Once upon a time there was public ecstasy; then capitalism and Calvinism conspired to rout it out. […] Ecstasy and Enlightenment failed to hit it off. In the eyes of an emergent middle-class order, popular festivity was that most scandalous and opaque of all activities, that which is done purely for its own sake. All … More On Festivity and Enlightenment

A book to reread on poetry is Federico García Lorca, Granada, paraíso cerrado y otras páginas granadinas, ed., intro., and notes by Enrique Martínez López (Granada: Miguel Sánchez, 1989). Is poetry private or public, marginal or central, esoteric or communicative – expressive? Is poetic speech different from ordinary speech, or is ordinary speech actually closer … More Closed Paradise, Open Garden

One of my favorite academic articles, for the sake of literary style among other things, is Joan Dayan’s “Caribbean Cannibals and Whores” (Raritan 9:2 [Fall 1989]: 45-68). Here are a few passages from it: 1. In Haitian ceremonies of vodoun, the most spendid of the gods is Erzulie-Fréda. She is also known to be the … More Joan Dayan

Books I ought to read for recreational purposes include, but are not limited to: Bataille, Eroticism, which discusses the continuity and discontinuity of beings; Foucault, History of Sexuality, because I never have and because it might create an interesting combination with Bataille, and Kaysen, Girl, Interrupted, because if I am going to read some new-to-me … More William James

I am writing an article on two new poets, who have been reviewed and discussed before, but who have not yet had research inflicted upon them. It is an interesting and for me, unusual experience to write about people on whom there is no critical tradition. I am also on a dissertation on a writer … More A Beginner’s Mind

I am still snowed in with paperwork and this may continue for some time. I am also leaning into my current academic piece. At the studio, I have made a lidded porcelain jar. Meanwhile, a book worth reading is Guinier and Torres’ The Miner’s Canary (Harvard, 2002) on the limits of the “democratic” political system … More Porcelain Jar

Always of interest to me are the ways in which folk and ethnic musics are deployed in the service of national projects. Penny M. Von Eschen’s Satchmo Blows Up the World: Jazz Ambassadors Play the Cold War (Harvard, 2005) discusses one such case. From Brian Morton’s review (The Nation, June 27, 2005, 38-41): Between 1956 … More Jazz Ambassadors

From one review of a book I want to read: [This] work amounts to a radical remapping of global literary space–which means, first of all, the recognition that there is a global literary space. [Its] insights build on world systems theory, the idea, developed by Fernand Braudel and Immanuel Wallerstein, that the capitalist economy that … More Literary World Systems

I have just finished a list of works cited. It was the pickiest such job I ever undertook, because I had never written anything that cited so many very old books. Getting the editions straight, and discovering the conventions for citing these particular people, seems to have taken as long as writing the article in … More Picky