Row, row, row your boat gently down the stream. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, Life is but a dream. (English Language nursery rhyme) I wouldn’t have read Finnegans Wake if it hadn’t been for Ela. It was a winter weekday, stopping at a sidewalk book vendor, when I saw […]
“I would like to be able to look Maitreyi in the eyes…” — Bengal Nights, 1933 For a powerful narrative set in postcolonial India, told by two powerful minds, one pair stands to be compared and contrasted. These are Mircea Eliade’s 1933 Bengal Nights and Maitreyi Devi’s 1974 It […]
(An essay on free will; Happy Independence Day 2017; “One small step for man…”) In response to The New York Times article “650 Prompts for Narrative and Personal Writing.” 200. “How Much Control Do You Think You Have Over Your Fate?” The question assumes fate exists. So […]
(Original can be found on the blog Atrapadas en Azul.) My first impression upon entering the poem was of immediate sadness. There are many casual rhymes, natural with Spanish, and a freedom of verse that gives the poem a sense of sincerity, while an intriguing use of punctuation adds […]
Click here for a PDF — A Short Story in Five Tenses As an exercise for my wonderful English students at New York Language Center, I asked them to write the final page, all sentences in future tense. It takes a lot of concentration to not run through prose. […]