Sometime in early October I'm scheduled to give a lecture on work by Sam Cornish. At this point, the primary text (Folks Like Me) will be situated between work by Hayden and by Baraka, the ramifications of which I haven't thought through fully (yet). I've taken a closer look at the poems in Folks and I keep returning to a knotty set of issues: What are the varied conceptions of "race" at play in the text and how do these conceptions challenge one's assumptions about "freedom"? With a poetics that is tuned to Marxist theory rather than that of post-structuralism, does the text--which is, in part, a cacophony of historical voicings--take issue with Gates' notion that "race" is indeed a "dangerous trope," (Henry Louis Gates, Jr. in the editor's introduction to "Race," Writing, and Difference) keeping in mind that poetics itself--poetics as such--engages the conception of "freedom," a conception that may very well be read as a kind of "dangerous trope." This is the general point from which I've begun my closer listening to the poems. If I could figure out how to get blogger to post with a tabbed lineation I'd put up a couple of pieces for you to read. At the moment, though, I need to finish S/Z and get some sleep. Adieu.