I think my first section is finished. It is Me Bastard, You Bastard, an extension of and enrichment (I sincerely hope) upon an essay David Hamilton published many years ago in The Iowa Review. It was after I read the kernel of that essay aloud to a small group of poets and writers I had… Continue reading The Grammar of Animacy and the Grammar of Intimacy
Author: russellv
Thinking with the Wind
Bridging cultural and natural approaches to the world can be a challenge. The interrelations are obvious, but connecting them in writing can sometimes feel arbitrary: from an ecological perspective, after all, everything is connected, so why one might start with one connection over another is as likely to be motivated by personal, rhetorical, or storytelling… Continue reading Thinking with the Wind
Trieste as Cultural Nexus (rather than “nowhere”)
When Jan Morris opens her 2001 Trieste and the Meaning of Nowhere with the phrase, “I cannot always see Trieste in my mind’s eye,” I feel bad for her. When she adds, rhetorically, it seems, “Who can?” I want to object, “Well, I can!” Probably the difference in our perceptions comes from how each of… Continue reading Trieste as Cultural Nexus (rather than “nowhere”)
Writing as Gift
I had a consultation with a writing coach recently because I recently wrote myself into an impasse and needed help. I published this person’s work many years ago, and while I don’t know her well as a person, I see that she has skills and sense, and this is what I wanted, especially from someone… Continue reading Writing as Gift
When Dragons Show Themselves
I finally managed to formulate my thoughts on translation as a practice in a more coherent and systematic fashion. It only took about eighteen years. The first idea came out in a Poroi essay published in 2005 after a conference at the University of Iowa on empathy. It seems to have been viewed 540 times… Continue reading When Dragons Show Themselves
Pop Quizzes and Ordering Quizzes
This semester’s Introduction to Russian Culture is smaller by choice than the last several years, as we did not have a graduate student who could teach it with me. So I lowered the cap to 40 (from the usual 60) and have been teaching it solo. This, I admit, is easier from the standpoint of… Continue reading Pop Quizzes and Ordering Quizzes
September Light
Very cool to see the places of the plays when I release a new song on SoundCloud, as the algorithms do their work. “September Light” is a new 3-minute piece I released a couple of days ago, inspired by the sharp but fragile, delicate light in the Northern Hemisphere at the end of September, which… Continue reading September Light
Dostoevsky as Problem
My “Loving Russia” was published earlier this summer at The Massachusetts Review, with an epigraph from Susan Sontag’s 2000 New Yorker essay “Loving Russia.” Though the essay’s done and out in the world, it’s still something I’m working on, or maybe working through is the better expression. As part of that on-going work, I presented,… Continue reading Dostoevsky as Problem
Insights and such
Boy No. 1, who is now twenty-one and knows more than his father about such things, says it’s all about the algorithms. I am still hoping that Crack: A Tone Poem has in fact reached the people SoundCloud’s insights page is telling me it has reached. They are… …in the US 53 listeners; in Australia… Continue reading Insights and such
Crack: A Tone Poem
I did a limited release of Crack: A Tone Poem on SoundCloud yesterday, which quickly had just under 50 plays. That by itself is not extraordinary, but I was surprised by the places where the plays came from: 6 from the the US; 3 each from the UK, Australia, Canada, and Germany; 2 each from… Continue reading Crack: A Tone Poem
Russell Scott Valentino 