"... and I don't know the people who will feed me..."

In the car this morning listening to Mark E. Smith explaining how he’s "dislearned a lot of things”. I then open Ron Silliman's Blog and read his remarks on Charles Olson who claimed:

"I have had to learn the simplest things
last. Which made for difficulties."

They're both pretty good descriptions of the reading & thinking I have been doing -– and a useful theme for this Blog. An ongoing outgrowing of what Jack Spicer called "The English Department of the spirit - that great quagmire that lurks at the bottom of all of us”. I know exactly what he means.

So, I'm prepared to take the risk, put some ideas 'out for tender', go back to basics. There will be people who have read more, written more, cornered the territory, have greater theoretical rigour. However, the kinds of writing I admire most seem to demand a generosity of reading and discussion - an openness of mind, if you like. I'm not aiming at tenure - I'm trying to start a few conversations, air a few ideas.

Teaching Frank O'Hara's 'The Day Lady Died' yesterday, I was struck for the first time by a thematics of 'company'. The dinner engagement, the purchasing of gifts, the interdependence of each named writer. Hesiod is translated by Richmond Lattimore, Genet and Behan - as playwrights - require actors, Verlaine is illustrated by Bonnard. Even Billie Holiday has her piano accompanist Mal Waldron. It's as if O'Hara is suggesting everyone needs someone to enable them to sing.

It's sad, really, how strenuously we think ourselves into being alone.