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!

Monet's garden

There we were today, at 10, early and the exhibition space at the Botanic Garden almost empty, except a school group, so intelligently shepherded by 3 teachers, with excited 8 year-olds (I'm guessing by size and language..)
rushing about the brilliant colors and commenting: "would you not think this a grand show?" an enchanting red-haired young man asked me? i did indeed think so, especially because of the large and readable boards with various poems by Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Verlaine, and Mallarme. (a great Roger Fry translation, that I chose from his whole volume of translations by his -- and my -- favorite poet)... and some of us will do readings later from these poets --
but I see we are to speak about how they have influenced our poetry! well, it is like a garden we never wanted to get out of, though that will scarcely do...

And a Handel opera in the lounge of the Gershwin hotel! of course, and we will make our way to see a film about Mahler on the couch, if I have correctly understood, in the film festival over at Lincoln Center, with a couple of smart-as-hell pals...

Will I ever settle down to tidying up my Modern Art Cookbook, never unless now. So, now.

SYMBOLISM

What a lark, teaching symbolist poets! My seminar this week concerns  ( as it did last week also, how to stop? ) Mallarme, the most 21st century poet writing in the 19th century, blows anyone's mind... for sure. Every time you read him on Loie Fuller (as in his nigh-impenetrable essay on the Ballets) or on shipwrecks and typography (as in the major-important No Throw of the Dice will Get Rid of Chance, or any way you desire it translated), you feel as if you could shout with Virginia Woolf after reading Proust: "What is there to say after that?" Well, she continued to say a few things, and we are glad of that.