A) Patti Smith stood in sneakers and unkempt braids bookending her baggy jeans, a graphic tee, and oversized blazer, telling us she was the most “disciplined undisciplined person,” and I thought, that’s exactly what I aim to be: contained just enough so as to be wholly free on the scale of decades.
B) I call Don Quijote my literary boyfriend, as he’s the man I spend the most time with, and someone I have to work really hard to understand.
C) The House on Mango Street was born blocks from where we stood, Sandra Cisneros in her embroidered lace dress and beaded jewels, me in bright orange linen. She said she found success with her voice despite the Writers Workshop. When she was admitted in the 1970s, she had to submit a photo of herself with her writing sample application. Joy Harjo, standing beside her in red Lucchese boots, nodded, said she always wondered if that’s why she herself was chosen, how that dug-in doubts she then had to work to overcome.
D) The collegiate pool is one place I find silence. My head nothing more than numbers, breathing in and out, move move moving through cool liquid, just enough resistance, one two three breathe, admiring the light on the bottom tiles.
E) The transmutation of rage as/is sacred spirit work.
F) Resist the urge to buy that skirt because we’re living on a grad student stipend now and rent needs be paid.
G) Let the colors of the changing leaves captivate you. Why not?
H) Ask the dog where he wants to walk today. Should we turn right or left out the door? Then straight, left, or right? What kind of shape do we want to make along the neighborhood today?
I) Our Don Quijote expert also is a Dean of Graduate Studies, and she regales us with stories of being a new mom when she started her PhD, encouraging my classmates with children (about a third in this seminar) to bring them to class whenever necessary or wanted, showcasing motherhood as absolute badassery.
J) Grading in orange pen because red feels far too harsh.
K) The trees are confused! Blooming again, the irises and hydrangeas too, crabapples sprouting, global warming, I tell them, but they don’t speak English and I haven’t yet mastered the language of these blooms.
L) Reading, but different reading, between the line reading, what’s in the spaces reading, go deeper reading, reading 726 pages for class this week reading.
M) Crosswords in the morning with my oatmeal, plodding through the clues. Weeks on one Sunday puzzle: clues look different on different days. How satisfying to suddenly answer one after days of not-knowing.
N) I buy myself flowers, the colors like love sprinkled around my apartment. I have a bouquet of crochet flowers, too, and everyone who comes over loves them; they sit on my kitchen table at the window, greeting all who pass by, catching the light in all its forms.
O) What to wear is what will make my happy today?
P) Walk the dog (again), turn left or right? Straight then, or? What shape now?
Q) Do I sleep now and get up early to work? Or stay up and work now, and maybe sleep a little later?
R) Rachel Yoder talks in the bookstore about “writing as the locust of justice.” How “outward justice can never be attained, but inner justice can come from writing.”
S) Translation as a political act, an act that demands introspection, self-awareness, intention, multiplicity. What am I saying, and why?
T) Young people all around me, booty shorts and muscly man quads and vomit on the sidewalk, a gaggle of girls and the boys commenting from behind, that one downing DayQuil before stepping into the classroom…
U) “People are reading TV,” Regina Porter, graduate of the Writers Workshop, who now writes for TV in addition to writing novels, she said at the bookstore. “As in, it’s a solitary consumption, an act of absorption and of following short and longer narrative arcs.”
V) Wake up moody, have to go to class, have to teach class, have to do homework for tomorrow’s class. Wake up happy, have to do the same.
W) Joy in thinking something right before my professor says same thing.
X) 9,832 steps as my “average” last month, and everything in between.
Y) Love as radical resistance to the horrors of reality: love in presence, love in waking up, love in witnessing, love in asking questions, love in turning off the news, love in opening the news, love in wandering new neighborhood streets, love in turning the same corner again and again and again.
Z) Walking the dog (again again) as night falls. Soon we will see our breaths crystalize the air.
WHAT I’VE BEEN READING
Minor Detail by Adania Shibli. Set in Palestine/Israel, translated from Arabic, short and sweet and tragic and absolutely something I recommend reading.
Texaco by Patrick Chamoiseau. I’ve never read anything like this sweeping saga set in Martinique… what a gorgeous, colorful, surprising ride. Translated from Creole/French.
The Extinction of Irena Rey by Jennifer Croft. I’m excited for Croft to visit our classroom later this month. This is a quirky novel about translators abandoned during a project in a Polish forest… if you’re curious about what goes on in translators heads, this is a funny play-by-play of memorable characters.
Lucy by Jamaica Kincaid. Everything this woman writes is gorgeous. This work of autofiction draws heavily from Kincaid’s life, and I loved how bold and straightforward the character acted.
Yellowface by RF Kuang. An incisive and entertaining side-eye/stab at the publishing industry… narrated by a white woman who takes the work of an Asian woman, written by an Asian-American woman.
I taught a section of Body Work: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative by Melissa Febos to my students, and it laid great grounds for discussion about using our own stories for persuasive purposes.
In one seminar, all we’re reading is Don Quijote—talking about it, writing about it, thinking about it, all in its original Spanish—so we’re about a quarter of the way through the tome now.
P.S. you can set me “Emma Athena” as your Bookshop.org beneficiary, if you’re looking to buy books from a place that’s not A-m-a-z-o-n and simultaneously support independent/creative endeavors (like me).
WHAT I’VE BEEN LISTENING TO
Something I want to sing out loud:
A song that makes me want to mooove:
My strutting through campus Main Character theme song:
More Patti, more power to the people:
A song sears my heart:
WHAT I’VE BEEN WATCHING
(⭐️/5)
Norma ⭐️⭐️⭐️ a funny Argentinian movie (written and directed by one of my classmates!) about a middle-aged woman drowning in the monotony of her life—she decides to break the rules, question the system in which she's been living her whole life, and join other challenging women like her… who make her discover a new version of herself.
WHAT I’VE BEEN EATING
This frozen banana-peanut-butter-chocolate treat.
My daily oatmeal + chia seeds got an upgrade with a scoop of pureed pumpkin! I always add peanut butter and a fruit (apple this week, peaches last week).
Quiche! Trader Joe’s pie crust + 7 eggs + scoop of sour cream + squeeze of dijon mustard + caramelized onions + Brussel sprouts —> in oven @ 375F for 25 min.
WHAT I’VE BEEN THINKING ABOUT
“laugh with fate and make fate laugh”—Noon Meem Rashid, translated by my classmate, a father of free verse in Urdu poetry constantly pushing against tradition, towards invention.
Anne Carson, writer and translator, on Descartes’ famous lines: Cogito, ergo sum. “If you look at the sentence, what it really says is: ‘Dubito, ergo cogito, ergo sum.’ I doubt, therefore I think, therefore I am. … that’s very provocative. Everything starts in doubt.” From there we go!
How the trees are re-blooming. They are confused. It’s been too hot for too long. They don’t know what season it’s supposed to be. It’s confusing me!
WHAT I’VE BEEN LEARNING
Two modes of wonderful presence in my life:
Writing letters
Teaching
I can’t read everything! There’s an art to picking and choosing what to read in graduate school.
All these ways to support Palestinian people right now.
I love swimming laps!
WHAT I’M LOOKING FORWARD TO
Milwaukee here I come! I’m joining my professors and program at the 2024 ALTA Conference later this month: “a refreshingly collegial gathering of amateurs and professionals alike, both within the profession and outside it, all wholeheartedly committed to fostering, furthering, and supporting the practice of literary translation.”
Cooler weather! Even though I see 80F on the horizon this week… come on Fall!
Working with my local labor union, helping organize teaching and research assistants at the University of Iowa 🤘🏽
xx Emma
What’s been tickling your senses this month? Leave a comment or hit the reply button!
I love this alphabetic format