Assorted Quotes from Lyn Hejinian Last Night at the University
Language poetry is about a certain kind of activism.
(Really?)
We still struggle with didacticism and sentimentality.
(These seem to be the biggest enemies.)
What I do is not stream of consciousness, more like improvising and thinking as you go.
(Yes!)
Writing allows one to undertake cross-dressing.
(For sho.)
(Really?)
We still struggle with didacticism and sentimentality.
(These seem to be the biggest enemies.)
What I do is not stream of consciousness, more like improvising and thinking as you go.
(Yes!)
Writing allows one to undertake cross-dressing.
(For sho.)
Let’s not have any illusions. I claim that much of the attraction of the recent wave, Hugo Chavez and so on, of Latin American populism comes from this old desire of the left. Let’s be clear, many leftists today in the United States are relatively well-paid academics who fight all the dirty department career war, but they like to feel warm in their hearts. So it’s good to have as far away as possible another country where you can sympathize. “Oh, but things are really happening there.” You know, at some point in the ‘30s it was Soviet Union, Cuba, Chinese Cultural Revolution, Nicaragua. I’m afraid now that it is Venezuela a little bit.
-Slavoj Žižek in an interview on Democracy Now.
-Slavoj Žižek in an interview on Democracy Now.
As Javier points out, a person who can cross or transgress the borders regularly is one who the has the privilege to do so, the documents to do so, the languages to do so.
-Barbara Jane Reyes talking about Javier Huerta here.
-Barbara Jane Reyes talking about Javier Huerta here.
El hecho de que las mujeres pertenecieran al ámbito de lo privado y que no tuvieran la posibilidad de autoinstituirse como sujetos en el mundo de lo público, hizo que entre las mujeres se instaurara lo que Celia Amorós llama la lógica de las idénticas. “Tú, mujer, eres una función: parir, cuidar a los hijos, cocinar, tener la ropa limpia...” En algunas partes de nuestro país esta división entre lo público y lo privado sigue vigente, pero en otras sin duda ha cambiado. Sin embargo, la lógica de las idénticas permanece y después de siglos de funcionamiento, lleva a las mujeres a una actitud doble: por una lado, grandes gestos de solidaridad entre mujeres, de apoyo a la que está necesitada; y por otro, una gran dificultad para reconocer las diferencias. Todas somos iguales, todas somos idénticas, todas nos apoyamos porque somos hermanas. Pero cuando alguna se quiere separar del conjunto de las idénticas, las demás no lo aceptan o lo hacen con resistencia, sin darle reconocimiento.
- Marta Lamas. Lee más de la entrevista acá. Estoy traduciendo un libro de ella ahora.
This is so just awful. But Daniel Hernandez is doing the good work of calling these "reporters" out. Good work.
Shout out to Nikolai! Representin' SoCal Style!
From C.A. Conrad's Book of Frank.
Just putting these videos here for a class I have to teach...
And Club Fonograma está bien cool.
Ya sé que ahora nomás pongo videos de Youtube, pero es que son muy buenos.
W.S. Merwin on advice he received from Ezra Pound:
He said if you want to be a poet you have to take it seriously. You have to work on it the way you would work on anything else and you have to do it every day. He said you should write about 75 lines every day. You know, Pound was a great one for laying down the law about how you did anything. And he said, you don't really have anything to write about 75 lines about a day. He said you don't really have anything to write about. He said, at the age of 18, you think you do but you don't. And he said the way to do it is to learn a language and translate. He said, that way, you can practice and you can find out what you can do with your language, with your language. You can learn a foreign language but the translation is your way of learning your own language.
From an interview, here.
He said if you want to be a poet you have to take it seriously. You have to work on it the way you would work on anything else and you have to do it every day. He said you should write about 75 lines every day. You know, Pound was a great one for laying down the law about how you did anything. And he said, you don't really have anything to write about 75 lines about a day. He said you don't really have anything to write about. He said, at the age of 18, you think you do but you don't. And he said the way to do it is to learn a language and translate. He said, that way, you can practice and you can find out what you can do with your language, with your language. You can learn a foreign language but the translation is your way of learning your own language.
From an interview, here.
Noche de nostalgias.
Ya sé que es su vieja, pero la que rifo soy yo.
- Frase que se escuchó en la Zona Norte.
- Frase que se escuchó en la Zona Norte.
Slam does some things so so well. Like giving me piel de gallina, ie bumps of geese. And making people shut up and pay attention to life.