I was hit on today for being able to recite George Oppen's "A Theological Question," the first four lines of Mina Loy's "Song to Joannes" (the girl had the good sense of interrupting me before I got to the parts I really didn't know), the first four of Adam Zagajewski's "Self-Portrait" (ditto) and the first sentence of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's
One Hundred Years of Solitude. Also managed to tell her to read Michael Palmer and Juliana Spahr. Finally, my student debt and exhaustion is leading to something.
One Hundred Years of Solitude. Also managed to tell her to read Michael Palmer and Juliana Spahr. Finally, my student debt and exhaustion is leading to something.
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And no, she didn't ask me for all that. I was at a bookstore, she came, she was looking for Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner, then asked me if there were anything in the literature section I liked. I told her I didn't really read much fiction nowadays, mostly poetry. She replied "Oh, I looove poetry. Can you show me some good poetry." I told her "Sure, why not?" I gave her some books from the shelves, told her why they were good poets and every now and then, she'd interrupt me to ask me personal questions.
And it happened yesterday again, but with a different girl. This one was looking for Beauvoir's The Second Sex. I told her it was a lousy translation and that she would be better off with the original. She asked me about her fiction. Told her to read Les Mandarins and Malraux's La condition humaine. She asked me if I could tutor her in French. Five minutes later, she came back and asked me if I knew anything about poetry and about Breyten Breytenbach.
Both times, I was dancing in my head, screaming "Thank you, San Francisco. I love you too."
"boulder borders, boulder borders, boulder borders" i even have trouble typing that let alone saying it.