September 4, 2013

Listened to Bach last night and culled poems. The cull amounted to about twenty five individual poems and four aborted (or at least never published) books. It’s been a while since I’ve taken the shears to the branches with that intensity. In a corner of my imagination a disciple hurries to make copies of the lines I’m about to throw away, to preserve them for posterity, though of course there is no such person. My poems fail typically when they attempt to be either mindlessly ecstatic or cleverly analytic. I should recognize that by now and save myself the wasted energy.

Meeting at school about what most meetings at school are about, assessment. It’s almost humorous to watch intelligent people address themselves  to ludicrous mandates. Sometimes we faithfully look for ways to comply. Sometimes we slump forward in our seats and wait for it all to go away. Swift would love it. He’d add a new chapter onto Gulliver in which some imaginary wasteful kingdom devises a system of accountability based solely on numbers the very stupidest of them can absorb without ambiguity. The kingdom then stops what’s it’s doing and does only those thing reducible to uniform numerics. Poems are judged by how many lines are in them, and how many more than the last poem by the same author. Paintings are calculated by the square inch. Lovers must count the number of caresses and devise a way of objectifying the quality of those caresses. The Powers that Be among us dare not mandate exactly this, but that is what, in their heart of hearts, they long for. If only the whole academic process were a multiple choice exam that could be graded by a machine! Then it would be perfect.

There’s a new class you can take that addresses itself to success in other classes. I’d never heard of it, but students in that class bring forms in for me to sign, wherein they record advice I have to give them on academic dilemmas such, “Have a Hard Time Budgeting My Time” or “Too Easily Distracted” or “Have to Force Myself to Study Material I Don’t Want to Learn.” I’m not making the last one up. An angry-faced blond boy slid that in front of me. I said “What material do you want to learn?” He said, in all caps, “I CAME HERE TO MAJOR IN PSYCHOLOGY.” So much needed to be said I had no idea where to start, so I wrote in the advice box, “Keep an open mind.”

Inexplicable exhaustion.

Birthday call from All Souls. Sweet.