Swampt

I haven't actually dropped off the face of the earth, tho it might seem that way – it's just turning out to be one of those semesters, one of the ones where there seems never to be the time even to think, much less to write. But I've just cleared one large hurdle, & am gearing up for the next one, so I have a few days' breather.

Reading biographies lately – Rüdiger Safranski's Martin Heidegger: Between Good and Evil (trans. Ewald Osers, Harvard UP, 1998), which I mentioned a while back; Robert D. Richardson, Jr.'s Henry David Thoreau: A Life of the Mind (U of California P, 1986), which I picked up on a whim at our library's sale shelf, & which is turning out to be a truly luminous, beautiful book (doesn't hurt when if you have Barry Moser designing and illustrating). The mail just disgorged Stefan Müller-Doohm's Adorno: A Biography (Polity, 2005), which I'm doing my best to avoid starting, since I know it'll eat up a substantial chunk of time (almost 500 pages of text, and another hundred of notes). The dedication alone is enough to put off those of us who have little patience with the fabled German ponderousness: "I dedicate this biography to my daughter Anna-Maximiliane because I would like my account of Adorno's life and work to help keep alive for future generations something of the thinking that was so influential for my own intellectual orientation." Phew! If you can’t wait for the paperback (I couldn’t), go to Amazon, which is offering a pretty substantial discount. But reserve at least 3 inches of shelf space.
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New on Michael Rothenberg’s Big Bridge is the collaborative poem, “Blue Poets in a Red State.” Some trifling prize to anyone who can find the 10 lines I contributed.