I saw the poet Christian Bök read the other night and I have not yet digested the event. He appears to be a very nice person and this is not negligible. The work, although interesting, seemed clever but cold. Some of the things I appreciated were his interest in French avant-garde writers, which I share, … More Sound Poems, Digital Speech

El suertero que grita “La de a mil”, contiene no sé qué fondo de Dios. Pasan todos los labios. El hastío despunta en una arruga su yanó. Pasa el suertero que atesora, acaso nominal, como Dios, entre panes tantálicos, humana impotencia de amor. Yo le miro al andrajo, y él pudiera darnos el corazón; pero … More La de a mil

Today we were discussing images of the body in García Lorca. We stared in astonishment for several minutes at the Romance del emplazado or ballad of a man who has been given the precise date of his death. I believe this poem has been translated by Langston Hughes, but I found it translated by a … More Romance del emplazado

I. It is said that my great-great-grandfather had a Ph.D. from the Sorbonne and corresponded with Marx, and that this correspondence is archived in the Kremlin. That was long ago, before his school in St. Petersburg was closed by the Czar, and the family was saved from deportation to Siberia by a friend of my … More A Middle Class Story

“El secreto del arte es tener duende. El duende es el espíritu escondido de la España sin consuelo. Todo lo que tiene sonidos negros tiene duende. Estos sonidos son el misterio…” The secret of [this] art is to have duende. Duende is the hidden spirit of the inconsolable [part of] Spain. All that has black … More La señorita del abanico

I am too intellectual, it is said. That is a problem because the intellectual can never be personal, and the personal is what counts. I am hiding my face, and I ought to reveal myself. I disagree. It was my original intention in these pages to be as ethereal as Le Colonel Chabert. Cybernetic words … More On Masks

Federico García Lorca published this prose poem in the Revista de Occidente in November, 1927. It is beautiful and mysterious: A las doce de la noche llegué a la ciudad. La escarcha bailaba sobre un pie. “Una muchacha puede ser morena, puede ser rubia, pero no debe ser ciega.” Esto decía el dueño del mesón … More Santa Lucía y San Lázaro

. . . in the land of Mordor where the shadows lie (Tolkien). When Frodo Baggins threw the Ring into the fires of Mount Doom, the only place where it could be destroyed, the Shadow lifted. One year in late spring I found the Ring. Having it was exhilarating until early fall. I have been … More Shadow

There is always at least one student fascinated with One Hundred Years of Solitude. Today one such student said that in this novel, the characters are impelled to act according to a series of paradigms, with which they work but which they do not control. The containing and shaping influence of these paradigms does not … More One Hundred Years

I wanted, but did not have, an English version of Garcilaso’s canción To the Flower of Gnido. I wanted it for people like Stephen Bess, who has a poetic and artistic blog, and likes old texts, but does not read Spanish. I also wanted it out of mere curiosity, to see how such a translation … More On Odes and Songs