Fulbright Poems

 I never wanted to go to a foreign place and write poetry based on observations, things that I saw there. That would seem forced to me, and I dislike other poets' travelogue or Fulbright fellowship poems. I dislike things that are picturesque like that, rising from the obligation to report on one's immediate surroundings.  

I was in the Basque Country and elated. I had just taught my last class and was retiring.  Everything in Navarre and the Basque Country was wonderful; I saw some sights and tasted some good pintxos and wines. But the euphoria was really coming from within.  

Brilliance

 I used to enjoy my own "brilliance," the "dance of the intellect" in my own head.  Obviously that is a youthful feeling that could cause me embarrassment now, looking back at it and seeing my past immaturity with clarity. Yet thinking in this way I would be the same old guy who might have looked down at someone like me at the time. My past self does not deserve that condescension! In part because I am still that brilliant young self: that is the basis for my current intellectual maturity, such as it is.  It was a necessary step in my development. Now if I had always been mediocre, perhaps I could have worked steadily and accomplished something, but I think starting off hot was the only path for me.  

3 projects

 Right now I have

Article for Cambridge Companion to Modernism, on FGL.

Article for Oxford Companion to FGl: Lorca in English translation. 

The Musical Legacy of Federico García Lorca.  A book on that topic. 

My plan is working M-F.  on these three things.  

The 2 articles are 8,000 words each. 

The book will be 5 chapters, averaging 10,000 words each. 

That's all I got. 

Fussy writing, pretentious writing, fancy writing

 

Fussy writing is done with an eye to not make a mistake. A fussy writer might distinguish between continual and continuous, maybe. There is nothing wrong with a little bit of fussiness, but some writers think in terms of shibboleths.  "I will never use the word thus or hence," they might think. I don't use these words very much, but I don't want to mostly be on the defensive when I'm writing.  Most of the customary shibboleths are kind of stupid. Avoiding them won't make me a good writer; they are more like talismans that I think might offer some protection against the accusations of not being a careful writer.  We were taught to write "Lorca, however...." instead of "However, Lorca...."  What's important is being able to choose, though. 

Pretentious writing: I am adopting a pose, "interrogating the conditions of ..."  The jargon itself is the point: it me you in the club with others who share that vocabulary. It's not even fussy, doesn't rise to that level, because it isn't attuned to fine distinctions or the avoidance of mistakes. 

What I like right now is fancy writing. What I mean is that each word is the right one, the sentences are balanced and flowing.  I don't repeat that many words, because each paragraph brings me something new where the words will be different. I can avoid pretentiousness, not worry about fussiness. 

Setting your own standard

 I like to begin with things that I can control; things that I don't have to ask permission to do. Now that I am Professor Emeritus my degree of freedom is complete. There is no job review any more. 

The first freedom in academic research is in the choice of topic. I can choose any topic that I want, and take any possible approach. I cannot control how interested other people are, or how my work will be received. I can think about things outside of my control, but I cannot change them. My topic happens to be "Lorca and Music," and I am studying the poet's musical activities and posthumous legacy. 

After that, one thing under my control is the standards I set for myself. How clear do I want my writing to be? How tightly organized? What amount of knowledge of the raw subject matter is necessary? How granular is my approach? How interesting or original do I want my scholarship to be? 

I can also ask more specific questions. Do I want sign-posting, jargon? How do I balance granularity of knowledge with the capacity to communicate to audience who doesn't have that degree of interest in minutiae, while at the same time being rigorously accurate? 

Most people will say they want all of this! This is great, but there is a usefulness also in making all of this explicit and intentional. Write it out as a list. Prioritize your goals. For example, some papers will not be as original: they will present interesting synthesis of knowledge already available.  

(Probably if your standard is high, then you will get further in the review process for publishing articles. If a journal has a 5% acceptance rate, you want to be in top 10% in quality to give yourself a good chance of getting a "revise and resubmit." You don't hear people complaining about papers because the language is not vague enough, or the organization is too coherent. Usually, reviewers will respond warmly to competence.)  

The next freedom is the freedom to live up to your own standards. For example, at one point I taught myself to write better. At another stage, I taught myself to write better again. I did research to improve my granular knowledge of the subject matter. Articles I wrote that were not up to my own standard were rejected. Some were up the standard of the field, in that they were published, but possibly mediocre from my own perspective. 

Envisioning the standard is the main step. That will allow you to figure out how to achieve it.  Without the standards in place in your mind, though, you will be lost.  

1-liners

 

Is a callous part of me? I lose some dry skin yet feel none the less. 

***

I feel less Angst than Bronk that things have no meaning. 

***

I was a scholar not a poet. The decision was made for me. 

***

Who made the comedians the experts on your town? 

Degrees of confidence

 Surrounding the Jason Arday case, there are huge areas of deception, inconsistency, fraud, plagiarism, exaggeration, embellishment. It is not just a question of plagiarism, but of an entire back story that kept changing shape. This not a question of one or two lies, but of a pattern of shifting narratives. 

The result is that it is impossible to have any degree of confidence in any claim made by Arday, or claim made on his behalf by others. Some things in his memoir may be true, but why would anyone have any confidence in any of it? Even a seemingly innocuous detail could be false.  

It would take a rigorous forensic process to sort out the lies and deceptions. At the same time, we're told that Arday was subject to far too much scrutiny!