A student gave me Adrienne Rich’s poem “Planetarium” on astronomer Caroline Hershel, because of feminist identification and because I had been an important professor. I did not know the poem and liked it because I take seriously the relationship between earth and sky. The reproductions I found were not laid out visually in the attractive … More “The skies are full of them”
Oficios menudos Considerando detenidamente la construcción moral de un gran pueblo se puede observar que lo que se llama «profesiones conocidas o carreras» no es lo que sostiene la gran muchedumbre; descártense los abogados y los médicos, cuyo oficio es vivir de los disparates y excesos de los demás; los curas, que fundan su vida … More Modos de vivir que no dan de vivir
Of Agamben, I was going to read the author as gesture. So I have remembered. I am looking through my files and finding my things. I once printed and wrote on this article by S. P. Guimarães, and kept the copy for years as I waited to work with it. I am going to take … More A modernidade negra
There is value in his prologue to the Ayacucho edition of Vallejo. I have a photocopy of this prologue in a file that I never look at, and the Chávez government (apparently) put all the Ayacucho books online for free, but I do not trust the permanence of that. I may buy a used copy … More Enrique Ballón Aguirre
What is a good literary or poetry magazine, in French, that publishes translations and that is not terribly hard to get into? One of my undergraduates has published translations to English in Alchemy (a translation journal for students) and Tripwire (a poetry journal, not just for students), and I know of many other places to … More A serious question, and lagniappe
Our luck has changed and the tide is turning, I can feel it. I have had this feeling once before that I can identify clearly–something was happening, I did not know what it was, but it was good, I knew–and I recognize it now. Axé.
Our library actually owns a copy of this book by Guillermo de Torre, so I am recycling my xeroxed pieces of it. These sorts of items I like to keep around me, as they are mementos of my love for the field and of my innocence, in the time before I thought I must renounce … More La aventura estética de nuestra edad
I would not frame the discussion in terms of success and failure, instructions for success, but I think this post gets closer to a useful discussion of how to do an academic job than do most in the genre. The activities it discusses are, of course, the ones that interest me and also interested me … More Pour penser
It is as though we had been through a long war and it were finally over, and we had had losses but had won, were in a position to pick up our lives again. Perhaps we have been through a long war that is now over, have had losses but have won, and are in … More La fin
I was saying things about academia, how I dislike it because it requires you to renounce the things you love most about it. That is about working at institutions that work against your programs, of course, and I won’t say this is not a real problem, and that it is not highly irritating. But “renouncing … More On giving up what you love most
coldhearted scientist وداد 