Feeling guilty about leaving my blog empty for, what, a week now, but also feeling uninterested in the diaristic and/or cognitive trivia of my life. Yesterday, Chris Nealon gave a talk on Adornian and queer-theoretical disappointment in poetry, and particularly that of George Stanley, noting the productive and constructive powers of disappointment and resignation, in which he used the term disco-homographesis, a first I would expect. Nealon's essay on "Camp Messianism" which you can get through Project Muse (if you have access) is really fantastic, a wonderful articulation of recent and future tendencies in poetry, namely a concern with all that effluvial shit no-one knows what to do with, "Man on the Dump"-style. The the. Per Nealon's reading, and Josh's rec., I'm reading Kevin Davies' Comp. which is just a fantastically wild ride that makes me rethink everything I might otherwise think about diction, that it exists, etc. Great title, too. How many meanings in those four letters? Four, five? Teaching My Life. Jessie, my honors student, is finishing up her project, a remarkable collection of poems, some of which I will soon post here. And another student, who is going to present on Gabe's A Defense of Poetry recently brought the book to a fraternity open-mic, where they spent the entire night reading from it, and laughing, Gabe being perhaps the most universally hilarious poet I can think of, only the most corseted and uptight of people, I think, could fail to find a humor--lowbrow, highbrow, scatological--to their liking there. With all respect and love, a fraternity might be Gabe's ideal audience--farts, violence to animals, etc.
What else? Noah is walking, toddling's the word, with less and less circumspection. He'll be running soon, I'm sure, and then we're really in for it.
Not sure where I'm going next year, either Stanford or Berkeley, depending on whether or not I get a fellowship package from Berkeley. Both great places, with people doing important work on poetry and related interests.
I'm putting together a chapbook-length version of the LA poem for Burn Denver Down. It's good to have a deadline to force some concentrated attention.
Karl and I are planning to do some kind of collaboration for our reading at Soon in May.
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