Creative Genius

Just a few minutes ago I was walking down the street with Waldo. I was in poor condition, feeling both physically and mentally down. Rafael Pérez Estrada saved me. Really, that's the power of poetry. I started bringing to mind some of his verses, but, what a luxury!, also recollections of his presence. Now I'm back home, and a jewel of a poem appeared at just the right moment. The poem is "Demasiadas cosas para un solo poema" ("Too many things for a single poem") and it's classic Rafael: our reality is overpopulated with wonder. In this poem the poetic voice is observing nuns and seagulls at the beach. He posits that they'll have to post a sign prohibiting so many nuns and gulls from flying around at the same time! The poem's central metaphor is compelling: "It's as if all the stars in the sky insisted on coming out on the same night." Saved again!

Summer Approaches

It's a beautiful morning in Carlisle. Summer is here, even if the calendar would have us wait a few more days. The bright light and green grass made me think of a favorite poem of mine, just three beautiful lines from Walt Whitman. It was first published in 1865 in Drum Taps, but, I just learned, as a mere two line poem. The third, crucial line was added in 1870:

A Farm-Picture

Through the ample open door of the peaceful country barn,

A sun-lit pasture field, with cattle and horses feeding;

And haze, and vista, and the far horizon, fading away.

Just listen to the wonderful rhythms of the first line, so nicely divided into two symmetrical halves of trochaic tetrameter. And he keeps changing it up. So the attractive sound qualities really contribute to the pastoral tranquility. It's summer, it's good, and we see an attractive, productive landscape. But the fading horizon is a touch ambiguous. A receding picture. Infinite? In any case, consider the perspective: this picture is described from inside the barn. We see out through the open barn door, which suggests a very "pictorial" frame. To me, that's one half of what the title is about. Our frame of reference is a peaceful country barn, and we are in it. Not a bad place to be on a hot summer day!

Sometimes these peaceful places may lead us to excessive pondering. I think I'd like my horizon to always be fading, but I fear it's coming closer. And sometimes the best I can manage is "it's o.k." Walt makes it easier.

Harmonies

"A poetic image of eternity, of order, symmetry, harmony..." I read these words this morning with great interest. Eternity, order, symmetry, and harmony: hey, it's what I'm after! The image referred to is the opening sequence of the famous "Shades" scene from the ballet La Bayadere. I became familiar with this ballet in 2007, when Daniela performed it with CPYB. (In 2008 we saw the complete ballet performed by Angel Corrella's company in their debut at the Royal Theatre in Madrid. The ballet was created by the great choreographer Marius Petipa, based on a score by Ludwig Minkus.) This morning it is the subject of Roslyn Sulcas' reflection in the New York Times. The first time I saw it I was completely enchanted and so now, having seen the ballet twice, I understand Sulcas' affirmation. You can watch the scene here, performed at the Paris Opera Ballet. The movement is slow and repetitive, and may strike some as simplistic, but it is no easy feat and for the dancers it requires tremendous strength, discipline, and pain-staking coordination. I guess what interests me is the group dynamic. Thirty-two dancers! (CPYB and other companies do this scene with twenty-four dancers.) That's harmony. Perfection! (I get a similar feeling with some of Jorge Guillén's poems, especially his décimas.) There is something somewhat otherworldly about this dance. And dreamlike.

Well, that's what I read this morning. Now it's time to get to work. Must prepare an exam. Yesterday too much time was spent cleaning up from Friday's damaging hail storm. Asun worked on the damage done to her vegetable garden, and I tried to repair some of the damage done here at home. This morning we just noticed the broken window panes in one of the carriage house windows. Ugghhh, more chores, more lack of perfection and harmony. The hail storm certainly did not suggest symmetry, but it sure was a poetic image. Perhaps of chaos, of cosmic anger. My head got clobbered! Some of the hailstones were pretty large and there sure were a lot of them! Incredibly, even though it was warm after the storm passed, there was still ice in the garden yesterday afternoon, twenty-four hours after the storm had passed.

Knowing How it Feels

Yesterday at the Whitaker Center, waiting to see "Cinderella's Ball", I noticed the art exhibit in the lobby area had the curious title: "Art as Emotion". Too obvious? What else can it be? Art as Intelligence, no doubt. Of course, this title presupposes, for me anyway, that by "art" we are referring not to the art object itself, but to the various relationships established between creator, creation, and whoever has a sensorial experience of some sort with the art object: seeing it, hearing it, touching it, etc. That's where the emotion comes in. One of the first works in the exhibition is a photo of a man taking a snapshot of three people standing just a few feet away. A very frequent, almost universally experienced scene: a nearly spontaneous family portrait. The people being photographed are clearly happy, you can just see in their expressions that being together is a good thing, an important time. And the photograph immediately transmitted to me a particular emotion: I could easily identify with the situation and I smiled, happily, grateful for the shared knowledge. Oh yes, I know exactly how that feels.

I don't know exactly what it could feel like to be a ballerina, but believe I possess sufficient imagination to take an educated guess. When a performance is going well, and the audience is clearly enjoying it, it must feel really good. You feel happiness, joy, excitment... It's all in the dance. In any case, we sure did get some powerful emotions during the performances, and one of them, pride, would not typically be present when experiencing art, but our particular circumstances in this case made that emotion inevitable. Daniela gave an inspired performance as Cinderella. I am often at a loss for words when trying to respond to some of the post performance comments. "Thank you"? Well, we'll just keep trying. Looking forward very much to today's final performance.

Cervantes, Shakespeare, Pacheco, Cilleruelo... Read a Book!

Friday, April 23rd, was El Día del libro, a significant day in Spain, and especially in Barcelona, where it is also the La Diada de Sant Jordi (St. George's Day), patron saint of Catalonia. In Alcalá de Henares, the beautiful university town outside Madrid, the King and Queen preside the Cervantes Prize ceremony, honoring a Spanish language author for the totality of his or her work. It is often referred to as the "Nobel of Spanish language letters". This year the winner was Mexican poet José Emilio Pacheco. Why April 23rd? On this date, 1616, the world lost two of the most singular creators ever to put pen to paper: William Shakespeare and Miguel de Cervantes. Quite a remarkable coincidence, and a fascinating albeit imperfect one: both Shakespeare and Cervantes died on April 23rd, 1616. But they died ten days apart. Excuse me?, you ask. Yes, in 1616 England was still using the Julian calendar, while Spain had already switched to the Gregorian calendar, initiated by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582. The switch has to do with a slight imperfection (about 11 minutes per year in the Julian calendar), resulting in the Spring equinox coming progressively earlier, and that became a problem for the Church because Easter is a movable feast. Anyway, Pacheco, a poet I've admired for years, was a great choice for this prize. (That's him, above.)

In Barcelona Sant Jordi is somewhat like Valentine's Day: men give their love(s) a rose, and the girls, ever since a bookseller came up with this wonderful marketing scheme in 1923, correspond by giving their guy(s) a book. Las Ramblas is awash in flowers and books! The Catalonians are to be greatly admired: they understand what's important! Barcelona, that's where friend José Angel Cilleruelo is, and he marked April 23rd with a nice little anecdote about Cervantes, presented here as a rushed translation:

José Angel Cilleruelo,

A Man of Action Reading

From the beginning it was believed Quijote was one thing and Cervantes something quite different. There were those who who went to great lengths to demonstrate the obvious, that Cervantes was as singular as his character. On deaf ears. At estate auctions rarely is a Quijote figure missing: framed, wooden, metal, miniature, as a bust... the variety of forms is enormous, as is the variety of gestures and postures. Today I find a surprising one: an armored Quijote, seated, book in hands, reading. There is no greater paradox: if don Quijote sat down to read, he wouldn't be Quijote, he'd be Cervantes.

Thank you, José Angel!

Botero and Abu Ghraib

This weekend I listened to an interesting conversation between Fernando Botero and former poet laureate Robert Hass. The occasion was Botero's series on Abu Ghraib, done in 2006. The drawings and paintings have been donated to the UC Berkely Art Museum, after Berkely, in 2007, became the first public institution in the US willing to show the paintings. Botero had previously been turned down by many museums. The paintings are quite powerful, and a powerful reminder of a shameful episode in American history. Some of the paintings can be seen at Slate.com. Why do so many people put blidners on? There is no hope for human dignity when you torture.

Dignity. Yesterday I went to visit a friend, an older woman who is living her last days. A very aggressive lung cancer is fast ravishing her body. She's in an out. But such dignity. Thank you Madelyn, for this beautiful lesson!

Youth, Divine Treasure

So begins Rubén Darío's wonderful poem, "Song of Spring in Autumn" ("Canción de primavera en otoño", published in 1905 in one of the XX century's greatest volumes of poetry, Cantos de vida y esperanza). But, ah, the second line: "you're already leaving, never to return!" Thankfully, there are always young people around, and that's the great advantage of my work: always being surrounded by youth. Like a bottomless treasure pit.

And it's certainly not just the poets celebrating youth: last night we watched the new film version of Jerome Robbins' 1958 masterpiece, "Export NY: Opus Jazz." The film was a project conceived by young New York City Ballet dancers Ellen Bar and Sean Suozzi, and featured Carlisle-area native and CPYB alum Adam Hendrickson. A great creative triumph for youth! Even the film directors are very young and I thought they did superb work. The film was presented on PBS as part of their Dance in America series. See this film!

So newness is on my mind this early spring morning. Newness and optimism, even as the drumbeat of violence continues unabated: today it's news of children (children!) in Philadelphia assaulting homeless people. The first stanza of Darío's beautiful poem:

¡Juventud, divino tesoro,

ya te vas para no volver!

Cuando quiero llorar, no lloro,

y a veces lloro sin querer...

In the photo, Jerome Robbins, young at heart.

Life is a Dream

Yesterday I was in New York with a group of Dickinson students to see Calderón de la Barca's La vida es sueño at Repertorio Español on 27th St. It was a fairly simple production, professionally performed. I don't mean that in a negative way, but the stage at Repertorio Español is very small and so the company has some imposing limitations on how the work can be imagined. One of the fascinating things about this production is the international character of the casting: lead roles were played by actors from Cuba, Venezuela, Spain, Argentina, and Puerto Rico. As a result, the varieties of Spanish heard created a sense of the grandness of the language. An enjoyment that has nothing to do with the work itself. Luis Carlos de la Lombana played Segismundo, the young prince has been cruelly imprisoned since early childhood by his cruel and superstitious father. I wasn't all together convinced by his performance. He gave a theatricality to Calderón's text that, for me, greatly diminished the baroque wonder of the verse. But it was an enjoyable afternoon. A lot of driving for one day, but worth it. In the photo, De la Lombana as Segismundo.

Paradox

I don’t have faith. I should modify that: I don’t have the faith, not the kind so admirably identified by Clara Beltrán, a young woman from Sevilla who has a big career ahead of her singing cante jondo, the “deep song”. Although I don’t share Clara’s faith, I am moved by it. Seems somewhat paradoxical. And her saeta can move one to tears. Feel that. As she herself says, when she sings to her Christ she tears up. She also says quite emphatically that it's all about feeling, feeling that comes from faith. And then with that single pronoun she identifies something essential about saetas and, I believe, about cante jondo generally: the heart of things, the esential questions, are made real when expresssed in personal, intimate terms. (On the other hand, it’s quite funny how she catches herself when she’s about to utter something about having to sing to Christ figures that don’t mean much to her. But she doesn’t quite say it. She was on the cusp of giving voice to an uncomfortable truth regarding holy week celebrations in Southern Spain: contrary to the logic of Christian dogma, there are intensely held personal preferences regarding the iconography. ¡No te metas con mi Virgen! Count me among the guilty!) Back to the saeta: the suffering is felt intimately. There is nothing superficial about it. The voice, the gestures, and above all, the centrality of the setting, propitiate the comunication of intensely felt emotions. Pain so horrible it threatens our very existence. Love so immense it can redeem all. Is any of this real? She can be seen and listened to on this youtube video. Anyway, I came across this video in the context of my composition course, in which we listened to a few of the songs from Miles Davis’ Sketches of Spain. One of the songs is titled Saeta, and I wanted to give them some context, so that’s where Clara comes in. The point of listening to Miles was to talk about cultural borrowings. We didn’t get far in that conversation, but we’ll come back to it. (Above, "La chiquita piconera" by Julio Romero de Torres.)

Fidel and Franco, two gallegos

Fidel will die and thousands of Cubans will pay homage. Fidel, the beloved! The leader! O, now we are orphaned. It won't be like the death of Franco, when, the legend goes, you could here the pops of the cava bottles being opened all over Barcelona. Newspapers around the world will print long obituaries. Novelists and experts on Cuba will weigh in. But before long things will change, and so too will opinions of Fidel. Soon, it will seem that almost no one had ever believed in him after all. Things will get better. There will be little nostalgia for the old days. But there will be some of a very predictable kind. People will say, "with Fidel this never happened". Crime, corruption, scandals of all kind. In fact, all those things did happen, but they weren't reported. Kind of like with Franco. The other day I was reading Granma, Cuba's official state newspaper, run by the Communist Party. I read an article about energy shortages and energy rationing. The double speak is fantastic. But not all the reporting is like that: some of the articles do seem to "play it straight" and now and then you can even find something that's critical. In any case, it can be interesting once in a while to get a glimpse into a rather different world. I guess I'm thinking about this because this past week I read two excellent autobiographies by Cuban writers who were imprisoned and tortured by Castro: Reinaldo Arenas (Before Night Falls, published in 1992) and Heberto Padilla (Self-Portrait of the Other, published in 1990). Both writers include detailed descriptions of their hellish experiences with Cuba's "State Security" apparatus. I can complain about the cold and snow, but I'm not really complaining. If I were really to whine about anything it would be worse than an embarrassment. I wouldn't be able to hold my head up.

"Ah de la vida..."

The past few days I've had Francisco de Quevedo's famous sonnet "Represéntase la brevedad de la vida..." on my mind. It begins "¡Ah de la vida!... ¿Nadie me responde?" (Translated be Alix Ingber as "Calling Life! And no one answers me?") Yes, any one out there? Quevedo was a truly fascinating character of 17th century Spain. Polemicist, satirist, brilliant, curious, outrageous... a real baroque figure for a baroque time. He was full of contradictions. In his 1641 essay "God's Providence", a kind of late Scholastic text, Quevedo seems to reveal his own agnosticism: the text is directed at atheists and attempts to "prove" rationally the immortality of the soul. But he was a smart guy. It's hard for me to imagine he really believed it. In any case, maybe I was reminded of Quevedo when I came across the Out Campaign earlier this week: an initiative led by noted atheist Richard Dawkins to get atheists to "come out of the closet" (but no 'outing' other atheists). The link to the website is here. My brain is quite limited, but I keep coming back to the big bang. Didn't there have to be a "match" of some kind? Something to ignite this process? Isn't that the divinity? But that isn't much consolation is it? It seems that force could care less about our fate. A new metaphor: God is driving down the interstate smoking a cigarette. He tosses the butt out the window and it lands on a puddle of gasoline in a very dry field. Kaboom! The fire is HOT, and sets off quite a chain reaction... But God is long gone, isn't aware of the fire... He never turns back. Well, at least I've advanced a little bit: I now understand that metaphors of this sort are no good to the extent that there is no "time" before the big bang. So the idea of "God coming down the highway..." just doesn't work. It was actually a video I came across that gave a visual representation of Einstein's insights into the space/time relationship in the General Relativity theory that helped me finally begin to grasp this concept. By the way, Quevedo was a drunk. I can imagine.

Who Should Pay for Culture?

That's the question that underlies an article in this morning's Times that uses as its starting point a promise from Britain's Conservative Party shadow Culture Minister to introduce a "US-style culture of philanthropy" if the Tories come to power. They are trembling in Paris: Sarkozy might be listening. This question of who pays for the arts avoids a question that perhaps it would be healthy to return to with some regularity: why should the arts be subsidized at all? Yes, the arts should be subsidized. And generously. Societies that devote significant energy to the creative arts are healthier, happier societies. Can you be a good citizen without some artistic sensibility? (No!) On the other hand, bureaucratic control of the arts can do great harm. Cultural institutions should be privately controlled and, in select cases, publicly subsidized. (Oh boy, doesn't this sound just a little too earnest?! Quick, someone tell a joke! Here's one: Glenn Beck.) Well, I'll take the middle road on this one: tax benefits for private funding of the arts (and education) should be a no brainer; direct public financing has a place too, and, in the case of the US, should be substantially increased.

Avatar vs. Carmen

Last weekend we went to see Avatar at the multiplex up the street. It's great entertainment, incredibly rich visually. It's a pretty long film, but to me didn't seem so. We left the cinema happy and satisfied. Yesterday we went again to a multiplex, but this time to Harrisburg, and for the purpose of seeing a live simulcast of Carmen from the Met. Wow! I've never been a big opera fan and have only gone to see professional opera a few times in my life. I've never been to the Met. But in a sense, yesterday we had a more close up experience than anyone who was actually at the theater. The technology is stunning. The audio is excellent and the HD cameras bring you amazing detail and close up focus. I'll take this over a film any day. The production: above all, the Latvian soprano Elina Garanca in the title role. Olé, Elina! This girl has it all. What a voice! And what acting! She owned that stage. (In that regard, and certainly in that regard only, she reminded me of another performer I love to see on stage...) Roberto Alagna as don José was fantastic. Of course, I don't know anything about opera and so maybe it would have all seemed wonderful to me regardless of who was performing. This new production also included some dancing, created by renowned choreographer Christopher Wheeldon. Interesting, but I don't think it added anything significant. (The New York Times review of the season's first performance is here.) After the show I found myself thinking about the technology that makes this possible and its general implications for culture. It's just another example of a potential democratizing force: now, the greatest manifestations of high culture can be experienced by just about anyone, potentially, almost anywhere. You don't have to go to New York (or Paris or London) to see the great artists of the day perform. Yes, it's true, it is not the same as being at a live performance, but it sure is an extremely high quality and worthy experience. This is nothing like, for example, seeing a video on a smallish tv screen. And it's a lot cheaper, too. More expensive than going to a movie, but a lot less than the cost of going to NY. So, Avatar or Carmen? I'll take Carmen, without a doubt. (We saw several familiar faces at the theater, and Asun ran into a former colleague. It was a typical friends of friends linked to colleagues, neighbors, etc. situation.) We ended up having a really lovely time with a fun and ecclectic group: people from Spain, Mexico, the US, and Latvia. Amazingly, our new Latvian friend, Linka, a professional pianist, has a direct connection to Elina Garanca: she gave lessons to Elina's mother. Small world! I have a feeling Elina is on her way to becoming an international megastar. That's her, above, in the photo.

Warhol meets Van Dyck

Last night I read an interesting essay in The New Yorker about Andy Warhol. The essay, by Louis Menand, reviews Warhol's career and reevaluates his role in the emergence of Pop Art. (Actually, one of the most fascinating details for me was the bit of outrageous moralizing performed by Time magazine on the occasion of the shooting suffered by Warhol at the hands of a paranoid schizophrenic in 1968: "Americans who deplore crime and disorder might consider the case of Andy Warhol, who for years has celebrated every form of licentiousness. Like some Nathanael West hero, the pop-art king was the blond guru of a nightmare world, photographing depravity and calling it truth. He surrounded himself with freakily named people–Viva, Ultra Violet, International Velvet, Ingrid Superstar–playing games of lust, perversion, drug addiction and brutality before his crotchety cameras... As he fought for life in a hospital, pals insisted that he had not brought it on himself." Oh my! Little Andy brought down Western Civilization all by his lonesome!

In reading the essay I was reminded of a comment I heard a choreographer make recently regarding the "difficulty" of appreciating contemporary dance. I'm paraphrasing: 'people, stop intellectualizing! Do you like it? If so, great. There's nothing to understand and there won't be a test after the performance.' But, beginning with Abstract Expressionism, painting does become about intellectualizing. (Of course, the visual arts have always involved conceptual considerations, but in the second half of the XX century the dominant trend becomes a kind of self-immolation: look? see: Nothing here!) There often isn't much to look at. Inside jokes. No one needs to go to a museum to see a big monochrome canvas. It's just as well, and more convenient, to simply have it described for you. Now, Van Dyck. That's another matter. His Portrait of Frans Snyders is a masterpiece I could contemplate again, and again, and again. (The zoomable image available at the Frick Museum website is a wonder! How it brought me back to my encounter with Snyders at the museum: Aldrich, I am me. Who are you? I think! Do you think? What do we share?!) The notion that one's face is a window to the soul is affirmed with such mastery. When I contemplate a work such as this it performs the healthy miracle of handing me a most useful illusion: that I actually know something of what it is to be human. Velázquez performs the same miracle, but with a style and technique that seems to me quite noticeably different. Velázquez, too, reaches for the soul, and never more so than in the self-portrait he incorporates into Las Meninas. I can imagine a conversation between Van Dyck, Velázquez, and Warhol. Van Dyck and Velázquez would want to talk about craft, but Andy might keep pushing things towards Kraft. Above, Van Dyck's portrait. (Another day, I would like to consider the paired portrait Van Dyck did of Margareta Snyders, Frans' wife.)

The Frick

Yesterday I made my first ever visit to the Frick Museum in New York. Score that a ten for the wow factor. What a collection! Three incredible Ver Meers. Two astounding Turners. One of Velázquez's most impressive large scale portraits of Philip IV, El Greco's portrait of St. Jerome*, and a long etc. And that's just the painting! We didn't have time to really absorb the sculptures, the room designs, furniture, etc. I'd like to go back on my next visit to New York, for we only had time for a superficial, 90 minute visit. Daniela seemed to enjoy her class at the School of American Ballet and thought it went well. While we waited Asun and I had a very pleasant conversation with a woman whose daughter was also there. She and her husband have a dairy farm near Kutztown, PA and it was quite interesting to talk about that and about the efforts they have made to allow their daughter to engage her passion. The girl is seventeen now and studying with Peter Boal out in Seattle. Speaking of whom, the Pacific Northwest Ballet is in New York this week. Unfortunately last night's show at the Joyce Theatre was sold out, so after the visit to the Frick we went back to the car and headed back for Carlisle.

*And speaking of Jerome, Jay Ohlsten and I will be collaborating this year on a future, prize winning play, a tragicomic drama of everything. Jay is as yet unaware of this. Well, he is, but he doesn't know he is. It is a matter of his unaware awareness. More soon!

Vertigo

Make sure you see the film Man on Wire. (It's currently on demand on the Sundance Channel if you have Comcast cable.) What a great way to start the new year. It's an excellent documentary about the French artist Phillippe Petit and his famous tight-rope walk between the World Trade Center towers in 1974. Fascinating, funny, dramatic. It's a really compelling story and the film is marvelously done. Petit is quite a character, and his enthusiasm tremendously endearing. Cristina made a great observation: there is almost no way that kind of genius could flourish today in our society because right away children like Petit would be diagnosed as ADD and put on medications. (Petit was an overly rambunctious child, was expelled from a number of schools, ran away from home, etc.) Then again, that kind of extreme daring-do does raise interesting questions. At what point should intervention take place? (In the case of Petit, he was very clearly at serious risk of killing himself.) How many risks should we allow our children to take? Are we overprotective? The answer to this last question is, unequivocally, yes, certainly we are, generally speaking, overprotective. Let's conform less and be more creative. Not a bad new year's resolution!

Books

In today's New York Times (online vesion) you can listen to six writers read brief excerpts from books that are essential to them. These are books they would never get rid of. (This being the end of the year, the notion of culling our bookshelves is present...) I'd never heard of three of the six authors (Frederick Exley, Scott Spencer, and Robert Burton.) And I'd never heard of four of the six writers asked to read. The link is here. In any case, books are books and I am forever plagued by the anxiety that I don't have time to read all the "important" ones. For whatever reason, I was intrigued by one of the selections, and, oh the joys of Google, within a couple of minutes my curiosity was satisfied. The selection was Frederick Exley's A Fan's Notes, chosen by David Matthews. Exley was mentally ill and alcoholic, and A Fan's Notes his first, and most successful novel. It's basically an autobiography. I read a review at bookslut.com. I don't think I'll read it. I'm not big on self-obsession, and Exley, from the very little I've read, sounds quite self-obsessed.

These days I've been juggling several different readings, including Daniel Boorstin's The Creators, which has been on my bookshelf for many years. I've picked it up often, never having made it through more than a few chapters at a time. I've had many failed attempts at keeping lists of all my readings. (They often begin in January.) Yesterday it occurred to me that perhaps I need to try a different way of categorizing my lists. Maybe I should make the list first: here are all the books I should read... then go about checking them off one by one. Maybe... In the photo, Frederick Exley. Finally, in looking for the photo, I came across this interesting reflection by writer and journalist Alan Bisbort: I drink...)

The Milkmaid

No question one of the highlights of our visit to NY this weekend was the exhibit organized around Vermeer's famous painting "The Milkmaid", on exceptional loan to the Met from Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum. It's a marvel to behold, and it was a real treat to be able to see it on its next to last day in New York. The painting was displayed along with the five Vermeers in the Met's collection (of thirty-six total known to have been painted by the master.) It was fun to have Cristina explain the painting to us. I was unaware of its participation in a well established genre tradition rich with sexual allusion. It's not just about the incredible realism. It seems that by the time Vermeer came around the tradition was very well established and he could be quite subtle in how his work participates in it. For example, the very small image of Cupid on a tile, in the lower right part of the canvas, is suggestive of the milkmaid's positive disposition towards romance. Perhaps she's got something on her mind besides baking. Or perhaps the spectator does. I was overwhelmed by the painting's detailed realism, in particular, the illusion of movement created by the milk coming out of the jar. The colors, too, are strking. I'd like to read more about Vermeer's life and work. I'd also like to go back and see the film Girl with a Pearl Earring. There's a lot more to write about this painting, and in another entry I'll get to that and to some of the other wonders contemplated on this visit, but right now I'm just too tired and there is work to be done.

The End of Poetry Week

Semana Poética VIII is history. It was tiring, but also a lot of fun. There were some excellent readings, memorable conversations, new friendships... overall I feel really good about it. We had poets with tremendously different works and backgrounds together here at Dickinson... They met us, one another, met with our students... There was one moment on Wednesday night that captured this organized chaos beautifully. Isabel Pérez Montalbán (Spain) and Lev Rubinstein (Russia) had just finished their reading in front of a big audience (over 150 people, that's a lot for a poetry reading). Neither Isabel nor Lev speak English. A student asks a question directed at both of them. The interpreters jump in. There was a funny moment, the poets huddled at the ends of a long table with their interpreters. Muffled mumbling. Smiles. Spanish. English. Russian. English. Back and forth... For many students simply hearing a language they don't understand is a new experience. To sit through a reading, following the translations in the printed booklet or up on the big screen I'm sure gets some of them thinking about language. They've opened up the possibility of learning not taking language for granted. That is, to consider (again, always...) that language needs to be challenged. More importantly: how we use language must always be challenged. Is that really what me mean? Can we say it better? More precisely? Is there any thought there or is it just mumbo jumbo? Does this person know what he/she is talking about? We finished Thursday night with a big paella. (Thank you, Mike, Chris, Tsveti, and Dan!) I made it for close to sixty and there were not more than 45 guests, but they didn't leave anything behind. Nothin'. I guess they like it. In any case, we had lots of fun.

Herta Müller

This year's Nobel Prize for Literature was certainly a surprising choice. It seems they almost always are, especially in recent years. I met Hera Müller when she came to Dickinson for a residency back in 1996. Very quiet. And, happy coincidence, we are publishing some of her poems in the upcoming issue of SIRENA, which should have been out this week. (It did arrive, just now: beautiful! And we use one of Müller's poems, a cut-and-paste word collage, for the cover art; quite lovely.) Anway, Jorge Sagastume and I were asked for an article for the Harrisburg Patriot News. Here's the link to the article on the Romanian-born writer.