Piera

 "Now a heptasyllabic pattern ... will be undistinguishable from the lefthand colon of a Type A hendecasyllable" (p.54 ).  

I've been re-reading Carlos Piera's dissertation.  In my car, I was listening to two version of Lorca's "Cuerpo presente," by Margarita Xirgu and Germaine Montero, both of whom worked in the theater with Lorca. I was able to hear very clearly the pattern of the alexandrine (7 + 7). A few lines were harder to assimilate into the pattern: "los hombres de voz dura," for example. (The stress clash of voz dura.) If you said "aproximadamente" was a 7-syllable line, you wouldn't be wrong, but normally we would have a pattern of two accents, one on six (mandatory) and the other typically on 2, but possibly occuring on 1, 3, or 4 as well. "para que se acostumbre" would be an example from Lorca. The accent on the first syllable is weak because it is a preposition. 

A distinction between lines that reinforce the gestalt of the form and those that don't?  

I'm thinking of project on Lorca's prosody, but I haven't thought it to be very interesting, or yielding of insights that everyone might not have had already. One insight: enjambment only occurs in very short lines. Another: rhyme is frequent in all but a few works. Maybe mastery of classical meters is not that interesting?  

Dream of chess, Becket, Proust...

I was in a library; I found a suitcase and in it a book titled British Chess.  (I don't play chess in real life but I sometimes try to solve the "checkmate in two moves" puzzles that appear on my Facebook page.) I took it out and went to the desk to check it out, though I knew it was wrong, since the suitcase wasn't mine.  The library employee was giving me the side eye. There was something about the game shown on one page that had held my attention and was to be the basis of some fruitful idea later.  

***

There were a series of misunderstandings about books about Beckett and Proust. I knew I was dreaming so I tried to retain the narrative in my mind, but at the end there was only a book devoted to one of these authors signed by the author, that my father was showing me. 

***

Later, I had a pet python, with large diameter. I was gentle and I had no fear of it, but I resented having to carry it around. 

Sister dream

 There was another sister dream last night.  I was in bed with family, and sister got pushed out on the opposite side where I was. (Next to my brother or daughter?).  She had a black eye from the fall from the bed. Then I remembered she was not alive any more.  

I've had many father dreams after his death, more than 20 years ago. It's not surprising to have dreams about my sister too.  Usually, they are about trying to reconcile myself to their death.  (Unsurprisingly). 

Bullshit

 https://digitalcommons.bau.edu.lb/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1173&context=schbjournal

I'm calling bullshit on this paper.  I can't read it, but the abstract is enough. 

Poetry reciting gun

 There was an instruction sheet on how to recite our poems that was vague; then I saw another section that it didn't matter whether the poems were in published books or not. 

Then apparently there was a huge gun that had to be assembled. I was grateful that a woman member or our team was doing this, quite efficiently.  The result was something like an assault rifle, but larger. Something wasn't quite right with the assembly, however, and she was on the phone with customer service. 

14

 My sister appeared to me in a dream last night as a fourteen-year old girl. She explained to me that this is how I should remember her; I felt myself creating the image of her in my mind, knowing that I was dreaming but also accepting this as a genuine visitation. Her face was similar to that of a particular photo we had used for the funeral, when she was perhaps 18? 

I was weeping and woke up, but woke up still in the dream. The woman sharing my bed was angry with me for crying and waking her, but fortunately I was actually alone, and that part of the story was also within the dream. 

Notley

 I was reading some Notley poems from Early Works that are based on dreams. It occured to me I could write up dreams as poems, but prefer to just accurately write them down without poeticizing them.  Part of what I'm after is the banality and non-coherence of them, so the best ones might be the worst after a manner of speaking. 

***

In choir we are singing "O Taste and See," and thought of the Levertov poem (and book of that title), but the piece we are singing is based on the Bible verse Levertov took for her poem: "O taste and see! the subway bible poster said...."  That is not a dream, just a (not very) interesting experience of finding two works of art based on the same text. 

Instrument

 There was a strange instrument that I brought in to be tuned. It was an electric device played by plucking, but not in standard lute / guitar / mandolin like shapes. They were making fun of me for thinking it needed tuning, and I couldn't seem to get a note out of it, or know where to start. Then I saw that there were fruit shaped items inside of it, like bananas, representing different notes. I still couldn't really play it, and left without paying for the tuning, since we were interrupted by another dream event. 

Now a dog was trying to go through a door. I solved the problem by opening the door, since the dog (a large white one) was theoretically allowed access to these other rooms. 

Gestalt

 It occurred to me that a meter is a gestalt. The word is usually used for visual information. Seeing a face, we don't see individual features, but a face. Of course, we can describe a nose, etc... but those 19th century description of peoples faces feature by feature don't work all that well. 

Faces vary a bit, but fall into the same gestalt. The 11 syllable Spanish line is essentially a shape, not a collection of 11 syllables. 

Here is the most canonical pattern: 

x/xxxx/xxx/x   [accents on 2, 6, 10, evenly spaced]

El dulce lamentar de dos pastores 

Another common pattern: 

xxx/xxx/x/x [accents on 4, 8, 10]

The other patterns are accents on 1 6 10, or 3, 6 10.  

The gestalt is the feel of the meter, not the number of syllables, since we aren't counting them unless we are unsure. Even then, if we are off by a syllable, it shouldn't even matter that much.

Here's one with a stress clash:

Siempre la claridad viene del cielo:  1,6, 7!, 10. It's odd. We hardly ever get stresses on 5,7,9. Notice that there is still a stress on 6. 

The grammar paradox

 The grammar paradox: anyone peeving over grammar is more likely to be incorrect than the bad grammar being corrected. 

Latter days

 Every date by definition is the latest date so far in human history. Nobody thinks of themselves as early folks. Of course to think at all of what position one occupies chronologically is already to think historically. 

Normandy

 I’m coming back from a trip to Normandy. I asked the guy who invited me why I was invited.  He said he had read an article I had published in PMLA on Guillen in the early 90s. He said 20 years ago but it is much more than that. Neither of us remembered what I said in the article though I’m sure I could if you gave me a few minutes. He also invited some of my favorite poets but a bit randomly since he didn’t know that I knew these poets and was friends with them.