Dream of Writing Group

 In my dream last night there was a writing group I was thinking of signing up for, some kind of retreat was involved, and I discovered almost at the last minute that I knew almost everyone in the group already: they were you, commenters on the blog. There was one other woman I didn't know. I think Thomas was organizing it. So I began to write my application out on an index card in fountain pen. I was worried it wouldn't get there in time, and was worried about how to address the envelope and get to the post office in time. 

Later in the dream I was there (indeterminate location) and camping overnight  a sort distance from the retreat itself. A guy camping next to me, whom I didn't know, said he had brought some things for breakfast to eat and share with me, he listed them, and mentioned pumpkin bread, which I also had brought by coincidence. I felt gratitude, but thought that giving him my pumpkin bread would be redundant since he had his own. In fact, I had bought this in real life earlier that evening for breakfast today. 

This dream seemed to go on a lot longer, but unmemorably. When I woke up I thought that I should have this group in real life, though I am not sure what the format would be. 

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I was reading Alice Notley's Disobedience yesterday. A lot of it takes place in dreams, and I was thinking of a book of stories by Lydia Davis I had recently finished, that contains a lot of dreams. Davis's dreams are well-narrated, after the fact, as coherent events. In Notley's poems we are in the middle of a dream with her and struggling, with her, to make sense of them. These are both favorite writers of mine, so I'm not saying one way is better, although I can't imagine either one doing what the other does. I like leaving the narration of the dream a little messy. 

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I was thinking of some of my favorite women writers as I was awake last night in long fit of insomnia. Some poets of the New York school, like Notley, Eileen Myles, Bernadette Mayer, Barbara Guest. Some other in the Language poetry group. Lydia Davis. Kay Ryan. The Peruvian poet Blanca Varela. The Spanish women poets of the Diosas Blancas generation, several of whom I know personally. Also, a bit older, MV Atencia.  I can't say I prefer women writers over men writers. Because, well, the facts speak for themselves. You just have to look at my CV. And there are many I despise of both genders. I also don't read them, necessarily, in a feminist key. They are just part of the universe of writers to which I respond as a reader. If I have 100 favorite writers, some percent of them will be women. There are women I know in the profession that work only on male writers. I think that's fine, even if I don't wholly understand it. Nobody should tell someone else what to like or work on. It is damaging to pretend to like things you don't, or promote writers for the wrong reasons. Agreement is overrated. If you have the exact same list of 100 writers as I do, from Antin and Ashbery to Wittgenstein and Zukofsky,  then something is wrong. 

This literary universe of moi is both large, Spanning languages and cultures, but also restricted, in the sense that isn't going to include many many things that appeal to many people. Also, I won't pretend to like things I don't. I have always disliked Gloria Fuertes, though I don't feel strong in this any more. I struggled to get into María Zambrano, and even wrote an article about her and translated a chapter of a book of hers, but I am not in the Zambrano club, even when I feel I ought to be. These spaces of resistance are as vital as the spaces of receptivity.