we call this last minute!

so when I am about to go to the University of Colorado to lecture and have already sent twice a picture of a picture: first, Cornell's Taglioni Box, and next his Toward the Blue Peninsula and a different title, I get right now a message saying would I please talk on Picasso? So I now sent a Picasso of Dora in a yellow shirt and a title about Picasso, Dora, and Some Other Things, thinking I can get to that when I get to that and in the meantime have not been able to access my own university's slide room, have to wait until tomorrow for the very very very long address, I think: oh shucks, let's just go back to what i really want to do next, which is submitting a proposal for several original poems: from Neruda and Paz and Holderlin and Rilke  and Char and Reverdy and Mallarme and Rimbaud and so on, surrounded by several translations each, and I long to Get Back to that, to say nothing of my Pascal Critical Life I am really wanting to do soon, and this is what I should say to my students: Be Ready for Whatever You are Asked to Do and enjoy the flexibility, otherwise, just Forget It

oh, I found at least this, so I won't again Forget It!

And the Show Went On

should anyone read this who hasn't read this book by Alan Riding, AND who is interested in France in the Nazi-occupied times, you will sit up at night reading it, like me, although I am also in the middle of Picasso and Truth by the wonderful T.J. Clark And Alyson Waters' latest translation, by one of my alltime favorite art writers, Daniel Arasse, who actually came to my class when I was teaching at Jussieu, and whose book on Le Detail is just riveting -- as are all these three

Ah, how I had wanted to stay in philosophy and art history, which was -- I thought -- my double major ah so long ago at Bryn Mawr -- but I wanted more to go to France, as some visitor suggested we could only I knew no French. But that didn't seem to matter somehow and so, I never got over it.

Or over Pascal, because of that abyss on his left side. And the rest. One of these hours, I really must go back to bed, but then I do NOT see how I will ever get to read anything. Daylight is so taken up with whatever it is taken up with. And in the wee hours, all is quiet, even in N.Y. so it is actually my favorite time. Next to all my other favorite times. I find it kind of engaging that I have 2 books coming out this month in principle, and have not seen either: Pierre Reverdy (with 14 translators) and the Modern Art Cookbook (just did podcast about it from our more than rustically elegant, I think, cabanon in Provence) and neither of them have I seen, except in proof. That is kind of appealing. 

Reverdy/Chanel Big Mistake

Made a ghastly mistake: having read Hal Vaughan's book about Coco Chanel, Sleeping with the Enemy (Vintage, 2012), I fell for something hook and lines. It was Pierre Reverdy's dedication to Chanel of a bunch of poems in 1949, that begins "I give you my hand/I give you my heart." The poem was from 1949, but was listed as being his dedication for her tomb. Alas, I printed the concluding three lines in my preface to my anthology of Reverdy poems (New York Review Books, just appeared) and cited his statement. Here are the concluding lines:
 

       Before heading toward/ The dark road’s end/ If condemned/ If pardoned/Know you are loved.

Rhonda Garelick, whose forthcoming biography of Chanel ( Antigone in Vogue: Coco Chanel and the Myths of Fashion (forthcoming in 2014 from Random House in the United States and Picador Books in Australia and New Zealand)  will set records straight all around, helped me discover the origin of this dedication: i am more than grateful! It seems I cannot put an erratum slip, and can't think where to print a  mea maxima culpa except here, so here it is!