Pnin’s double
Reading Nabokov’s Pnin, I spend a while deliberating over a passage in which the hapless Pnin, who teaches Russian in an American university with no requirement for a Professor of Russian, meets a Professor Wynn –… Read More
Ricardo Blanco’s Blog
- Poems for staying at home (Day 30)After the weekend, this cow rummages through the debris left by the visiting humans; the remains of campfires, plastic carrier bags, bottles and beer cans. We know, we’ve seen it. Poor cow. Fabio Morábito reminds us of... Read More
- Poems for staying at home (Day 29)Today Piedad Bonnett sings the praises of the oft-neglected sea cucumber. I once spent so long trying to find her house in Bogotá, in a taxi with Jorge Fondebrider and a clueless driver, that she thought we’d been... Read More
- Poems for staying at home (Day 28)Now, listen: do not go roaming with the possum. Is that perfectly clear? from A Somewhat Difficult Syntax The possum represents those who craved the Holy Word, but who, once they have received it, do nothing... Read More
- Poems for staying at home (Day 27)Today – because ‘it’s the only thing the universe knows how to do’ – a poem about falling, from Argentina’s Beatríz Vignoli. I love the particularity of these lines: ‘If they tell you that I fell / don’t... Read More
- Poems for staying at home (Day 26)The theft of a rooster prompts today’s poem from the Venezuelan Igor Barreto; a lament for a creature who ‘sings like the Angel Gabriel’. The poem can be found, along with 155 others, in The Other Tiger:... Read More
Ricardo Blanco, Citizen of Nowhere
