Feeling pretty good here in the heat. Will read some more today and possibly write a draft or a line or not. Feeling free as usual when I am in El Paso, Texas. Will fly to Denver on the 27th.

Still reading AMERICAN HYBRID and liking some poems much more than others. For instance, I love Mary Jo Bang and John Ashbery though I have to use a dictionary sometimes to read Ashbery, but it's not overdone, just interesting enough to keep one reading and looking up words!

I was in a workshop once with Mary Jo Bang and she didn't react to my poems as though they were old hat at all; in fact she was quite encouraging, and I don't think they are paid to be so, so I think and suspect time will take care of cliques and patterns of exclusion and petty sidelining. I sure hope so. But for now, I have to learn how to stay in this very moment, no matter how much it is cramped with clutter. There's a beauty to clutter. I recently read Einstein's Three Rules of Work 1) out of clutter find simplicity 2) from discord find harmony and 3) In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.

People love power and bend a knee to it as if in prayer, but power corrupts and absolute power absolutely corrupts. To handle power responsibly is a task that is difficult, and if abused, I think in time there will be some karma handed out eventually. Those who have kissed the ass of power in order to get something, say publicity will have the stink of that to live with or not. Mostly they are blind to the smell on their own breath.

S used to say, "if you can see something, you can bet others see it too." And they do. I mean those that should see it are often blind to it, but others outside the cliquish community of favor-trading see it, they see it when they pick up a book and decide to read it or set it aside because it is dull and shallow.