Finding shit

Going through ancient files. Found my essay on Lorca's "Ode to Walt Whitman," with the rejection letter and reports from PMLA. I think it is a twenty-year old essay worthy of publishing now, in its present form (with updated bibliography, of course). I found old letters from friends, my college diploma, and many other things of greater or lesser import. Poems from college days.

I need a research assistant very badly.

Flow

When my students are commenting on what they like about one another's translations, the criterion they return to most is flow. This is a rhythmic consideration (Rhuthmos / rhein = flow). This criterion is closely related to their goals for their Spanish (fluency). Prosody, then, is paramount in their thinking about language. Speech or writing without "flow" is halting, hesitant. It does not flow.

Coleman Hawkins. The bebop years

This is slightly out of order, but it is what I am listening today. It is a four cd box set of Hawkins that I bought on the cheap, including a lot of things that are not bebop at all, of course. That thump on the floor of the bass drum on all four beats in a lot of jazz of this period is really noticeable. The pulse is really fat with the rhythm guitar and walking bass strumming on those beats too. It makes the music square up without being "square." Hawkins hits notes squarely on the beats too, without that behind the beat feel introduced by Lester Young.

1/2

I've been a tenure track professor for 24 years, which I almost half my life (I am 53). If you count the fact that I was teaching college level courses since 1982 in some capacity or another, then it more than half. Of course, I was in training to be a professor since I was about 11, so there's that.

The Motivated Sign

I scored 8 out of 10 on this quiz. I knew none of these words before, so I was just going by how appropriate the sounds were to the sense.

Stalin and Exceptionalism

Here at language log.

Apocryphal Lorca

How I missed this apocryphal Lorca poem I don't know. Perhaps this poet was not on my radar (well, not perhaps, he wasn't).