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Found time (found poems, found stories)
If I’m careful on my class prep/writing days, I can just fit in a run between the time when I get too stiff to sit at the computer any longer and the time I need to pick my son up from school. (If I’m overwhelmed or disorganized, I end up working up to the last…
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Teachable moments: vosotros and thou
Every spring, the U. of Oregon hosts some 1500 high school language students and their teachers for Foreign Languages and International Studies Day (FLIS). They attend performances and short workshops on folksongs, food, poetry, jokes, family life, handy vocabulary for getting lost, for not getting lost. . . the list goes on (on the UO…
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Travel Journal (Peru, 1987)
Today, for the second time this week, I saw a hummingbird perched on one of the spindly maples by the jogging trail. They haven’t graced the white-flowering currants in my yard this spring the way they have in past years, so perhaps they’ve moved. The currants are nearly done blooming by now. Maybe it’s just…
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Dappled praise
I was going to write about mixed-language stage plays today, and I may get to that (if not, stay tuned–it’s one of my ongoing preoccupations, sure to reappear), but dabbling around, sampling other people’s blogs, I came across the Poetry Society of America‘s request that people share via Twitter the line of poetry that first…
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Underlining: an irresistibly unreliable narrator talks about art
The Topless Tower, Silvina Ocampo’s long story/novella, translated by James Womack (London: Hesperus Worldwide, 2010) is the tale of 9-year-old Leandro’s unexpected entrapment and eventual redemption. Leandro mixes first and third person, sometimes inside his story, sometimes beside it, almost always inside the tower that he both suffers and creates. It’s a story about writing…
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Wish you were here. . .
My bookstore find this week: two small, square books of reprints of 19th and early 20th century postcards from Argentina, landscapes and gauchos, good tourist fodder. Some are black and white, others tinted in pastel shades that bathe the mountains in a perpetual sunrise or sunset. The backs of the cards aren’t reproduced, but some…
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Play language in play
I learned Spanish as a kid, but maybe I was a little too old for some things. I never learned the Spanish equivalent of Pig Latin. Until recently, I never even thought much about the fact that such pretend or play languages must exist in many home languages. Of course they do–in Spanish, French, Javanese, Portuguese.…
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Variations on a steamed-cake theme
On Sunday, I made quimbolitos for a dinner party. Quimbolitos are one of my all-time favorite Ecuadorian delicacies, a rich (eggs, cheese, lard), not-too-sweet cornflour cake steamed in achira leaves. Getting the flavor right brings an instant memory burst of family adventures (and misadventures), close friends, afternoon sunlight, possibility. . . all worth, to…
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Time and Place: Past/Present/Spring/Fall
I’ll be teaching in Rosario in the fall. I always say “fall” when I announce this plan, though it will be spring in Argentina. It is almost impossible for me to think of October as anything other than autumn–I can imagine the month with different weather than that of Oregon or Michigan, but it’s hard…
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Tasting Notes
Over Valentine’s Day weekend, to vary the admittedly delicious but oft-repeated wine and chocolate theme, I was invited to put together a writers’ event for Winter’s Hill Vineyard. We settled on the theme, “Word and Wine Tasting,” and set out–tongue firmly in cheek–to prepare tasting notes that might pair our readings with suitable wines. We…