week week week week

Actually just "week." One week before I leave Utah. Or go to Chicago. Whichever way you want to look at it.
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I have a place to live. And a roommate. And apparently a fondess for conjunctions.
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Symposium on Poetics on Friday. Featuring Kim Johnson, Jay Hopler, Susan Howe, Lance Larsen, and Paisley Rekdal. In seating order, of course. And my favorite quotes. Ever.

Larsen: "All we can do is filch or fabricate [our poetics]. All lyric poems are one."

Howe: "my poetry operates cynically"

Hopler: "my poems tend to be smarter than I am"

Hopler quoting James Tate: "If you're not surprised by the poem, the reader's not surprised by the poem."

Johnson: The function of poetry is to "redeem the unrepresentable in the world".

Hopler: "the inevitable fall [down the page]"

Larsen/Johnson: The poem itself ought to be its own experience/world and follow its own rules. It casts a shadow on this world.

Hopler: Language has to be beautiful in a way the world cannot be.

Hopler: What a poem is about is the least interesting thing about a poem.

Johnson: When I start with those four words, I assume the poem is already there.