Spring Break 2010 (2)

Two long days in a row of writing/revising. Work in particular on Hinojosa and today finished the bulk of the revisions. Monumental. Exhausting. I have about fifteen new poems from the last book (Sangre en la libertad) to work on/revise, and then I think the manuscript will be very close. I still need to do work on the introduction but that is also already forming in my head and I have some notes. Biggest problem with that will be how much to say about a major poet who is relatively unknown even in his own country and barely a blip on the English-speaking world radar.

Finished typing up poems from moleskine of 2009. They sit waiting for revision as well. Between those and the translating, reading Los detectives salvajes by Bolaño, some Melville, some Elizabeth Bishop, I am feeling very literary in the early spring break days.

I also have a lousy head cold. No surprise there, though. I always seem to get some kind of physical something at the start of any vacation.

But tomorrow is supposed to be sunny. Will try tonight catching up on sleep (have been staying up very late and rising very early, havoc on internal clock) and if the weather is right, may actually take a spin on the bike in the park. Imagine that. Maybe the winter is really about to end.

The Weeks Ahead

So walking into too many different stores and they're all playing Christmas songs (can I get "Christmas in Killarney" out of my head?). I know some places were playing them before but now they seem everywhere and so the whole Christmas season starts which I suppose I don't mind. I like some of the bustle of it, the barber shop on 7th Avenue that has the running train and the skaters in a wintry setting, Union Square converted into a great outdoor bazaar. Of course Chanukah comes first, so there'll be lights and trees and it will all seem, well, like holidays. It will bring back memories and for another year, even though Jesse may feel he's too old (but Katherine and I are not) we'll read Night Tree by Eve Bunting and Ted Rand which I think is one of the best Christmas books ever (I remember once many years ago that Kenneth read it to Jesse before Jesse went to sleep and he came downstairs and talked about how wonderful and surprising it was as a book. Of course, it isn't Somebody Spilled the Sky by Ruth Krauss, but that's just on another level.

It all means that the semester is also rushing to a close and I'm worried if we'll get to everything I'd hoped. Not with my writing fellows students, who seem on track, nor my Poet in New York students who seem the same, but my Intro to Poetry students. I think I always feel this way, though, and then it gets done. My mind is already drifting to next semester and teaching Spanish Surrealism and Advanced Poetry, both for the first time. It will be an interesting spring, after all, with new classes and a new book (and hopes that Celia Cruz will find a publisher.

What to do for Christmas break? Travel? Stay home and ready for the spring? "Oh must we dream our dreams and have them too?" (Elizabeth Bishop).

Abrazos

Interesting teaching day--reading Lorca in conjunction with O'Hara, Bishop, Rukeyser, Corso and Crane. The latter is obvious, but it's interesting to see how O'Hara and Bishop can be like Lorca in their rivers of words but with such different intensities, tonalities.

Hemi-synch on the ipod is the ticket for the train--instead of music replacing subway, surf took away subway. Completely unexpected and very welcome.

The new Subtropics (University of Florida) has two of the Lorca translations (Dawn and City Without Sleep).

Have actually in the last two days received two fan letters. Is this a silly thing to put on a blog?