This is the fourth installment of our mysterious text. Once again, what I present here is a very rough draft. It could use comments. In the cathedral people were celebrating the solemn novena to the human eyes of St. Lucy. The exterior of things was being glorified, the clean, well ventilated beauty of the skin, … More St. Lucy and St. Lazarus IV

This translation is getting harder, and it needs annotation as well. Here, however, is the third section. It could use comments. I started doing the translation because I was not sure I understood the original. I then found that in order to make the text marginally readable in English, I must also stray on purpose … More St. Lucy and St. Lazarus III

This post is going to be in Spanish, so if you do not read that exalted language, you are invited instead to read It’s Not You, It’s Your Apartment, on the horrors of dating poor housekeepers. Do not overlook the comments thread. More serious English language entertainment can be found in the abstracts of two … More El archipiélago de la vanguardia

Saint Lucy was a beautiful young girl from Syracuse. She is painted with two magnificent ox eyes on a tray. She suffered martyrdom under the consul Pascasian, who had a silver mustache and howled like a mastiff. As do all saints she posed and resolved delicious theorems, before those whose plate glass windows the apparatuses … More St. Lucy and St. Lazarus II

I have begun to translate this long prose poem, a text I discovered by chance. I got a new Research Insight from it, which I think I should work on for other venues. But it was the first time in a long time I had had this type of Research Insight: a spontaneous one. Lately … More St. Lucy and St. Lazarus I

“In a lonely cabin on the frontier, I, Clinton Rollins, attempting no literary style, pass the time by penning my memories. And as an old man my thoughts wander back: The things that happened fifty years ago… Spanish-Americans I have known — whom I have grown to like… And that warm, sweet, green odor of … More With Walker in Nicaragua

A Macedonio Fernández En busca de la tarde fui apurando en vano las calles. Ya estaban los zaguanes entorpecidos de sombra. Con fino bruñimiento de caoba la tarde entera se había remansado en la plaza, serena y sazonada, bienhechora y sutil como una lámpara, clara como una frente, grave como un ademán de hombre enlutado. … More La Plaza San Martín

Nick Cave’s entire lecture The Secret Life of the Love Song is available on line in full text. Everyone should read it, as it is a classic. Normally I would post some actual music of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds with this announcement, but I only like Nick Cave as a spoken word artist. … More Secret Life of the Love Song

I have very elaborate dreams and I had one of my most academically successful ones the morning of my first Ph.D. exam. It was in the adventure quest genre. At the very end I was able to snatch the golden key from the beak of the eagle. I woke up knowing I would write a … More Academic Dreams

Paul Dresman’s The Silver Dazzle of the Sun is a brilliant book of very well distilled poetry, with Southern California as one of its major backdrops. Today we have what we call “California weather,” meaning 75 dry degrees in a cloudless sky with high, bright white light. On a winter day back home the sun … More Silver Dazzle