In the next few posts I'd like to examine four textual encounters I've come across recently in my research. These are moments when one writer cites the words of another in a way that blurs the lines of authorship in some way.

The suspension of aesthetic judgment can be liberating. Not having to worry at every moment about "how good it is" is a foundational gesture in contemporary literary and cultural studies.  The raw material for many kinds of investigation would simply not be available if it first had to pass an acid test of judgment.

I've been thinking a great deal about the relation between music and poetry for an essay I want to write with the title "What Claudio Knew:  Teaching Receptivity."  Claudio is Claudio Rodríguez, by consensus the greatest Spanish poet of the second half of the twentieth century.

My approach to the set of fields known as the Humanities is rather different from that of most people I know.  I hesitate to assert the universal validity of my approach because it is, basically, a desire for everyone else to become more like me.  

Here are some paragraphs I wrote for an introduction to a book I am working on.

Lawrence Venuti reviewed my Apocryphal Lorca in the TLS a few weeks ago.  Marjorie asked me privately what I thought of this review so I thought I would explain my position in public.  My general policy is to be thankful for the attention rather than to object to misreadings.

My latest book is Apocryphal Lorca (2009), a study of Lorca's influence on poetry of the US. My next will be Lorca and Modernity, a study that attempts to answer the question of what it means for Spanish literature that Federico García Lorca is the major modern poet in this particular tradition. There are several problems I have to sort out.

I sympathize with Ricardo Padrón.  From one perspective, canonical authors like Cervantes or Lorca seem critically exhausted, and the challenge of saying something new about them is daunting.

For my first post on Arcade I thought I would introduce myself and my recent and current projects.  I graduated with a PhD in Comparative Literature from Stanford in 1988 and am Professor of Spanish at the University of Kansas in Lawrence.  I blog at Bemsha Swing, mostly about jazz and contemporary Spanish poetry.