I've actually been working on some reviews of recent books of poetry.. six in all, for here or elsewhere. Three of them are positive, one is mixed, two are negative. I'm thinking of making one of the positives more mixed and giving one of the negatives a better consideration. I did "Friday capsules" a while back and was going to do five the following week, but wanted to re-read a book I was going to pan, that I read but didn't buy, but never did so.

I have criticized logrolling, but I think if logrolling were a major crisis people would react differently to it. If you don't like the state of criticism, do it better. Obviously as someone who has defended Silliman's blogging, that was for me sort of a formative experience of contemporary criticism, and I was motivated by respect for him, but not so formative as I thought there was anything unusual going on, as I expected there to be some backlashes against what he was doing. A lot of the "lack" of negative criticism of small press books arises from the feeling that they are up against enough. But Silliman's crit often took the form of criticizing the stylistic foundations of works that were well realized, which is often the most useful negative criticism rather than "so-and-so is a lightweight." Cahiers du Cinema, when negative, criticized the foundations of works that were well realized.

I don't think film or art criticism has done much to improve those genre. The negative reviews of Andrew Sarris seem suspect to me, even if his positive reviews make me want to see a film. What film reviews do best is publicize the product in the newspapers, but this has comprehensively resulted in a declining medium. Most negative art reviews I read are garbage. Frank O'Hara's art commentary, such as it was, set the standard for only being positive in what he said, even when quietly acting to impose limitations on the medium. Ashbery says he only reviews art that he is very interested in, i.e. positive. The others in that town mostly followed suit. There is no golden age of literary criticism. Thomas Mann presumably writing Lukacs into the Magic Mountain was contrary to pattern, the way most good things are in this racket. What we have now is a vast improvement over what we had 40 years ago.

But in general I have been trying to focus on finishing up creative things in recent months and my internet interactions have been unfortunately limited to responding to things that really irritate me. I have enjoyed some recently published books. I would perhaps like at some point to get a lot of free books in the mail and gab about them, but I have difficulty - or cultivate difficulty - with what I'm writing as it is, and don't need to seek out more distraction.

Enrique Morente recorded two albums in the mid-90s about Frederico García Lorca, one collaboration with the rock band Lagartija Nick called Omega with lyrics from Poet in New York and a follow up called Morente-Lorca, which concludes with a stirring elegy in collaboration with the Bulgarian Female Choir:



I just found a live version of this for Spanish television with the choir which is quite dramatically enacted but medleys into the sudden (spoiler alert) appearance of Lagartija Nick for a different tune.. I would have liked to have heard the whole song on its own live..



Speaking of cantaores, someone uploaded my two favorite El Lebrijano songs, which are from his album Grandes Cantaores de Flamenco adapting verses from the Sermon of the Mount (Spanish versions in comments section):



Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth,
But lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven..
Behold the birds of the air: for they sow not, neither
do they reap, nor gather into barns;
And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin:
And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.

(from Matthew 6: 19-29)



Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's
clothing..
Enter ye in at the narrow gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way,
that leadeth to destruction..
Ye shall know them by their fruits.
Inwardly they are ravening wolves
Do men
gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?
Beware of false prophets..

(from Matthew 7: 13-16)

Manolo Sanlúcar is on guitar in those two tracks.. of whom there's a fair amount of footage online such as in the Saura film with Diego Carrasco singing "I am a gypsy, from the salt of Cádiz" and the women in the back singing "ay, lemon seller, give me some lemonade.."



Also lest I forget I found 29 seconds of an early 60's TV appearance by veteran Colombian actress Dora Catavid singing "Se Llama Lucia Cristal" surrounded by two guys dressed as elephants:

bloo
d-on
i

ce-f
or-so
o th
say ma
de in th
shade-to
face
th-sun
less
dead

Ah.. Qui me rendra mon pays.. Haiti.. C'est toi mon seul paradis.. Haiti.. Ah.. Dieu me rappelle.. Tes forêts si belles.. Tes grands horizons.. Loin de tes rivages

La plus belle cage
N'est qu'une prison
Oui.. Mon désir, mon cri d'amour
Haiti..
C'est de te revenir un jour

Oh, beau pays bleu.. Bien loin, bien loin sous d'autres cieux.. Je vivais des jours heureux.. Mais tout est fini..
Seule dans mon exil aujourd'hui
Je chante, le coeur meurtri

Oui ! mon désir mon cri d'amour
Haiti
C'est de te revenir un jour
Haiti...

(emphasis mine)

In addition to Frank O'Hara's statement that Twombly was "witty and funereal" and CA Conrad's poem where "we realize we're driving in Cy Twombly's paintings," I recall Robert Creeley talking about how he walked through a Twombly show after exhibition hours and the custodial staff was having an animated conversation, pointing out different parts of the paintings with their mops... & a conversation I had with a guard at Philly's installation "I'm going to tell my neice about this" "Why your neice" "She paints.. She can do this because she's 8" "Then she should" "But I keep telling people, it has a meaning." In 1994 Twombly sculpted the Thermopylae series, each of which contain insciptions from Cavafy's poem of the same name:

Honor to those who in their lives
are committed and guard their Thermopylae.
Never stirring from duty;
just and upright in all their deeds,
but with pity and compassion too;
generous whenever they are rich, and when
they are poor, again a little generous,
again helping as much as they are able;
always speaking the truth,
but without rancor for those who lie.

And they merit greater honor
when they forsee (and many do foresee)
that Ephialtes will finally appear,
and in the end the Medes will go through.

tr: Rae Dalvin

sss
ever
ed it i on
land it-see

sss
peak
ing-o
i am)

not-t
here-n
or-ever
euer

id
dice(e