Passwords and Being Open

Every time

What a nice way to start:  I must have written that at least a month ago, to say some angry thing about losing, finding, relosing passwords, then dashlane, one of those things

and now, months later, in freezing new york, about to go to chicago (more Modern Art Cookbook talks, always fun because you have absolutely no idea who might turn up and it is so deeply non-literary, and I loved the review in the TLS speaking of my grandmother, and will send the one that just came out in Artnews to Julian Merrow-Smith, since his beautiful rougets decorates the top of it) and I loved the idea of doing a Literary Foods book, but perhaps that is not where my heart lies

and someone suggested Surrealism in a Hurry, thanks to George McClintock, what fun that would be, and am enjoying a proposed biography of Georges Malkine (surrealist, friend of Desnos, of Artaud, and a greatly unusual painter and writer and film actor), can work on that in Paris, where I go next week to join in a jury on a brilliant and staggeringly long iimportant, I think, thesis on Max Ernst and how his war experience impacted his work

it is a good moment not being bogged down in one thing you know you have to rush on getting through, just a translation of a scientist poet I love, Lorand Gaspar, doing it for ContraMundum, such a great press, with Rainer Hanshe, for whom I  translated Gherasim Luca, and this will be with Nancy Kline, with whom I did a Rene Char

am doing another Pierre Reverdy, this time with Black Widow Books, who did the Char and a Tristan Tzara and a Robert Desnos, and an Eluard, in fact, just about everyone I ever wanted to translaate!
Thanks to Joe Phillips!

it all feels open and possible, which is probably why I left open that only begun thing at the top of this, called "every time"-- so many things are "every time" and they are never dull
Had breakfast with Matthew this morning, now that is never dull, and spoke with Hilary, who is about to run 5 kilometers in the snow in a rabbit costume at the end of which you get soup and hot chocolate -- she is perfectly suited to Northampton and it to her which is a compliment to both

Paris indeed

paris indeed

haven't been writing HERE because of living THERE, as in Paris, for a thesis defense, MUCH ENJOYED, on surrealist exhibitions in North America (and Mexico, some stress upon), from 1930, 31 --first, Wadsworth Atheneum, in Hartford, directed by Chick Austin (whose daughter, Sally Austin, made Joseph Cornell-like boxes, and whose biography, brief, I was asked to write), and then Julien Levy, in New York, more famous, and where the excitement  continued. Dali's entrance into America sent the surrealism publicity into tailspin, AND made the movement more (perhaps alas) acceptable to the cultural atmosphere. Then the really big things, in 1940... 1960, around which this thesis -- interestingly written by Susan Power -- turns. I loved being on the jury, because you get flown over and hotelled for 3 days, AND you get to see the people you wanted to see anyway, AND you feel part of things. And lunch at La Palette, just munching outside... and Le Procope, which I like FAR LESS than the old standby on Monsieur-le-Prince, oh what's it's name, you know if you are reading this, POLIDOR,  no reservations, and then you can rush down the street to the cinema,
 and having breakfast at Le Rostand, across from the Luxembourg gardens, best croissants in Paris, and the hot milk in a little jug...
In fact, it was so grand just wandering around one's Paris streets (for me, only the 5th and the 6th arrondissements), and seeing Marilyn Hacker, great Translator of poetry, Monique Chefdor, world's authority on Eugene Guillevic, the Breton poet, and also Blaise Cendrars, and so on, including my favorite poet living in France, Yves Bonnefoy, and the wonderful art writer, Alain Madeleine-Perdrillat, and staying a bit -- ah, too short, with Marie-Claire Dumas, my French sister, because of her generosity from way back, she who knows everything about Robert Desnos, easily the greatest surrealist poet, to my mind. AND we went to see Pierrette Leveque, who is involved in the rue Blomet, and the idea of Blomet Paradiso, hope someday to have an exhibition about that -- am now writing on Miro and his poet friends...when I dislodge myself from Pierre Reverdy and all the translations of his greatest poems I am gathering....
ah, the joys of caring about poetry!
And now back in New York, how not to love being here? the park and the well everything...