I remember, after reading the facebook thread, about an article by Gustavo Pérez Firmat on poem 20 of Neruda's 20 poemas, in Hispanic Review of 2007. (I remembered something about it so I found it pretty quickly on jstor. It's a nuanced reading and productive approach to poetry that seems sentimental, like "Puedo escribir los versos más tristes esta noche."
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Looks great. https://www.jstor.org/stable/20063437?seq=1
Looking for it led to finding some other cool PF stuff. I never thought he wasn't solid but now I may have become an outright admirer.
Try out his article on Machado and the poetry of ruins. They interviewed me at Duke once and I got along well with him. They hired Vilarós instead, in order to get Alberto M. in the deal.
I believe I know that piece, I will reread. I have just realized that PF was who I should have called when I didn't know what to do about that ill fated Vallejo book contract. I was wracking my brain, who can say something useful, and years later I realize it was him and I could have, he's friendly. So in the office today I pulled out a book of poems he sent to say thanks for a good review back then, and he calls me "compañera en la (X)-vocación." (X)-vocación, interesting.
Moreiras is mournful about academia now in his Texan exile, I keep meaning to read his memoir about the blow-up at Duke and everything.
I don't know his blow up at Duke memoir? It is kind of poetic justice to end up in some Texas backwater, for them. I like Cristina better than her brother.
https://utpress.utexas.edu/books/moreiras-against-abstraction I need to read it so I can write a sympathetic, yet differing response. People love Cristina, I've never met her, but I like Alberto to the extent I know him. I first met him at the MLA 1986, because we had the same interviews and kept running into each other coming out of hotel rooms in upper floors. We began saying hello ... then laughing, you again ... then introduced ourselves. So far as I know he is a non-jerk and I like some of his work. I don't know him that well and he inhabits a different universe but I've been in LAS *exactly* as long as he has, and we have these Portuguese and Catalan connections, so I feel as though he were my rich first cousin who oddly resembles me, something like that. This is why if I wrote a companion volume to that memoir, it would be interesting: the opposite. Bad career. Woman. U.S. native. Political memoir, observing the neo-liberalization of universities from the perspective of those who suffer it first. Differently political than his. People could assign both in their seminars and it would be interesting for students to get these two insider stories of the profession.
A&M is R1 and they have a nice house on the lake, and all. It's not It also didn't go well for them in Aberdeen. If I had been them I imagine I would have stayed in Madison but I know people always want to get out of Madison, the hothouse university neighborhoods, conservatism of Wisconsin and the snow.
I don't dislike him, but I find that whole theoretical discourse alienating and a bit arrogant in its rhetoric, from that period. Not only in his work, but also Brad Epps, etc... I could have been a bit jealous of that kind of person, something that I dn't have to feel any more. In other words, I never got those Ivy league jobs that were meant for other Ivy leaguers.
I am also perhaps influenced by views of Teresa and Alberto by some former colleagues of his from Madison and Duke.
Right, I'm not enough connected to either place to have views like that. (Note that if I didn't know Idelber A.'s reputation, I could like him, too -- he's fine to talk to.)
Oh, that theoretical discourse is kind of boring. But all those guys are kind of affable and somewhat interesting, so they don't drive me nuts. Envious of people getting those jobs, of course I am. I'm envious of people in state flagship R1s with PhD programs, esp. if they have them in Spanish, Comp Lit *and* LAS. But it doesn't make me dislike the people
I've read the part of the memoir now where he talks about the blow up with Walter Mignolo. There was a big Duke conference with the Latin American Subaltern group where Mignolo, department chair, denounced the postmodernists (Alberto, his own colleague, and his crowd). That was the "assassination" of the group itself, which then produced "weak writing." Then AM goes to Aberdeen, cannot find a place for himself there, and returns to be a Latin Americanist in Texas, "the only kind of job I could find." It's kind of fascinating reading. I'm glad I'm not a Latin Americanist because that politics would be unsurvivable for me. I'm more sympathetic with Alberto after reading this.
Yeah. This is also when Mignolo kind of turned into a pissy old liberal man, or something. His version of decoloniality is very fuzzy thinking as far as I am concerned.
I've never heard of Alberto doing anything downright cruel / dishonest so until I do, I am sympathetic.
That kind of politics, I guess I am used to it. It may be bad but it is better than dealing with the French department. ;-)
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