the hot sun of June

Don't write this line in your poem. Don't write "the miracle of listening." Just don't. Just think of not using the word "hot" here, and what it does to the poem. All of a sudden your are suggesting heat without using the word. You can write "chilly sun" though, because that is unexpected. In one of the later sections of "A" Zukofsky talks about people being "glued to the television" after the JFK assassination. What's the point of being Z if you are going to write like that?

Blank is an important theme in the work of [author's name]

I would not write that as the first sentence of a paper. It would be ok for for a highschoolr, bad for an undergraduate, unforgivable for a grad student, and outrageous for a scholar.

Rhythm Worm

I know people have ear worm where they can't get a tune out of their head. Am I the only person who gets "rhythm worm" where it is a particular musical or prosodic rhythm that gets stuck in my head?

Imaginary Audience

I can think I am writing this current essay for the following people: Bob Antonio, Leslie Bary, Jo Labanyi, Carlos Piera. Then I can imagine their reactions and anticipate their objections, or what I would have to explain to each one of them. One is a sociologist, the other a Latin Americanist, the third a Peninsularist, and fourth a Spanish poet/linguist and Lorca specialist. I guess I have another four people too once I start thinking of more: Thomas Basbøll, Roberta Quance, etc... But let's say three or four for now. They probably would each agree to read it or portions of it, so this imaginary audience is quite real. Unlike other writers who might be paralyzed, I find it energizing to write for someone. If I imagine these readers I know exactly how to write it.

5th Paragaph

Not bad for a few hours work, huh:

Since this essay had its origin as part of a book-chapter on a lecture by Federico García Lorca, Juego y teoría del duende, it is grounded in Spanish exceptionalism, and in the thought of Lorca himself. I propose it as a general theory of the poetics of cultural exceptionalism because I am making the assumption—contrary to prevalent views of Lorca’s text—that, whatever its uniqueness, it is a typical example a kind of discourse found elsewhere in Spanish literature and intellectual history, and in other formulations of this poetics. My essay, then, will predict what Lorca’s duende might look like from the point of view of comparative exceptionalism.

These five paragraphs.

4th Paragraph

3rd paragraph (revised)

A systematic and more or less “universalist” approach, such as the one that I am proposing here, encourages a skeptical view of exceptionalism in general as well as in its individual manifestations: the recognition of patterns repeated from one discourse to another tends to undermine the entire intellectual project. Since universalism has its own well-known pitfalls, though, my use of it here will be largely heuristic. In other words, I am not proposing a universalist theory of culture, but looking for commonalities among discourses that make claims for particularism. It will not be my concern, either, to debunk or disprove exceptionalist claims one by one, either on empirical or ideological grounds. A historian, for example, might attempt to refute Unamuno’s notions of “casticismo” or “intrahistoria” through empirical research, but the ways in which these concepts invoke typically exceptionalist tropes reveal them to be suspect on their face. By the same token, it is easy to see that certain versions of exceptionalism are politically conservative, but even seemingly progressive narratatives should not escape scrutiny.