wall." It's been anthologized, but not as much as these.

Another flarf poem on Eagle's Wing.