This is a podcast version, a bit elaborated and updated, from the blog post of the same name, which you can find here.
Category: writing
The Grammar of Animacy and the Grammar of Intimacy
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
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
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
Fulbright and Sea of Intimacy
I’ve been selected as a Fulbright Scholar to continue — to finish! — my book on the Adriatic. Watching the welcome videos from Donna Brazile and a senior official in the Department of State this morning, I couldn’t help feeling relieved that I did not receive this award during the presidency of the previous person… Continue reading Fulbright and Sea of Intimacy
Racializing Travel Narrative
Continuing my reading “around” the Adriatic, I picked up Jan Morris’s 1980 book The Venetian Empire: A Sea Voyage and read the parts that focus most on the Adriatic, skimming the other parts. The Venetian Empire in the period she’s interested in exploring included Cyprus, Crete, Constantinople for a brief moment in the 13th century,… Continue reading Racializing Travel Narrative
Two Islands
A colleague in Dalmatia, whom I have written about before here, mentioned a pair of islands in the Kvarner Gulf, the idea of which has fascinated me since last summer. A couple of weeks ago I finally got there. The islands are paired in a distinctive sense: one, which is called Sveti Petar has the… Continue reading Two Islands
Russell Scott Valentino 