Dream of JCO

 I was to share a room with a former student of mine, on some kind of field trip. I was nervous, even though we had two separate beds. I promised to myself that if she tried to come into my bed I would reject her. But really, dreaming of NOT wanting to sleep with someone is the same as dreaming you do want to. (The logic of dreams is reversed.) I said goodnight and asked her if she had gotten into the program I recommended her for, perhaps in nursing?  

In the morning we were to meet Joyce Carol Oates, though in the dream she somehow had the nickname "Connie," and was into occultism or tarot readings in a way I wouldn't associate with Oates at all. We didn't actually meet her, though.  

The dream morphed into preparations for a potluck. The person I was going with said she had bought and prepared the food, and even washed the dishes. This seemed unfair to me, because I had just spent more money than that on a huge present that I had to carry. There were two of us and we had to carry three heavy items to the car.  

There was a discussion of gifts: in a certain family each person got the same number of gifts, like 3 or 4, in the interests of fairness. It was pointed out that in one case two of the gifts for one person were bicycles. The obvious flaw in the system was that the gifts were not of equal value.  

My drummers

 I also like listening to drums as I am listening to jazz. In other words, I focus on the drums throughout rather than listening to the whole thing all at once. This is difficult, but it is necessary.  

The most admired drummers are those who are the busiest, who are constantly playing different ideas. I have dug those drummers too, but those who are more transparent, playing fewer ideas, might be preferable at times. Who hits that happy medium?  Perhaps it is Max Roach.  His solos are so well constructed, and his comping is so tasty.  

But, of course, the busy drummers are fantastic too, like Elvin, Tony, etc... 

Dream of Lorca monologue

 I was supposed to perform in a Lorca play, a short one (which on waking I realized did not really exist). I hadn't memorized it and was planning to use the script the whole time, though I had doubts about this. And was I supposed to do it in Spanish or English? We hadn't rehearsed at all, and the details about where and when it would take place were hazy.  The whole things was increasingly uncertain. A colleague from another university was supposed to come and do part of it with me, or have some panel discussion. The play would conclude with me doing a closing monologue. I realized I didn't have my script and also wasn't wearing my suit, which the part called for.  Did I have time to go home and get these things? 

The time had passed and the event did not occur as scheduled.  I was drinking limoncello with someone and when that was done he kept giving me shots of something else...  

3 strikes for Lovecraft

 I wondered about Lovecraft, having read very little and that very long ago.  From the perspective of today, it would seem he has three strikes, having read a few stories and short novel yesterday.  

The obvious racism behind a lot of it.  The racism isn't incidental, but hard-baked into his vision.  Sometimes it is merely implicit, but it comes out explicitly enough to be undeniable.  

The fact that it's genre fiction, not high brow stuff in the first place.  So then you don't have to balance out the racism with the fact that it's literature of the highest quality that happens to be racist.  

The prose itself is over-heated and a bit cringe-worthy.  He has a great lexicon, but the prose is always purple, and never settles down into a kind of normal writing.  Everything is fortissimo, fff, with very little dynamic range.  

Three strikes, and he is out. Yet there is something about the sheer force of his imagination that makes people want to read him (including me, this particular week).  

Dream of job interview

 I was invited to interview for a job, because of a "skill set" I had. I walked into a room on campus that was full of people. They began interviewing me, but mostly trying to sell me on taking the job. The interviewer was a middle-aged African American man, and maybe another woman too, of unidentified ethnicity. "Wouldn't you like to live in New York?" they were saying. The job had something to do with industrial espionage, I gathered, though this was not said explicitly. I wondered if I could be hired, if it was a KU job, because my retirement agreement says I cannot be rehired by the university. 

Obviously, this is a retirement dream, in which I am asking myself what I will do after I retire.  

My bass players

 "My bass players" is not the same as a list of the best bass players.  For whatever reason, I respond to some at a deeper level than others. I'm sure a jazz expert would say that Ron Carter and Ray Brown are among the best ever, and I agree with that, but I'm talking here about a few that resonate more with me. In no particular order: 

Paul Chambers. The shape of his lines, the way they ascend and descend. I think it is perfect for both early John Coltrane, before the quartet with McCoy Tyner, Elvin, and Jimmy Garrison.  

Oscar Pettiford.  I'm not as knowledgeable about him, but I do like the melodic invention and also the shape of his walking lines.  I particularly like his playing on Monk's album of Ellington tunes. 

Charlie Haden. The purity of his sound, the centeredness of his intonation. The note choice. What he brings to the early Ornette recordings, and also to collaborations with Pat Metheny and Keith Jarrett.  

Mingus. This is an obvious one, not only because of the power of his bass playing, but also because of his importance as composer and shaper of jazz music. 

Scott LaFaro.  For his work with early Ornette and Bill Evans.  

There are many others I think of as fantastically good, like Pederson, for his work with Peterson. Every bass player who has been chosen by someone like Miles or Bill Evans to play has got to be superb.  I've seen Eddie Gomez and he is great. 

What I like about the bass is that its function is so similar, so basic across a wide range of styles.  Even Haden playing with Ornette is still playing 4 quarter notes to the measure (most of the time!) or at least implying that pulse.  

I will listen to music repeatedly and focus on the drums, or the bass, or some other aspect of the music. 

Four or five pressures

 Higher ed in the humanities are not in good shape, especially in the humanities. I feel we are squeezed on all sides. 

1) Wokeness, defined here as self-parodic performative pseudo-progressive identity politics. This mindset narrows the scope of research and determines ideological positions from the outset. It leaves the humanities without a purpose of it own, and leaves it vulnerable to #2:  

2) The reaction against woke.  Okay, so you want to teach that there are a zillion genders? Then the state legislature will say you can't have gender studies at all. DEI must infuse every action of the university at a granular level? Then the legislature will say you can't have DEI at all. The right-wing reaction against woke is anti-intellectual in its motivations and it effects. I say this as someone who is no friend of wokeness itself (see 1).  

3) Economic pressures. Fewer student major in classics or want to study a less-studied language? Eliminate or gut those programs. Tuition is more expensive, while at the same time administrative costs rise, but not faculty salaries. There are more and more adjuncts. Athletics and big science make humanities budgets seem paltry in comparison. 

4) Cultural factors. There are fewer of those nerdy super-readers who are the bulwark of the humanities students. Maybe there were never that many of us, but students have less capacity to read large amounts of material.  

5) Technology.  The rise of Artificial Intelligence means you can write a mediocre paper on literature very easily. Students will use this to varying degrees even if told not to.  Then you no longer get the core of the humanities: engaging with intellectually challenging material through writing academic prose. The point of this is not the final result (the paper) but what has occurred in the student's brain. I always say it's like sending a robot to the gym to do your bench presses for you.  

Dream of Harrassment

 In this dream I told a colleague (chair?) that I had been accused of sexual harassment. He punched in the face and told me I was fired. Then another colleague punched me.  Neither very hard. Being fired didn't seem a big deal, because I only have a few days left to work. 

I was trying to sort out my possible guilt, but not until I was fully awake could I convince myself that I was in the clear.  

Dream of Stephen King

[I am updating this from 7 years ago, because I just found it and I like it.]

I do not especially care about King. I am not a fan (particularly) or a detractor. I have seen movies and television series, but I haven't read his books. One day I heard an NPR interview with him and, without knowing his identity at first, I assumed he was a highbrow writer of a different type. In this night of particularly fertile dreams, though, Stephen King and I were having a conversation. I was with a friend who knew King, in a workshop where my friend was doing an arts and crafts project. King was not there, but was being Skyped in. I had to lie on my back to see him, projected on a screen above my face.

He challenged me to tell a story about my life in two sessions, like we had done before. I said I wasn't a good storyteller, that I didn't have the kind of experiences that leant themselves to being tied up in narrative bundles like that. He scoffed at me a bit, though not in an unfriendly way. Throughout the whole conversation he was a skeptical but benevolent figure. I also told him I was a schmuck, that I didn't do things well, and so that the story would end up being about my various failures. He said something to the effect that we are all schmucks. I didn't want to ask him how he came up with the ideas for his stories, but I said that I mostly wrote poetry, and that occasionally a plot for an entire novel would pop into my head, fully formed.

He said something that implied that that was the easy part. You had to have the self-discipline to write the book. The first example I gave him was of a man who gradually wasted away. He said that had been done already too many times. The second one was of a science fiction novel in which the aliens were taking over the world, but that the reader didn't know it. In other words, the transformation of reality was so subtle that it could be attributed to other causes. This is an idea I have actually had in waking life. Stephen King didn't quite get understand my plot, though it seemed as though gradually we were getting to some meeting of the minds.  

Without a car...

 My car is in the shop for 2 weeks.  

I can walk or take the bus to work. I also need to feed the cat every two days. Can walk from work to where the cat is, and back to work. My friend (owner of cat) is out of the country, and cannot drive me anywhere. [I could use her car, but I don't feel like it.]

I went out with friends on Friday. I got a ride home after that from a friend who lives on the same street. 

Took a bus to get some dinner this evening, then the same bus back to choir practice. There was thunder storm and I walked back anyway. The rain was not too heavy and I barely got wet. I could have asked someone for a ride, but didn't. 

(On Sunday, I was going to be in a 5k run in the morning. I was going to walk there, but the run was cancelled because of the rain.) 

I have books to donate to the library, which I cannot do without a car. 

So the lesson is... The car is good to have, but not necessary every day. If I had my car, I would have used it, but I don't need to use it that much. Not having a car is inconvenient, but having a car means using it too much.  

Poison pen

 I got this poison pen email a few weeks ago. 30 years ago, I apparently accused a graduate student of plagiarism... and she dropped out of our program as a result.  She wanted to tell me now much of a jerk I was. 

I have no memory of this event, so I have no defense, and cannot reproduce the events in my memory.

  I do remember a particularly weak student in this class, with whom I argued about the interpretation of a Cernuda poem. In this poem, the speaker or the poem is attacking Cernuda himself, in a typical ironic reversal.  It's not even a controversy, because it is so obvious and unsubtle.  Cernuda will write things like "society is just, it treats everyone, the way they deserve." This is exactly the opposite of what Cernuda believes, of course. I had a student evaluation that I didn't accept other interpretations... probably from the student I disagreed with.  Possibly it is the one who is now accusing me. 

I didn't answer the student, because I didn't want to fuel the flames.  I don't think I would have accused a student of plagiarism without evidence. No other student has accused me of misconduct, and after so long a time I feel quite defenseless. 

Mark Halperin was in this class, and said that is was the most intellectually challenging class he ever took before then. He had been Linda Willem's student at Butler. Also, Paqui Paredes, a student from Galicia, who has also had a good career.  I had assumed that, since KU was a top rated program, the students would be great.  Some were, but others I was probably impatient with, because if you are graduate student, you shouldn't be an idiot.  

Dream of injured foot, affable man, and small polar bear

 I was walking from the airport terminal to my car over snow or ice, barefoot. My feet quickly became numb, so I somehow thought this made it ok: numbness = no pain. Then there were two pieces of metal in my foot, and I had to take them out. One was a screw. There was blood. People pointed out to me that I was bleeding. A piece of my foot appeared to be missing, where I had torn out the screw or other piece of metal. 

An affable man was in this dream. Every conversation in which he was involved was very pleasant: he naturally made others friendly by his own friendliness. The conversations were about scarves, or something trivial like that. 

Later, at the house, we were living with a smallish polar bear. He didn't know his own strength and pushed my niece or sister off the bed with just one swipe of his paw. I was thinking of ways to get rid of it. It wasn't exactly threatening, and more the size of a very large dog, but I still thought it was dangerous.  

The 9th kind of poet

 Ranking 9 out of ten are the poets who are fearless and cut through one's perceptions, like Frank O'Hara or Yeats.  In some ways they are preferable to the poets ranked at 10.  

The 10th category: poets who are canonical and deservedly so. The ones recognized by everyone as the best of their particularly tradition. The only problem here is that one never knows whether people like the poetry because of its status, or because they truly like it.  

These categories ultimately dissolve into the air, because what truly matters is the quality of the poetic itself, which can be found anywhere and nowhere. The respected poet who never approaches the poetic itself is the worst thing possible, even worse than the rank amateur.  

Puzzle routine...

 I will do crosswords around 9 p.m., the regular mini, midi, and full size NYT for Monday-Fri.  

I will do wordle and connections first thing. I will do pips, easy and medium, too. The difficult level is tedious and I will sometimes get to it later in the day, sometimes not. There is a very easy word search called strands that I will do quickly at some point in the day.  I will do the spelling bee, but I only look for words that use all seven letters (the pangram). I will stop after I find it, but will sometimes go back if there is more than one such word. Often, the word will jump out at me in a few seconds. I don't wanting to be finding 40 words and taking all day to do it. Finding many words makes it harder to find the one word that rules them all. If the word doesn't jump out at me, then I will try later in the day, but never stare at it for more than a minute. 

I won't do Sunday NYT puzzle, because it is tedious and fills too much of the screen. 

What I've read

 I used to read every novel by Philip Roth, John Updike, and Saul Bellow as they appeared. I would read entire books of poetry, not just poetry anthologies, in English when that was the only language I knew. I would read the collected poems, not the selected poems. When I was interested in a poet, or a particular author, I would read everything. 

I have read most of Galdós, something nobody does unless they are an expert on this author. I never finished the last series of the Episodios nacionales.  The summer before grad school, I read all the boom authors, GGM, Cortázar, Donoso... 

I would never just read what was assigned in classes. I would read all the novels of Henry Green, for example, though Henry Green was never assigned in any course where I went to school.  

At some point I lost my love of novels. I read them now to practice reading in foreign languages. I have read Elena Ferrante in Italian... I like to read Murakami in Catalan, etc... I can read in most romance languages.  

A lot of my "reading" is a practice of memorization. So it is a little different from reading prose fiction where you make linear progress but don't remember the words in your brain. I have read Basho in multiple translations and compared them. 

The sheer quantity and intensity of my reading practice explains a lot about me.  Of course, this is to be expected in a literature prof, but I still think I am not wholly typical. For example, I don't know anyone personally who has as much memorized as I do, or who reads as much in multiple languages.  

Library

 One's personal library is a significant scholarly resource. 

Accumulated over the course of six separate decades, in my case, from the 70s through the 20s. It consists of primary sources (books of Spanish poetry, mostly).  A significant collection of poetry of the New York School. I simply bought every book by Ashbery, Koch, O'Hara, Schuyler, and Guest as they came out, and actively searched for rarities. I also collect books by Creeley and Coolidge, and by William Bronk.   

Books of literary theory. A set of Diacritics. A shelf on which are my own books, journals with articles or poems by me, or contributions to edited collections. I have several editions of Frost and Yeats, Williams. 

Not much of my collection has any value or meaning to anyone other than myself, not even to friends and family.  I am donating some books to the public library, which resells them to raise money. Others I am leaving out for others in my department to pick through. One colleague wants one of my bookshelves, not the books themselves. 

What remains will be my New York School collection, my basic Spanish poetry and Lorca books (though I'm giving away some cheap or duplicate editions of Lorca as well.) And some other books that have some personal meaning to me in some way. 

A library will be in excess of what is actually used in scholarship, but also insufficient. One also needs access to a good university library and its electronic resources as well as its physical books.  

Retirement

 

What Arrangements?

 There was a review of one of Keith Jarrett's live trio albums of standards that said the arrangements were nice. In an interview, he said something like "What arrangements?" It was him improvising and the bass and drums playing along. 

On t.v. I saw a video of Chet Baker, playing trumpet and singing with a bass and a guitar, in a nightclub in Belgium. They play things like "Love for sale," standards like that. And at several junctures he gives credit to the arranger (Don Sebesky).  Yet this music does not seem any more "arranged" than Jarret's standard albums. Maybe even less so. 

So the lesson is?  

10 ranks of poet (7) (8)

 7) # 7 is the good poet in a particular style, like a Philip Levine or James Tate. Here we are getting to poets who are actually good, with no apologies. There will be some sense of musicality here, not like the novelist poets who aren't really giving us something to sing to. Of course, these two poets wrote a lot that was not up to the level of their best work.  But you can see why they are famous poets.  Maybe Barbara Guest falls here? I can like some of these more than others. 

8) The poet with a distinctive personality and voice, that makes you think differently about poetry itself. Here I am thinking of Koch, William Bronk, or Ammons. These poets are whole worlds unto themselves. Maybe Notley is in this category, though she might be better than most of these. This category is somewhat similar to 6, but you can easily see why Ammons is better than Brautigan.  

Levels 5 and 6 (out of 10)

 5) The local hero, the respectable mediocrity, the professional academic poet with some claim to fame, like a Celeste Turner Wright. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?volume=100&issue=1&page=41. Maybe a poet working in an old, unoriginal style. Someone who never had an honest critique of their work, or who has very limited range, like a Billy Collins.  

6) The poet without any particular pretension to being great, but who manages to make a good poem or two out of very little (apparent) artifice. A Richard Brautigan, or Charles Bukowski.  You might wonder why it is a poem at all, yet it actually beats out the more respectable and earnest modes we have discussed so far. Sometimes a prose writer writing poems will achieve this level, like a Raymond Carver or like the two I've already mentioned. John Updike writing a poem can achieve a 5 level, maybe a 6. On the same level as a 6 might be a poet like Gilbert Sorrentino, who is brilliant in prose but only so-so in verse, despite his extreme degree of poetic culture. For this level, a poet would have to be have a distinctive personality as a writer, even if the poem itself doesn't come off.  I'm not sure why all the names I'm thinking of are also writers of prose? 

5 levels of poets (3) (4)

3)  Here is the person with some talent, who has not read a lot.  A naturally verbal person who can turn a phrase, but without a deep poetic formation. Or it could be an earnest beginner.  Or a person without too much talent but who has learned some formulas that work out ok for a decent poem. They are trying hard, but probably getting rejected a lot. I think I might need more than 5 levels, here, maybe ten. 

***

4) Here is the professional poet who simply isn't very good. They may have a teaching position and published books, but they just don't have the ability to write poems, despite their extensive education. There was one guy in creative writing here at KU who was like this. Just the dullest possible poet imaginable. It's a step below the respectable mediocrity.  

5 levels of poet (1) (2)

 I saw a YouTube video about 5 levels of singer. From tone deaf to singing god. 

I was thinking of five levels of poet. 

1) The person who writes a poem but has no concept at all. They just fill a page with their intimate thoughts.  This is not necessarily bad, if you don't consider this page in relation to any other concept of poetry. 

2) The second level: they fill their pages with their thoughts, but they mistakenly relate this to some concept of poetry in the more exalted sense. This can actually be worse, because the gain in pretentiousness makes the poem worse, rather than better. Yet if there is some concept of a poem as something more, then the poet can develop this later on. A subcategory of this is the versifier, the person who writes with rhyme, but no meter. The doggerel poet.  Once again, trying to be poetic will make the poem worse at the lower level.