A study in Latin American poetry

This quarter I am doing an independent study in Latin American Poetry. I am using this wonderful bilingual anthology which includes poems from throughout Latin America from pre-columbus to present. In the study I read the poetry and submit an analysis every week to the professor in spanish and this morning I am working on my first piece. I am analyzing a poem by a Venezuelan poet/philosopher/educator named Simón Rodríquez. He was somewhat obsessed with the concept of writing as painting ideas which I think is beautiful and compelling. Here is an excerpt from his poem Luces y virtues sociales/Social Virtues and Illuminations:

FORMA que se da al DISCURSO

Pintando

las ideas elementales= en Paradigma

los pensamientos=en Sinópsis

La LENGUA y la MANO

son los dotes mas preciosos del hombre (observa Buffon)

Entiéndase aquí con respeto á la

INTENCIÓN DE INSTRUIR

No se trata de la importancia de la Palabra

porque

no hay quien no la conozca

La Importancia de su PINTURA

la conocen pocos bien

muchos….ni piensan en ella

no obstante.

Se puede PINTAR sin HABLAR

pero no HABLAR sin PINTAR

Los JESTOS son un BOSQUEJO

de lo que la mano

no puede dibujar por falta

de medios o de tiempo.

JESTICULAR es pintar EN EL AIRE

En el discurso hablado

como

en el escrito debe hablar

conexión de Ideas y

conexión de pensamientos

In English:

SHAPE given to DISCOURSE

Painting

Elementary ideas= into Paradigm

Thoughts= into synopsis

The TONGUE and the HAND

are humanity's most precious gifts (notes Buffon)

Hereby understood with regard to the

INTENTION TO INSTRUCT

It concerns not the importance of the Word

for

none knows it

The Importance of its PAINTING is well known by a few

most...don't even think of it

nonetheless

One can PAINT without SPEAKING

but not SPEAK without PAINTING

GESTURES are a SKETCH

of what the hand for lack of means

cannot draw or of time

GESTURING is painting IN THE AIR

in spoken discourse

as

in the written one should speak

connection of Ideas and

connection of thoughts

Wintertime cozy

As the days get shorter and colder, I have been trying out new ways to be cozy. I have had some successes and some failures.

Success: Cream of Wheatlessness

Finely ground brown rice, quinoa, millet and sunflower seeds cooked like porridge in a pot of hot water. I believe the most delicious ingredient in the mix is the quinoa, so you can be generous with it when grinding the grains. I also sometimes add cornmeal and/or buckwheat groats.

Less successful: Sweatshirt sharing

friendsgiving

I arrived in Philadelphia this evening and within an hour I was at a potluck, sitting on a couch talking with two doulas...good omen? I'd like to believe so.

When I arrived I met up with Nikki (the daughter of my dad's old navy friend who became my friend a few years ago). She met me at a train stop in Kensington and we walked a few blocks to her friends' house where they were having a "friendsgiving" meal. I said hi to some familiar faces and slowly tried to make my way to the food table. I had not had much to eat on a full day of traveling and socializing seemed impossible without some nourishment.

As I was scooping myself some collards in peanut sauce, the woman next to me introduced herself. We stood together eating from blue plastic plates and began a conversation. She asked why I was in Philly, I told her I came for an interview at PENN, she told me she was a beginning doula, and the conversation proceeded as one might assume: we talked about being doulas, hospital vs. home birth, and everything in between. Later on in the the evening, another woman arrived who was also a doula and she joined our conversation.

All in all it was encouraging in the sense that there are folks here with shared beliefs and perspectives about birth that I can be supported by. It was real in a way that I got to hear the frustrations of women working in the struggle to re-humanize birth on this coast and in Philadelphia particularly. It is going to be challenging to work in a city where there is only one known home birth, licensed midwife. Also, Pennsylvania still does not have a licensure pathway for midwives of this state thus making midwifery "illegal". It will be a challenge and a necessity to be working in birth here if this is where I end up. I feel that I may up for this sort of challenge.

more to come...