Grammar

I've seen the argument that grammar should not be taught because it doesn't improve one's writing to study grammar. I say this is idiotic, because it assumes that the purpose of grammar is to improve writing. Grammar is interesting in its own right, whether or not it has any practical use in prose writing or not. There is a joy in paying attention to the syntax of things, despite Cummings. A good writer should be interested in language irrespective of the usefulness of this knowledge. At the very least, a knowledge of grammar will prevent one from making false & idiotic statements about grammar.

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Also, I am impatient with people who profess interest in language, but disdain linguistics, either not knowing that it exists or dismissing it, thinking their folk beliefs about language superior to actual scientific, intellectually rigorous study of it.

The 6th Best Place to Work

There's a web-site I log in to almost daily, for a company that advertises itself as the 6th best place to work in America. I always think that this is not an attractive way to advertise themselves. They could say they are in the top 10, but saying they are number 6 is strangely off-putting.

Dream

I was confronted by a man about 40 years old, a little taller than me, balding, with a slightly reddish complexion, and good-natured. He took me to task for sticking up for someone that the group had decided to attack. I asked red-head if he was going to beat me up. I was not afraid, even though it was obvious that this man was larger, stronger, and younger than I was. He said no, of course not. The conversation continued and my interlocutor made some homophobic slurs. In spite of this, I did not feel especially hostile to him. I began to swear at him, with some f-bombs, which surprised him, put him off guard and on the defensive. I was someone in control of the situation by virtue of my mastery of profanity. That's all I remember.

Guru

Seeing myself as Lorca guru, or academic writing guru, or poetry guru, always seems deeply pretentious to me.

But I am.

Sing Song

When I am having difficulty singing a song it always seems to me that some other song, one I am not singing, would be easier to sing, unproblematic. But the song I happen to be singing is never unproblematic: it is only some other song that seems that way to me, because I am not trying to sing it.

Reading Myself

I try not to read things I have written and published in the past. If I find that I like something I wrote quite a lot, then I wonder if I still "have it," can still be as smart as I used to be. If I am disappointed to find that I could have done better, then that is bad too. Either way, I can't win.

But I had to read a few pages of my Lorca book in order to cite myself, and I found that it reinvigorated me. I made the discovery that I really do "have it." It is easy to see myself as an everyday blunderer, stumbling through life as I tend to do, but when I re-read my own prose I realize that I can pretty much kick ass (immodestly speaking) in that narrow area in which I specialize. To minimize that is to sell myself short.

The Short Form (again)

I think I could do my short form course as a short unit within a longer course on modern poetry. I had thought of doing a course based on Poundian ideas (melos / phanos / logos) but the short form would fit in there somehow as well.

Not that it is exclusive to phanopoeia or logopoeia. It certainly cuts across those categories. I wouldn't dare to do an aphorism course as a stand alone unit, since I wouldn't get the numbers of students needed to make the course make.