The Plan

This summer I did much less work (in the way of writing epic poetry) than I had hoped. Therefore there is now a plan to force more work to be done during the school year. I will go either into the woods or the meditation chapel (depending on weather and caprice) with no books (luckily most of the time I negelcted to work on writing was spent doing some serious studying) except perhaps a book of fine poetry that can get me engaged in the task of poetry but not in the book itself (e.g. Rilke's Sonnets would prove helpful because they are overflowing at most every point but still very short, but Paradise Lost would likely absorb too much time by making me need to see more clearly how it overflows throughout the complexities of its geography).

I hope to do this for most of the day every saturday that I am available (possibly setting out after a light brunch), and also whenever time allows for shorter expeditions during the week.

Earlier today I read Jean-Luc Nancy's Hegel: The Restlessness of the Negative. It was very short but intense all the way through. There was very little reference to texts, and the reading was rather radical. Still, I think I would probably recommend it. Eventually I guess there will have to be some brilliant reading of Hegel that will bring in elements both of the negative that refuses to stop at any set point, and of the more traditional image of the synthesizer. Hegel is not the mad system builder he was once thought to be, but he is still sytematic. Nancy's reading didn't ignore this completely, but gave short shrift to the aspects of Hegel that aren't immediately appealing to postmodernism. Thus concludes my half-assed review.