i myself have become interested in kate hudson's post-baby abs. i think it comes from going to see saving helen or whatever it is called in l.a. over the weekend and being weirded out by its christian subtext. is there a relationship b/t post-baby abs of steel and the movie?

otherwise, all my reading has been academic. most of it about Primitivism.

but i did read sven lindqvist's exterminate the brutes. interesting. it mixes the personal with the history around conrad's heart of darkness. isn't as stunning, i think, as his history of bombing but i grew more and more fond of this book as i read further into it (which often doesn't happen). the ending has this discussion of darwin mixed in with his dreams. very strange space. the book begins with him going out into the desert but it isn't really developed why and risks having the desert be exotic space. this bothered me at first, especially weird passage about lifting weights, but the more i read, the more i forgave him the desert which worried me at first.

for this workshop i've been going to in l.a. (on poetry and politics and pedagogy) read pasquale verdicchio's translation of pasolini's the savage father. it is a screenplay that was never produced. tells the story of a white schoolteacher who goes to africa and then of the slaughter of some u.n. forces by one of the students. interesting take on the complicated redemptive power of poetry. i haven't figured the whole thing out yet. how it does and does not fall into those patterns of how white people talk about africa. it is well worth reading and has gotten very little attention.

QUESTION FOR ANY/every/ONE: i want to make a list of reserve materials on poetics for the graduate workshop that will stay on reserve semester after semester. a sort of casual and ever expanding reader on poetics. so i want to know what articles/statements/manifestos you think should be on reserve.