An interesting POV on the MFA debate.

Nicole Krauss: graceful, eloquent, thoughtful, careful - in her fiction, and in this article.

“[Borges] has a lot of thoughts about translation, even saying that it’s maybe a more advanced stage of the work.

He thought of translation as creation. … It’s a creative act. One could argue that much of writing is translation. Whether or not writers are conscious of it, they’re often riffing off other texts, whether it’s from another language or their own language. Borges is saying, time and again, that we’re always rewriting. It’s really more of an 18th-, 19th-century invention, this rigid distinction between translation and original writing. If you go back to Shakespeare, he was “borrowing” other texts and rewriting them. In ancient times, the Latin poets were translating the Greeks, but these translations were their own poetry at the same time. He’s showing the relativity of certain concepts, revealing prejudices we have. He makes us question every category that we presume is written in stone.”

This article is great - and he sums it up so well at its conclusion.

“In the world of books, all is contingency and serendipity. Books are much more than container vessels for ideas. They are very nearly living things, or at least are more than the sum of their parts.

Many books are screwy, a great many are dull, some are irredeemable, and there are way too many of them, probably, in the world. I hate all the fetishistic twaddle about books promoted by the chain stores and the book clubs, which make books seem as cozy and unthreatening as teacups, instead of the often disputatious and sometimes frightening things they are. I recognize that we now have many ways to convey, store, and reproduce the sorts of matter that formerly were monopolized by books. I like to think that I’m no bookworm, egghead, four-eyed paleface library rat. I often engage in activities that have no reference to the printed words. I realize that books are not the entire world, even if they sometimes seem to contain it. But I need the stupid things.”

LUST.

Except for the Paul Farley poetry, I wouldn’t have guessed that Paul Muldoon would be interested in any of these books. I love when someone takes me by surprise like that.