THe opera star of “Diva” recently died, and though it is an all too brief post on Valentine’s Day, I simply must take note of her passing. The excerpt of Wilhelmenia Wiggins Fernandez singing in a suspense thriller built around a “bootleg” tape of an artist who doesn’t believe in the commodification of her voice is one of the most poignant experiences of my entire life. I just listened to it once again, and it is more enrapturing than ever. I regret that I never had a chance to hear her perform live.

Oddly enough, my guess is that this film, which was released over 40 years ago, has probably not been seen by the majority of filmgoers between the ages of 18 and 30.

May the most exquisite operatic voice I have ever heard rest in eternal reverberation.

Sunday, February 11

This weekend I’ve been preparing to lead a discussion of MFA students about Terrance Hayes’s “American Sonnets for My Once & Future Assassin.” I’ve just finished jotting down notes on each of his sonnets and realized that I should have assigned Wanda Coleman’s sequence to them, too. While it’s too late for me to insist that they do so, I would like to post this brief note today (at 5:45 p.m., PST) to let my readers know that they can be found on-line:

https://paulenelson.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Wanda-Coleman-American-Sonnets-Complete.pdf

There are dozens of poets whose work deserves close attention and at least some brief commentary, and the sad part of being a devoted reader of contemporary American poetry is the fact that no one could meet that demand, even if she or he were paid a full-time salary. Nevertheless, it’s almost incumbent on any serious reader to record a small portion of their insights into a few poets.

In Hayes’s case, I would like to apply a rule I heard about years ago that claimed anyone who wanted to know what one of Shakespeare’s plays was about only had to read the line of poetry that was at the exact center of the play. I thought that was an interesting premise, even if it was nothing more than a premise meant to bolster and augment one’s motive for indulging in Bardolotry.

In the “Once and Future Assassin” collection of poems, the rule turns up a haunting line, which in fact circles back to the very first “American Sonnet.” You’ll find that line in the middle of the sonnet on page 43: “To be dead and alive at the same time.” That kind of simultaneity is exactly what happens when Orpheus draws an “X” across the eyes of the beloved.

Hayes is an astonishing poet, and I have more to say about this book on another morning.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Last year, Semiotext(e) published Jack Skelley’s “Complete Fear of Kathy Acker,” the compilation of a project that began as a very small pamphlet in the early 1980s, or at least that’s when I remember seeing the first one. I have yet to obtain a copy of the finished edition, but I am hoping to have a chance to read it before I attend the theatrical adaptation that will have a brief run at the end of this month at Illusion Magic Lounge in Santa Monica located at 1418 4th St, Santa Monica, CA 90401.The performances will begin at 8:00 on February 27th, 28th, and 29th.

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/fear-of-kathy-acker-tickets-807381408527

If Skelley’s work seems somewhat familiar to readers of this blog, but you can’t quite place it, let me give you a little hint. My review of his book, “Pleased to Meet You Beastmaster 666,” was one of the top three dozen most visited posts in my blog during the past two years.In addition to his widely admired first book, “MONSTERS,” from Dennis Cooper’s Little Caesar Press, Skelley was also the editor and publisher oF BARNEY magazine in the early 1980s. In addition, he played in several bands, including PLANET OF TOYS with poet-performance artist Bob Flanagan, and curated the musical presentations at Beyond Baroque under the banner, “Beyond Barbecue.”

January 25, 2024 —

This morning, soon after a brief meditation and while doing some stretching on a yoga mat, I thought to myself, “maybe January 25the will the date for the anniversary of my death.” It’s a Thursday, I thought, so there’s a blending of Merwin and Vallejo. And it had been raining before dawn, when I first got up.

While I have no idea of course on what day I will die, I will remember this date as the one when a friend told me that D.R. Wagner, poet and artist, died a month ago, at age 80. I suppose I first heard of him over a half-century ago because of a magazine he edited called THE RUNCIBLE SPOON. Ah! Those were the glory days of poetry, when no one ever thought of it as a “career.” The AWP seemed like some obscure splinter group of a right wing political faction; it was of little relevance to the ever accelerating small press movement that D.R. Wagner was emblematic of.

Truly, may he rest in the muse’s dreams as one who spent his time on earth as only a poet can.
chttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oU50BCbfbp4

Some of Donald R. Wagner’s boos include:

The Lost Carnival and Other Places (Death Crater, California: Molly Moon Press, 1969. 22pp.)

Cruising’ at the Limit: Selected Poems 1968-1978 (1982)

April 15, April 16 : poems

Confessional poem to free the mind of its hang ups and keep the underworld free of its goofy
Cat’s Pajamas Press, 1970.

Round, earth, poems (Milwaukee : Gunrunner Press, 1969)

Tuesday, January 9, 2024 — A FIVE PERCENT “RAISE” IS A PAY CUT! ON STRIKE! ON STRIKE!

As I mention in an earlier post, one of the books I picked up at the PAMLA conference, in Portland, this past October was Nanni Balestrini’s We Want Everything.” Hyperbole, quoted chirpily.

With the CFA’s call for a five day system-wide strike of the CSU by the faculty for the first week of the spring semester, however, I think it’s appropriate that I dust off an old piece that I banged out several years ago in the weeks before a strike ended up being called off at the last minute because the Chancellor’s Office decided that the right thing to do was to give us the cost-of-living increase we deserved..

This time the Cnacellor’s Office of the CSU system has decided that a five percent pay raise is sufficient to mitigate the erosion of our paychecks by the massive inflation of the past two years. The faculty bluntly disagrees. The CO is imposing a pay cut on us. Let’s make it clear that is exactly what is happening. The CO is not offering to increase our pay. Rather, the CO wants us to accept a pay cut.

BRAIN FACTORY

I’m striking at the brain factory
‘cuz the Chancellor’s refractory.
Five percent’s a drop in the bucket.
Seven percent barely cuts it.

The Chancellor loves to heap the praise
But clams up tight when we want a raise.
All we’re asking is the cost of living
To compensate for what we’re giving.

If knowledge is prosperity,
then why so much austerity?
Five percent is a drop in the bucket.
Seven percent barely cuts it.

I’m striking at the brain factory.
Sublime, intellectual glory
won’t buy a house or pay the rent.
It affords enough to buy a tent.

Five percent is a drop in the bucket.
We say COLA, and they say, “F–k it.”
I’m striking at the brain factory
‘cuz the Chancellor’s refractory.

“Vogliamo Tutto!”
“Vogliamo Tutto!”
“Vogliamo Tutto!”
“Vogliamo Tutto!”
“Vogliamo Tutto!”
“Vogliamo Tutto!”
“Vogliamo Tutto!”
“Vogliamo Tutto!”

*****************************************

(Reprint addendum)

Friday, December 22, 2023

One month from now, either a decent contract === or on strike!!! (SEE ABOVE)

The leadership of the California Faculty Association has called on the entire faculty at all campuses of the California State University system to go on strike during the first week of classes in the Spring semester, 2024. The CFA wants to obtain for both tenured and adjunct faculty a salary commensurate with the skills and knowledge we bring to the training of the future work force. The five percent pay raise offered by the Chancellor’s Office is a pathetic joke, given the extraordinary inflation that has undermined the purchase power of our income in the past eighteen months. The fact that inflation seems recently to have leveled off does not mean that faculty have somehow magically found themselves on an even economic keel again. We are still reeling from the enormous increases in everything from rent to food to car insurance. And many of us rent. How could we possibly afford to buy a house in Southern California, where almost half of the 450,000 students enrolled in the CSU system study.

Quite bluntly, what the CSU is offering amounts to a pay cut. There’s no other way to put it. In point of fact, the California Faculty Association is not asking for a pay raise. Instead, we want to put a stop to the constant erosion of our salaries; and if CO needs a reminder of why we do not trust them, let us consider how CSU faculty were promised a four percent raise after the last contract was voted on and approved by the CFA (though I myself voted “no,” since I suspected a double-cross was in the works). What happened to that four percent? Funny you should ask. It was reduced to three percent because the legislature and the governor thought that trimming one percent from the union approved agreement would send the CFA a signal of how little power they have. Well, we have no desire to be sucker-punched again and we intend to show you how much power we do have.

CSU faculty are of course not the only workers who have felt the impingements of inflation. Other workers have flexed their muscle, and the outcome has been a mitigation of the inroads that inflation has made on their income. As a quick review of other employers who have recognized the extent that inflation has hampered the ability of workers to make ends meet, here are some other results:

July, 2023
“United Airlines pilots will get immediate wage-rate increases of 13.8% to 18.7%, depending on the type of plane they fly, followed by four smaller annual raises”

Full-time United Parcel Service (UPS) drivers got at least a ten percent pay raise this year in their new five year contract.

Here is the pay raise schedule that was agreed upon by the United Teachers Los Angeles:
3% retroactive to July 1, 2022
4% retroactive to Jan. 1
3% effective July 1, 2023
4% effective Jan. 1, 2024
3% effective July 1, 2024
4% effective Jan. 1, 2025

Why should CSU professors accept only a five percent raise in 2023-2024 when a high school teacher is getting seven percent between July 1, 2023 and January 1, 2024? That raise is in addition to a retroactive raise meant to compensate teachers for the extraordinary amount of inflation in 2022-2023.

Once again, let me reiterate the actual jump in the cost of living.

CNN BUSINESS
“Inflation may be cooling — but drivers can’t seem to catch. break” by Elisabeth Buchwald, 8:08 a.m. August 12, 2023

“It will cost 19.5 percent more to repair your car now than it did a year ago, according to July’s Consumer Price Index report, released Thursday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. …. (C)ar insurance (is) up 17.8 percent from a year ago.”

The CO has claimed that it has “deep respect” for the work that faculty do, but that “rapidly escalating costs of operation” preclude any pay raise beyond five percent. Their recalcitrance has a long history. In my own case, even after a half-dozen years of work following my promotion to full professor, my actual income has only minimally budged from the salary I was offered when I was appointed an assistant professor at California State University, Long Beach in 2006. The effects of inflation over the past 18 years have been that devastating.

CSU Faculty have given the Chancellor’s Office a more than fair warning. This past semester included a one-day strike at four different campuses. Apparently, the CO believes that one day is the most that we are willing to walk on a picket line. We’ll see how things stand once the second week of classes start in late January and still no students are learning what they paid tuition for.

In the meantime, the money that was promised faculty as a very small raise starting in July, 2023 is five months overdue. Brotman Hall claims that it takes considerable time for each person’s paycheck to be calculated, but my guess is that by stalling the payment of this money, the CO has used the funds to invest in short-timer, high interest loans, thereby swelling its coffers through the use of money we have already earned.

In case you somehow think that the CO’s accountants don’t know how the capitalist game is played, think again. When students pay their fees in advance of the semester, that money doesn’t just sit around twiddling its manicured thumbs. That liquidity is used to make more cash ASAP. It’s the education business, and the business of education pays its administrators very well. Those who do the educating are asked to settle for “deep respect.”