I moved this week and brought only two boxes of books with me! For a word-hoard-er, that‘s an accomplishment. Especially when around half the books were ones I really do reference and need with me as I study for my oral exams. The other box was almost exclusively volumes of English-language poetry, my native language … More Take me back to poet land: on Harryette Mullen’s “Fancy Cortex”
“You’re a polyglot? Oh! How many languages are you fluent in?!” I suspect most who are called or call themselves polyglots usually get this response when they reveal themselves. I certainly do, and it drives me crazy. It reflects a certain instrumental view of languages as objects or tools to accumulate. Polyglots “pick up” languages quickly … More Languages *are* Instruments: Musical Ones
I am not your typical atypical polyglot. I thrived in traditional language classes in school—so I thought, so my grades and all the adults around me insisted. I also sensed and said, from pre-K to now, “I hate school AND I love learning.” I’ve always had a keen love of hyperbole and stubbornly simple declarations–but there’s a … More Polyglottery: from my life’s soundtrack to its main act
Some of my most memorable, and thus powerful, learning experiences in languages and humanities have come from imitation. In a college literature class on the English Metaphysical Poets, I had the opportunity to write a poem imitating John Donne’s “A Valediction Forbidding Mourning” and reflect on my process, defending how it was an imitation, instead … More To create, imitate
“Proportions alternate between infinitesimal and astronomical. The signals are infinitesimal. The sources are astronomical. The sensitivities are infinitesimal. The rewards are astronomical. The human ambition to understand the universe is merely epic, and astronomical trumps epic.” – Janna Levin in Black Hole Blues My father, the wonder-full layman, and I, the one who broke … More Scholar, would you tell me a story?
Ich fürchte mich. (So haben wir alle einmal gedacht.) Atmen. So beginnt hier die Alltagsprobe. Fange du an. Doch. Doch! Bitte. Bitte. Fangen wir an, So einstimmig wie möglich. Auch wenn es für Anfänger eigentlich nicht sehr möglich ist. Schweigen. Atmen. Ein. Szene: Selbstbewusstsein Ich bin ganz lieb, sagte ich ernst. Du, die Deutsch besser … More Wir sind alle Proben Mitleiter hier (unbearbeitet von 28 Juli 2019, als ich mit Deutsch anfing)
(28 Juli 2019 nach einem Jahr Deutsch geschrieben / bearbeitet 30 Juli 2020) Die Orange der Baukegel gegen dem grauen Abendhimmel Ein Bild davon vorsichtig, genau, lange anschauen, allein im Rotlicht der Dunkelkammer Liebevoll den Stuhl spüren—Er ist gut gemacht. Vielleicht du auch. Feste Fläche. Der Boden. Auf einer leeren Bühne still sitzen und gut … More Inventar einiger erinnerungswürdiger und hilfreicher Dinge immer uns dabei
