Sorry, THIS is the Link

Check out all the TED talks you can. provocative and smart mini-lectures.

Update

School is starting soon and I'm in meetings most days, also working on the novel. I hate editing, but am getting into the groove at last. Had a good trip to the United States, though i dodnt have nearly enough time to spend with all my friends and family.

A little something from Ms Rich for those who wonder who's reading poems:

Dedications, Adrienne Rich

I know you are reading this poem
late, before leaving your office
of the one intense yellow lamp-spot and the darkening window
in the lassitude of a building faded to quiet
long after rush-hour. I know you are reading this poem
standing up in a bookstore far from the ocean
on a gray day of early spring, faint flakes driven
across the plain’s enormous spaces around you.
I know you are reading this poem
in a room where too much has happened for you to bear
where the bedclothes lie in stagnant coils on the bed
and the open valise speaks of flight
but you cannot leave yet. I know you are reading this poem
as the underground train loses momentum and before running
up the stairs
toward a new kind of love
your life has never allowed.
I know you are reading this poem by the light
of the television screen where soundless images jerk and slide
while you wait for the newscast from the Intifada.
I know you are reading this poem in a waiting-room
of eyes met and unmeeting, of identity with strangers.
I know you are reading this poem by fluorescent light
in the boredom and fatigue of the young who are counted out,
count themselves out, at too early an age. I know
you are reading this poem through your failing sight, the thick
lens enlarging these letters beyond all meaning yet you read on
because even the alphabet is precious.
I know you are reading this poem as you pace beside the stove
warming milk, a crying child on your shoulder, a book in your
hand
because life is short and you too are thirsty.
I know you are reading this poem which is not your language
guessing at some words while others keep you reading
and I want to know which words they are.
I know you are reading this poem listening for something, torn
between bitterness and hope
turning back once again to the task you cannot refuse.
I know you are reading this poem because there is nothing else
left to read
there where you have landed, stripped as you are.

- Adrienne Rich

Two projects i hope to start

One is about the degradation of language and its effect on politics and culture: would we, for example, have been as eager to pursue violent means in Iraq without the sports metaphor and the comic book language that makes violence an abstraction?
The second is a more mangeable and less abstract essay on the relationship of Cortazar's "Around the Day In Forty Worlds" to the possibilities of the blog.

Writers arriving

New Orleans is beginning to arrive in san miguel; The administrators of the low rez writing program of UNO are here and already the quality of my average conversation has jumped about 900% One about architecture and poetics, one about anarcho-capitalism, one about the merits of laser vs jet printers. okay, well, the last one was more useful than interesting, but still, it's been good.

E Bishop's poem about visiting Pound in the Madhouse

Visits to St. Elizabeths
by Elizabeth Bishop
[1950] This is the house of Bedlam. This is the man that lies in the house of Bedlam. This is the time of the tragic man that lies in the house of Bedlam. This is a wristwatch telling the time of the talkative man that lies in the house of Bedlam. This is a sailor wearing the watch that tells the time of the honored man that lies in the house of Bedlam. This is the roadstead all of board reached by the sailor wearing the watch that tells the time of the old, brave man that lies in the house of Bedlam. These are the years and the walls of the ward, the winds and clouds of the sea of board sailed by the sailor wearing the watch that tells the time of the cranky man that lies in the house of Bedlam. This is a Jew in a newspaper hat that dances weeping down the ward over the creaking sea of board beyond the sailor winding his watch that tells the time of the cruel man that lies in the house of Bedlam. This is a world of books gone flat. This is a Jew in a newspaper hat that dances weeping down the ward over the creaking sea of board of the batty sailor that winds his watch that tells the time of the busy man that lies in the house of Bedlam. This is a boy that pats the floor to see if the world is there, is flat, for the widowed Jew in the newspaper hat that dances weeping down the ward waltzing the length of a weaving board by the silent sailor that hears his watch that ticks the time of the tedious man that lies in the house of Bedlam. These are the years and the walls and the door that shut on a boy that pats the floor to feel if the world is there and flat. This is a Jew in a newspaper hat that dances joyfully down the ward into the parting seas of board past the staring sailor that shakes his watch that tells the time of the poet, the man that lies in the house of Bedlam. This is the soldier home from the war. These are the years and the walls and the door that shut on a boy that pats the floor to see if the world is round or flat. This is a Jew in a newspaper hat that dances carefully down the ward, walking the plank of a coffin board with the crazy sailor that shows his watch that tells the time of the wretched man that lies in the house of Bedlam.

Modernism for matt

This is part of an ongoing conversation I'm having, but I'm posting it here and anyone interested is welcome to join in:

I have a prejudice against Pound, not just because he was a fascist crank, but because I find his poetry tedious, but there is no denying his influence over other poets as an editor and influence and problematic friend.
In Latin American Poetry, the modernist period occurred earlier and meant a different thing. American literary modernism is often dated from the the Armory Show 1913 (Google it if you aren't familiar.) Modernism can be connected both artistically and literarily with the problems/phenomena of industrialization, photography, kitsch, fascism, popular atheism, Bauhaus and existentialism. Of course some of these phenomena were part of Modernism, or at least in a dialogue with modernism.
Stories became more interior and tended to pivot on "epiphany." Poetry began to concern itself with politics and the world more than the reactionary modes and themes of the Victorians. Modernist painters and sculptors exploited new techniques and materials as well as formulating schools and theories based in part on the growing irrelevance of painting to the bourgeoisie who could now snap photos instead of taking china painting classes or sketching. Art itself became less something everyone with leisure time did and more a specialists field.
It occurs to me to look into one of my favorite books, "The Theory of the Leisure Class" to see if Veblen has anything to say about the shift (I recall he has plenty to say about consumption of art).