[...] I've got to get the syllabus done for my Objectivists seminar, a fact I have known for three weeks. It's not (contrary to the evidence of this blog) that I have football on the brain; it's that after completing the website redesign, getting the catalog to the printer, finalizing two books for the printer, and writing promotional copy for two other books, I'd rather just sit and READ the Objectivists for a while. It's funny to me that in a milieu that so energetically campaigns against poets and academe intermixing, the Objectivists have been so profoundly ignored. Oppen and Niedecker both dropped out of their undergrad studies rather quickly, Reznikoff studied journalism and law, and only Zukofsky taught, armed with his MA from Columbia, at Brooklyn Polytechnic, where his students hoped to become engineers. Yet who, more clearly than these, could be said to have had vocations for poetry? Well, their absence from the anthologies could be several things. They were (except for Niedecker) Jews. They weren't wealthy or connected. Their poems made people have to think, always an unpopular trait. They bucked the mainstream (they weren't of the mainstream). So today I begin the syllabus. (I also have to begin to pack, since I'm leaving the cabin tomorrow.) The 43 Folders site, which I check from time to time, had this to say today: Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one?s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way. The quote's from the Scottish mountain climber W.H. Murray, filtered through the vehicle of Stephen Pressfield's The War of Art. So I'm hoping providence will bring undreamt-of options to this process. (A Statue of Liberty pass, maybe? a Hail Mary?) Because I promise to start this. Later today. Really. Posted by: Janet on Jan 04, 2007 | 10:10 am [0] comments (0 views) |  [0] Trackbacks   [0] Pingbacks [...]