When I was a kid

 When I was a kid I was trying to figure out how poetry worked. I wasn't a gifted writer, but I was curious about how it worked, kind of like from an engineering perspective, though I would be a sorry excuse for an engineer. I studied it from a college textbook when I was 12, maybe, and then went through the whole Norton Anthology. I just tried to figure it out from the inside. I still wanted to be a poet. 

I went to school with certain poets, figuring them out, like William Blake, WCW. I've done this with Borges, Frank O'Hara. I still do this in music, with Monk. 

I found a place in academia where I could continue this, and rose near to the top of this world. I studied languages, became an expert in my own subfield. 

So if anyone else reading has done this, how can we place a value on work that does not reflect an equivalent level of dedication and training?  How can we say that it also deserves praise?  

Training

 Imagine, then, two people of the same aptitude.  

One reads voraciously, learns languages, trains himself to write, learns about a variety of other subjects, (history, art history) plays music, figures out how to succeed in academia, rises to the top of an academic field.

The other: pursues a non-academic career, does fine. Main hobby is watching sports, maybe.  

The variability is in two factors: the opportunity, usually provided by a certain amount of "privilege" growing up, and the drive to do actually do it. I had both. I could have easily had the same privilege and same aptitude, and done nothing with it. 

The training is about 90% of the academic's value. It is work: training oneself to do all these things at a top level, but also expanding the brain through music and language learning. The non-academic could have done it, but didn't.   

Only a reduced percentage of the population get a doctorate or equivalent.  Even for a smart person it is not easy. 

Of these people, only a few get to research jobs and publish. Of these, a certain percentage is more or less on the top. It is an elite proposition, and it takes a lot. This is why academia, structurally, is elitist. 

Disorientation

 Here in Barcelona I went to restaurant one Sunday soon after I arrived. It had one of those fixed menus and they advertised "jazz moodd todo el día."  [sic]  They had good music, perhaps some Sonny Rollins followed by Miles, etc... The food was a little salty but not too bad. 

A few days later I started to go to one of the outside terraces near where I live; did it several times, having some beer or wine and tapas in the past few weeks. Then yesterday, I went back to the "jazz moodd" place.  Not as many places were open, and I had the same food more or less, but sitting on the other side of the restaurant this time. I was starting the suspect something, so I exited from the other door, onto another street, and there I was, at the outdoor terrace I had been frequenting on several other nights. It was the exact same restaurant, just experienced somewhat differently: day vs. night, one street vs the other, outdoors or indoors. The wait staff was different during the say. 

 I hadn't really noticed the name the first time, so even though I knew the outside place was called "Ginger" I didn't really associate it with the "other" place at all until I had another daytime meal there.  

Dante

 I saw in an interview with Borges (by Piglia) that he didn't think you needed to translate Dante into Spanish. Instead, you should read Dante in Italian, by learning another dialect of Latin. He had read the commedia several times himself, unsurprisingly.  

He always says that the scholarly editions of Dante in Italian are quite good, which is not hard to believe.   

Dream of New Yorker

 I had a mini-story accepted by the New Yorker.  But when it was about to come out (in the dream) it was merely a negation of my acceptance. Not exactly a letter of rejection, but something that had that same effect.  

Theory of Rhyme

Repetition + difference. 

Marks endings.  

From song to poem and back again

 

Here's what it could be. There is song; a poet imitates the song form and creates the poem. The composer sets the poem to music, and there is a new song.  

But this new song is different from the original, anonymous, popular song.  In 2 ways.  Now the text comes first, and is set to music. (In the original form of a song, music and words both come first, in a way. There is no necessary precedence.)  Secondly, there is a popularization of a text that belongs to the cultured tradition.