Grammar Lessons: Translating a Life in Spain Iowa Writes And later, after the mussels, after the pulpo a la gallega, the swirling bits of octopus flesh in a sauce of garlic and tomatoes, after the glasses of wine and loaves of bread broken and passed hand to hand, after the strong local blue cheese spread thick on thin crackers and the apples drizzled with honey, after we have all eaten as much as we can and then picked the remains from one another’s plates, tucking into our mouths one more bite, one more spoonful, one more tangy or sweet or salty fingertip, then we turn, lights dimmed and candles aflame, to the Queimada.
In the kitchen Chus shows me the brown ceramic bottle, the label handwritten: Aguardiente. I say it aloud. The other words I cannot pronounce because they are in the dialect of Galicia, the province where Chus was born. He is the only Gallego among us, the only person with roots in the land of magic and spirits, of incantations. Chus opens the bottle, holds it out for me to smell, explains that this is liquor made from the skins of grapes, not quite wine, not quite whiskey, and stronger than either. May I taste it, I ask, and Chus smiles, not yet, not until we tame it with fire.
His smile is full, expectant. In this apartment, which is not where he lives but where he spends his extra time with a dozen other artists, painting, sculpting, developing photographs, Chus is more himself than anywhere else. I have seen him in bars, at the homes of mutual friends, on the street as he heads off to work, and nowhere else does he look quite so full, quite so content. And above all tonight, a night on which he has brought this group together—his coworkers from the newspaper, their partners and friends—to share food and drink and the experience of calling spirits to us.
Around the table there is silence and arms resting on stomachs. Moonlight outlines the window shades, outlines Chus positioning the large clay bowl in the middle of the table. I say that the moon is full on the winter solstice, imagine, and the others sigh yes, how amazing. I arrived with a full moon, I do not say, and I will see six more, perhaps seven, and then I will leave. I am already nostalgic, already sad for the day I arrived here, so impressionable and with so much faith. And sad for this night, too, which I am already imagining as memory, the night of my first Queimada in a cold apartment on Calle Independencia, Oviedo, Spain.
2007-03-20 http://dailypalette.uiowa.edu/?artwork=915 Sandie Seeger Sandie Seeger, D.O., is a professor of biology at Missouri Western State University, a trauma surgeon in Chicago, and a native Iowan (born and raised in Hampton). “Marv’s Abode” is about a native Iowan, Marvin Fink, who farmed land around Latimer, Iowa. He farmed the same land for 60 years and died of colon cancer this summer. Marv's Abode Iowa Writes Standing over the gravesite
making it as I desire
not to selfish means
but to save what is left of him.
Chattering as I go…
2007-03-22 http://dailypalette.uiowa.edu/?artwork=922 Jim Julich Jim Julich worked for twenty years as a librarian (emeritus) for The University of Iowa. He is the author of a volume of translations from the French, Aubervilliers, poems of Jacques Prévert and André Verdet. He lives on a farm near Nichols, Iowa. Keep the Line Taut Iowa Writes After vats of mellow Burgundy wine,
bushels of dark Gauloise tobacco,
oysters on the half-shell and making love,
two bone marrow transplants for leukemia,
I can still feel the wild tug on my line,
the bright form leaping and flashing in the sun,
plunging in shadow beneath the sunken log,
Hold on, keep the rod bent, keep the line taut!
2007-03-25 http://dailypalette.uiowa.edu/?artwork=936 James Spangler Jason Spangler grew up in Marion, Iowa, and graduated from the University of Iowa in 1999. He owns and operates a seasonal shaved ice hut in Cedar Rapids. "This allows me six months off to write and make films," he says. A Binary in Opposition Iowa Writes I fell in love with Sharon,
Karen's Siamese twin,
the same day
I came
down
with Bell's Palsy
at the half-off
half dollar sale
at the Marion Hy-Vee.
Sharon said
she'd been looking
for a man like me.
I held her hand
and walked her
to the deli.
She had a tenderloin.
I couldn't eat.
I gave her my phone number
out in the parking lot.
She said she would call.
As she kissed me good-bye
on my limp cheek
Karen rolled her eyes,
raised her lip,
looked away.
The day had grown dark.
And as I drove home
with only one headlight
I prayed.
Please,
God,
don't let the left side go out too.
2007-03-26 http://dailypalette.uiowa.edu/?artwork=937 Patrick Vecera Patrick Vecera is seven years old. He attends school at Pat's Learning Adventure, a modern one-room schoolhouse run by Pat Schmidt in Iowa City. He likes science and yoga and feels he is starting to become a writer. Birds Iowa Writes
In this frigid, frozen corner of the world
birds are freezing,
shivering, fluffing their feathers.
Billowy bouncing balls
flying through the blinding bright sky
bumping into each other
looking for food.
Finding it in my front yard.
Bitter bright
sun bounces on the snow
blinding the world.
Air, fresh and clean
as warm fog, floats from frozen throats.
The ever cold gnaws on the noise
silencing the world,
padding the earth's ears.
Winter moves everything
Slower and slower
As quiet as a snowflake
Falling.
I smell clean cracking ice.
I feel the frigid phalanges of the winter wind pick
at my comfy clothes.
All I see is burning bright, paper white.
I sink into the shoveled snow
as the north wind comes.
I go as the breeze,
dance away to my fire warm home.
Winter returns.
Animals hide from soft, silver snowflakes.
Trees blinded
by the wonderful white winter
wait for their lanky lion leaves.
Fierce fire
the night guard
keeps the house warm and safe.
I feel the ghostly hands of winter chill,
goose bumps on my skin.
The wind moans with the voices of cold dead
howling for their revenge.
I smell the skeleton wind that runs through cemeteries
swirling and twirling
dancing to death.
I taste the icy, freezing phalanges
as the wind bites.
I see the dark falling to winter's last stand.
Winter waterfalls
look like giant jewels
hanging from the sky.
Glittering rainbows
bouncing around
like fireflies.
The sudden sound of ice cracking,
diamond dynamite exploding
in the fearful, frozen ice.
More precisely, a knot is defined as any circle trapped in three-dimensional space: a path confused, doubling and tripling back. It wanders into its own trap, garrots itself. (Alas.) A life line, a line to live by, advances without pause, straight and singular into the world. Depend on it. (One bowl advances one hundred linear feet at 0.125 cents per foot).
Something to love even more: the Gordian puzzle that unravels to gossamer, the blot that slims to almost nothing, once confused, now no more. The sudden funnel and solution. Sudden isolation and resolve. Fat brush tip lifting until a single hair trails—a surviving capillary. Caterpillar adrift till he finds the silk trail laid by his leader. The plan that leads to the interstate. The step from pillar to tightrope.
Come to think of it: the deep clarifying urge (to bathroom, to bed).
Come to think of it: the comet, the corridor, the cannonball arc, the calling: an oboe A piercing confusion, cloud cramming tiniest aperture, pipetting out that thin, indestructible filament. The entire orchestra depending from that thread.
2007-04-11 http://dailypalette.uiowa.edu/?artwork=944 Adam Fanning Adam Fanning is a singer, songwriter, and poet. His albums include Fields Before Us (2003), Dreams for Sleepers (2004), Tongues on Tongue (2005), Rivers (2006), and Old Light/No Name/Ghost (2006). Iowa Iowa Writes on such fertile grounds
did we lay to rest
those summer days like waves
winds rolling flowers
backwards as
red winged blackbirds
sang from the
swaying piney treetops
leaning southward
and in other such summers
you showed me
how ponds are like soup bowls
for the stars
we can swim in
naked
and then on the way back to town
stop for pie with mud
in between our toes
2007-04-14 http://dailypalette.uiowa.edu/?artwork=945 Amelia Marshall Rand Amelia Marshall Rand was born in Arlington, Virginia, but grew up in Norman, Oklahoma. She attended high school in Iowa City. "My mom made sure I covered a lot of territory before I could call one place home," she says. Amelia is currently studying creative writing at Knox College. for those of us who know Iowa Writes I wish at this moment I could be an omniscient figure. Where could I begin? Maybe at his eyes or maybe at her utter disbelief. Maybe I could attempt to describe both of their worlds. His continues to rotate with gravity intact while hers is thrown completely off its axis. She bites her fingernails and tastes the salt from her skin mix with the salt from her tears. He doesn't look at her. He avoids any feelings of guilt. He keeps talking. Words are spilling onto the floor between them. She doesn't know how to pick them up. She wants him to hold her hand, kiss her forehead, she wants him to love her again. It won't happen. They both know it. He offers an apology but his sincerity breaks her heart even more. He tells her he doesn't like to see her cry, that he feels like a jerk for causing her pain. She takes a deep breath and whispers that all she did was give him herself. All she did was hand her heart over to him with his promise to watch over it. He wants to give her heart back to her, but there is so much pain inside her body that it doesn't fit anymore. There isn't anywhere for it to go. She knows that if she gets up from that chair, walks across the grass, steps away from the curb, she knows she'll never see him again. How could that be possible? This is what she asks herself. He doesn't know what else to say. Nothing can fix her. She just has to exist for a while.
2007-04-16 http://dailypalette.uiowa.edu/?artwork=958 Perry Ross Perry Ross, a graduate of the University of Iowa, is a school administrator in Iowa City. He grew up in Mt. Pleasant and writes about his experiences growing up in a small town. Perry writes primarily for his family but sometimes shares his stories with a larger audience as a professional storyteller. An Alcohol-Free Event Iowa Writes Old men sit sideways on wooden folding chairs and work waterlogged toothpicks as they talk about Eisenhower and the county's plan to pave the gravel road in front of the house. Rows of cars are parked in the hayfield. Children, giddy with excitement, run and play in the barnyard. Behind the house, teenage boys and young men toil taking turns on the thirty-some handles. Women sit in the kitchen, on the porch, and in the dining room sipping iced tea. This is an alcohol-free event. No one even thinks of alcohol. It is 1954. It is the annual Presbyterian Ice Cream Social at Arlo Roth's farm.
Strong-armed men crank away at the freezers trying to show that they can go faster and longer than anyone else. Others carefully dump ice and then salt around the revolving canisters. Someone shouts, "This one is done," and others step in and try to do a few more turns. When everyone is satisfied that it is, indeed, ready, the women step in. One carefully removes the crank and then the lid. With great care another one pulls the paddle out. Young kids flock to her wanting to eat the ice cream off the paddle. A few lucky ones get that chance. The lid is carefully replaced and the canister is covered with ice and wrapped in towels to await the rest.
Soon, someone else shouts, "Done!" and grabs his arm to massage the pain. Then another and another are done. The women lay out the bowls, spoons, and toppings on a long table on the lawn. Children grab spoons and line up to get heaping dishes of homemade ice cream.
The old men are right behind the kids. "That Myrtle's recipe?" says one as he points to a canister. "She makes the best ice cream!" The adults follow and usually add some chocolate, strawberry, butterscotch, or peach topping to their bowl. The first time through the young ones, knowing they will get more, go for the straight ice cream.
"Aaawww," says Jerry, grabbing his forehead. Eating the ice cream too fast has brought on a painful headache. Soon others are in the same predicament but can't stop eating the delicious soup. "My 'ead urtz!" says Tim, whose tongue feels thick with the cold.
Me, I like the semi-liquid ice cream around the outside edge of the bowl. I scoop it into my mouth so fast that I have to stop and wait for the mountain in my bowl to melt so I can have more.
Then my head hurts, too. My eyes seem to cross and I run to my mother in pain. She talks to me softly and the pain subsides. "Don't eat so fast," she says, and I look around and see that the yard is full of cross-eyed kids grasping their foreheads in pain.
Later, my mother stops me from going back for a third bowl. It's time for the hayride. I smell the fresh straw as the adults and kids load up on the hay wagons. I remember riding but not much else. The excitement, the food, and the gentle creak of the wagon put me to sleep soon after I am on board. I don't ever remember going home from Roth's but I know, of course, I did.
2007-04-18 http://dailypalette.uiowa.edu/?artwork=959 Huston Diehl Huston Diehl is a professor of English at the University of Iowa. An award-winning teacher, she has published a number of essays on pedagogy as well as many articles on Renaissance literature. Dream Not of Other Worlds was published this month by the University of Iowa Press.
Established in 1938 and housed in the historic Kuhl House, the oldest house still standing in Iowa City, the University of Iowa Press publishes scholarly books and a wide variety of titles that will appeal to general readers. As the only university press in the state, it is dedicated to preserving the literature, history, culture, wildlife, and natural areas of the region. from