Why study foreign languages? Trysts

Listening to a Spanish-language CD in the car one day, I smiled when I heard the narrator say “es decir.” I loved that phrase. It means “that’s to say.” I was threading my way through morning traffic on Atlanta’s downtown Connector, and looking ahead. In a few weeks, I would be heading to Mexico, and I fantasized about using those words as I chatted with locals.

“Es decir que trabajo como periodista…..” 

Everyone has hobbies – one of mine is conjuring up some silly conversation I might have with someone in a foreign language, in this case explaining what I did for a living. “That’s to say, I work as a journalist….”

I was ferrying Leo to daycare, and inventing fictitious conversations distracted me from the bumper-to-bumper crush of cars while also doubling as vacation-prep.

Then all of a sudden, a stabbing pain in my chest caught me up short.

I was cheating!

But I wasn’t cheating on someone but rather on something. 

I was cheating on Italian – the language.

Since having a baby two years before, I’d studied Spanish very little, and I had forgotten that some part of my brain considered the language a rival suitor. 

The one I speak when I’m cheating on Italian.

I majored in Italian in college, and lived in Florence for a few years after graduation. Surrounded by Florentines, I breathed in the language of Dante so thoroughly that even after returning to the U.S. to become a journalist, I never stopped reading Italian or thinking about it. It became like a person in my life, and my house is packed with Italian dictionaries, Sicilian crime novels and one very large poster with the entire text of the Divine Comedy, which hangs in the living room.

I also now work in part as a literary translator (IT-EN) so to be fair, delighting in Spanish phrases really was tantamount to betraying Italian. It was as if Italian were my husband, and Spanish my backdoor man.

Of course, that’s not even the whole story because as you know, my first language is English. So where does it factor into all of this? For some reason, it doesn’t. It's almost like English is the skin over my bones or the air I breathe: nothing will change its primacy. And Italian will always be my primary foreign language.

But I still feel a little flutter of subversion when I think about speaking Spanish. 

Sitting in the car, I caught my breath. By studying Spanish, I'd convinced myself that I was betraying my first love, Italian. I laughed aloud that my brain had somehow conjured up this crazy little scenario. I also heaved a sigh of relief.

My life had turned upside down since becoming a mother. Soon after Leo was born, I fretted I would cease to be me, and either I would no longer love languages and literature or I’d lack the time to cultivate such passions.

But instead I found the time, and reading Italian novels or listening to Cuban music continued to provide an invaluable escape.

Speaking a foreign language causes a certain fission in my head. I feel the same rush of endorphins when I speak Italian or Spanish as I do exercising. And Spanish has an added oomph because, well, it’s my other foreign language. I feel no compunction to speak it well (I sometimes estimate I know to say only 50 to 100 words of Spanish in conversation -- in other words, not many).

When we arrived in Mexico a few weeks later, I quickly identified details that told me I was indeed finally abroad again. Mexican children sipped juices from plastic bags punctured with straws. Parents balanced babies and shopping bags on rickety motor scooters.

The world is shrinking, and as it does, English is becoming the lingua franca for communication, commerce and even education. Many universities around the world are increasingly teaching courses in English with subject matters ranging from accounting to computer science to business. There are pros and cons to that, and various languages have spread around the globe throughout history. At one time, French was the second language of most intellectuals.

But still, it would be a mistake if Americans skipped learning a second language, or a third. Studying foreign languages has supplied me with an alter ego, and a rich interior life that beckons wherever I am. A few pages into an Italian book, or a few minutes listening to Mexican rock, and I’m worlds away from traffic, work demands or the heat of a summer day.

Learning a language isn’t always about performing some useful act – learning X for when you do Y. It’s about discovering how other human beings are going about the business of living. 

I have thought fleetingly of learning Irish one day, and it won’t be for some useful purpose. I’ll head over to the cemetery in Donegal, near Mt. Errigal, where my ancestors lay. And I’ll read the gravestone covered in Irish that my relations showed me during my Study Abroad year. And I’ll know a little bit more about my history, and about the world. Which, come to think of it, is pretty useful.

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24 Hours in Rome

What can you possibly do in Rome if you only have 24 hours?

That was all the time I’d given myself there during a quickie trip to Italy in 2015. 

I arrived in the Eternal City around noon on a Wednesday, and was booked on the 11:50 a.m. Frecciarossa to Florence the next day.

I’d arranged a night’s layover in Rome really as a buffer for jet lag; it would be my first solo trip abroad after becoming a mom – an older mom, at that – and my first visit to Italy in eight years. I assumed I would barely be able to take in the sights, much less enjoy them, on a few hours of airplane sleep. Plus, I was giving short shrift to Rome because I'd told myself the real trip would begin after I reached Florence. When my 24 hours in Rome were up, I would be heading to the city where I once lived to retrace my steps. There I would meet up with friends and begin the real work of immersing myself once again in Italy, the objective of a trip I dubbed the Nostalgia Package Tour. I wanted to relive the days when I worked as a teacher in Florence, when I fell in love in Florence (with the city and a man). I wanted to practice my heavily Florentine-accented Italian.

Rome was just a quick detour. Or was it?

Well, it was, until I see a Roman man walking into a café near the Campidoglio. He’s carrying a motorcycle helmet and wearing a tan, fisherman’s vest, popular among men in Italy. It’s clear from the first second, the way he walks in, the way he surveys the bar and the way he nods at the bartender, that he’s a regular. As I watch, he exchanges one look with the barista that wordlessly conveys, “Do you see what I’m saying?” and “Can you believe that?” Where both parties know exactly what “that” refers to. 

The barman, for his part, shoots him a glance that says, “Where have you been?” and “Can you believe the day we’re having?” All without uttering a word, but aided by a few helpful Italian hand gestures, the jutting out of the chin, and an “O!” or two. Part theater, part afternoon chronicle.

Then I stroll into some minor piazza where there’s a glorious breeze and a man selling books from a bancarella. Behind me as I browse the book selection, a father kicks around a soccer ball with his young son. I walk a few blocks and peer in the window of one of Italy’s largest bookstore chains, drinking in the book titles and calculating and recalculating how many I can reasonably fit into my suitcase.

That evening, I visit a friend for dinner, and in the taxi on the way back to the hotel, the older driver is listening to the Juventus game. At one point, La Juve scores, and I look up to see the driver staring at me in the rear view mirror as he pumps his fist. Clearly, he thinks this is a moment we should share. “Forza Juve,” I say, smiling, almost gratefully. Thank you, Italy, for being Italy.

The next morning, I dash out to re-introduce myself to as many important sights as I can walk to. Approaching the Campo dei Fiori only to find vendors setting up the morning produce and flower market, I feel as though I am walking onto a film set labeled, “Rome, morning.” It would appear no one’s told every other visitor to Rome that this is the thing to do – an early morning walk through the city’s best squares. It is largely just me and the vendors and a few stray figures sailing by on bikes.

Now imagine all of these episodes happening within 24 hours, which, as it turned out, was plenty of time. 

You can do so much even if all you do is walk and look, if your main activity is savoring the tiny moments. If the kind of trip you’re pursuing has little to do with itineraries. A different brand of tourism. I suppose you could call it cultural tourism or maybe personal tourism. 

What I’m calling nostalgia tourism – for when your trip is really a long journey back. 

When you’ve already toured the city, and you’re coming back really just to tour your memories (against an enchanted backdrop), and find out how they make you feel now. Rome is the perfect city for this kind of trip.

(Versions of this story have appeared in various places on this blog, and other venues) 

What I think about when I think about Edward Snowden

Typical examinations of Edward Snowden in the media often ask if he is a patriot. 

Or they’ve suggested he’s a traitor. 

But not so fast. 

His decision to expose the US government’s secret data collection program was complicated.

And besides I don't think about any of that when I think about Edward Snowden.

Instead, I think about his voice. His soothing, methodical, calm voice, and a manner like a kindly grandfather who will entertain any question you have.

I've been listening to recordings of his interviews for years. Anytime I need soothing. Anytime I want to listen as someone calmly, patiently describes arcane software along with shadowy meetings with journalists in Hong Kong, where he first fled. It’s my own kind of mindfulness. It’s Snowden time for me, anytime I need to be reassured that whatever cockamamie decision I’ve made, all will turn out right, if I remain steadfast in my convictions. Even if I wind up living in exile in Russia.

There’s something about how he fluently talks about the intricacies of the secret data collection program he exposed, which targeted millions of Americans. Or the day-to-day work he did at the NSA and the CIA. Something about it seems mysterious – but arm-chair mysterious.

There are many videos to choose from since he’s been interviewed by Brian Williams, Gayle King, Katie Couric and others, and his main contact with the outside world since going into exile in Moscow has come via Skype interviews and podcasts.

Speaking of podcasts, Joe Rogan had him on once. Joe posted 3 hours’ worth of conversation. Who would listen to it all? Me, for one. Not in a single sitting, of course. But slowly over the course of a week or two. Anytime I needed to be in the car, I cued it up on my phone. Joe gives him as much time as he needs to explain exactly how our cell phones work to track us and how he went basically from high school to the CIA.

My obsession with Snowden would seem to stem from working on and off in journalism for nearly two decades. And sure the news element is captivating. Occupational hazard: I track his responses to certain questions from interview to interview. For example, when Katie Couric asked him if releasing the documents he took from the NSA was illegal, he replied, “It’s sketchy.” In later interviews, he has declined to answer that question. Hmmm….

But my obsession is really about something else. I’m mesmerized by what I call his “narrative,” which boils down to this: he had no choice, he had to turn over what he knew, and he had to flee once he had done so. Plus: he has no regrets.

If he has any doubts, they remain deep inside. What remains on the outside is this mesmerizing narrative, delivered with his mesmerizing voice, with an equally mesmerizing cadence. He speaks in full white-paper paragraphs. And he pauses for a long time, if the question is particularly probing.

Sometimes I can almost imagine that he is knitting this narrative as he speaks, or at the very least practicing/vetting some lines. Either way, I am intrigued by his journey from NSA insider to someone who, as he puts it, now works for the people.

It is a killer line. He has a way with words. At one point shortly after the 2016 election, he says he expects Trump “will break some furniture.” Interesting analogy.

When Katie Couric interviews him, she's done her homework and asks tough questions. But he answers every one smoothly, even if his answer is ridiculous or evades the question. Nothing flaps him – he remains unflappable even if the interviewer essentially calls his bluff, as Couric did repeatedly. Indeed, I noticed he rarely even says “like” or “um.”

I don’t begrudge him for developing a tidy story about his life – one which hinges on that conviction that he now works for the people. Like I said, it’s a brilliant line and I certainly know what he means. But when he pronounces it, it sounds like movie dialogue. I get the chills – and this is one of the reasons that when I need soothing, I turn to Snowden.

It shamelessly trivializes his plight as a potentially perennial outcast into some kind of relaxation ritual, not unlike chocolate or calming music on sleepless nights.

But it feels so of the moment in this rotten cyberworld that many of us prefer to real life.

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Jay Allison on recording your children (and your mother and your...)

In the course of writing an essay for The New York Times on the joys of recording the first words uttered by my Leo (seen here in his radio onesie), I interviewed legendary public radio guru Jay Allison.

Jay, known for producing "The Moth Radio Hour," spoke to me for a sidebar that ultimately wound up not running.

I'm going to share a few of his insights because what he said was so beautiful and so moving -- I believe it will move you all right now to start recording. Your child, your mother, your friends, the birds outside your window who signal it's time to wake up each day -- whatever.

Words of wisdom from Jay:

“People have a very special relationship to sound that is different than photos Sound literally gets inside of you, it inhabits you. It can break your heart. That’s different from photos, which remain outside.” 

(This quote mesmerized me and so I included it in an essay about recording loved ones for the Boston Globe).

“It’s a focused time to talk to your kids. We are so distracted. If you weren’t recording, they may not respond in the same way.”

“There is an intensity about recording it.”

I also spoke to my former colleague, Clay Bolton, who had some great points to share including this:

“The best way for someone to relax and tell you their story is not with a camera. Audio is the least disruptive. You just put your recorder on the kitchen table and press play.”

I recently interviewed my mother over Thanksgiving dinner, and a little tidbit emerged that I should have known, perhaps did know, but which never had much significance before. Namely, my grandfather was an only child. So is my Leo. I'm one of four girls so I can't even imagine being an only child. But Grandpa Tisdall was an only child. Grandpa Tisdall, a.k.a. Dr. Tisdall, who through some recent web research I learned had been quoted in The New York Times during World War II (he headed up the blood donation effort in Brooklyn; what I wouldn't do to have HIM on tape about it or anything he might want to talk about. Ditto my beloved grandmother, who inspired my most feminist ways). 

I now see an invisible line in the air connecting my grandfather to the great-grandson he never knew, and I wonder what other "hidden" bits of family history might emerge the next time I press record.

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Dacia Maraini on eating ants

Lost diary entry

March 19, 2019

Italian novelist Dacia Maraini’s father would admonish her when they were living in the Japanese concentration camp: “Basta col mangiare le formiche!” Stop eating ants! 

It’s almost like the words fail upon contact. I understand them, I can picture it, but I can barely imagine the insanity behind both positions – eating the ants, and the father telling his famished daughter not to eat the ants. 

How do we humans create such places of cruelty for other humans?

End of diary entry

***

The photo you see here was taken at the University of Connecticut when the Italian department there had the absolute thrill of hosting Maraini for a few days. I was teaching a course there on Italian women writers (also, I was walking on water. Also, I was married to Bono. You get the picture. I live for Italian women writers). 

One of the books I taught was Maraini's novel, La Lunga Vita di Marianna Ucria (in English, The Silent Duchess) and she sat in on my class. As in, the author of the book -- a possible Nobel contender -- was present while I presented a lesson in Italian about her masterpiece. It was both exhilarating and maddening! A lot of Chianti was had that night after my day of lessons wrapped up (oh, to be honest, not Chianti but probably a nice Primitivo or Aglianico, among the best of the Southern Italian wines but I digress).

What a relief when it was over because I was so nervous. But it was amazing – to meet someone who’s written a book like 'MARIANNA UCRIA' (among many other books); who lived her first few years of life in a Japanese concentration camp (her family went to Japan for her father's work but he refused to sign a loyalty oath to the Emperor and they were all interned); who was married to novelist Alberto Moravia; and who has fought to have women writers included in the canon, or even just taken into consideration.

One more thought: if you are looking to read a stunning historical novel, consider The Silent Duchess (if you don't read Italian). Maraini, who descends from Sicilian nobility, wrote it after discovering an ancient family portrait of an unusual ancestor (the inspiration for the character of Marianna Ucria). The story of this ancestor, a deaf woman, is nothing less than shocking. I can remember gripping the book, with my mouth agape, when the secret at the center of the book was revealed. Buona lettura!

This is Atlanta

From the lost diary entry archive (Atlanta division)

Aug 31, 2016

I often invent little errands for myself so I can SEE. See something – that’s my aim but somewhere down deep I must know I will also feel something, and then I will begin writing in my head, and I will remember why I am so lucky.

And without fail it happened on a short walk to mail letters in Cabbagetown this morning. 

I dropped Leo off at his new school and then hoofed it a few streets over to the mailbox on Boulevard in front of the Southwestern restaurant. Not knowing what I would see, only knowing I love the Cabbagetown neighborhood, and honestly I think I love it twice as much now as I did this morning. 

I took a chance on seeking to enroll him at the C-town campus, only later remembering that one of my small Atlanta to-dos was walking around Cabbagetown more, like I did when we first moved back. Walking around Cabbagetown makes me think Atlanta is cool. It’s why we came back, even if much of our life is away from the kookiness of that tiny neighborhood to the north of us.

So what did I see? Just the usual: morning glories crawling up the utility pole, old corner grocery stores attached to homes and re-purposed as artist nooks, lightbulbs strung on decks and across driveways to create ambiance, flower boxes everywhere to the point of obscuring the homes behind them, a front lawn given over entirely to sunflowers as tall as the one-story house’s roof, a workman moving a large cement block who asks me, “Are you having fun yet?”

No two houses the same, but every house working its little heart out to tell you its story, and there is a story. Each porch beckons you – sit down, read a book, enjoy a cup of tea.

I love Cabbagetown. And I think to myself as I walk, ‘This is Atlanta.’ 

***
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Polly's Guide to Italian Men

I am sharing writing every day in February -- including failed fiction attempts! This is a bit from a short story (maybe a long short story) I'd begun that I tentatively called "Polly's Guide to Italian Men." The narrator is an American girl living in Italy who's met a lot of Italian men. Maybe too many.

Fiction is hard and so I've put this aside. But I do think about Polly sometimes.

*

Chapter 1: How I Met Beppe

How I met Beppe isn’t something I can pinpoint without trawling back through months and months of fruitless, painfully awkward encounters with Italian men in Pisa. And knowing him now as I do, there’s nothing about him that immediately attracts one’s attention. For starters, he isn't much to look at (but don’t tell him that. Or tell him -- he won’t believe you either way). And for the record, he’s also not an intellectual powerhouse (information, again, that has been withheld from him, somehow).

All I know is that by the time my final weeks in Pisa approached, he and I had fallen into the habit of meeting up in the early afternoons as he went about his errands. By then, we were so comfortable with each other that we’d developed a kind of bickering call-and-response in our conversations. It was really just one long conversation about men and women. 

One day -- it could be almost any day of our acquaintance -- we wandered over to the post office in the early afternoon so he could retrieve a package (sent by -- wait for it -- his mother). 

Somehow he was chiding me about what Americans eat; conversations with Beppe had a way of winding around to some criticism he had so who can say how that day we came to be discussing the suspect eating habits of my native country? I played along for a while. In fact, with Beppe, I often had to pretend I didn't know what I knew. You could resist, but well, the rules of the game make themselves felt, whether you follow them or not. The rules of the game with types like Beppe.

It’s subtle. Beppe wasn’t ever going to say, “Play dumb,” or “It’s all about me,” or “Let me be right about everything, even if you have to pretend to the point of biting your tongue off.” No one ever does. Yet the expectation was there, hovering between us, wherever we were. In the case of the day in question, as we stood on line at the post office. 

I remember the postal clerk cradling the phone to his ear, trying to track it down in Pisa’s mammoth central post office. He was another type. I don’t have time to go into much detail but put it this way: In America, a similar chore means: Wait in line, retrieve package. In Italy, it seems to entail negotiations and idle speculation. The postman may even make a vague moral proclamation on the contents of the package you’re trying to send (like Fabio at the bank who with some suspicion in his voice said I lived at a “fancy” address). 

As Beppe and I tried to interpret the clerk’s face behind the service window, he announced, “It’s food. I know it. Or I will know it, if this tizio ever finds my package.”

“You mean, like chocolate chip cookies?” I imagined biting into one, fresh from the oven. “That’s the kind of thing my mom would send me.”

“Macché? Have you ever had Quarta coffee? Or orecchiette? Don’t answer.” He pressed his hands together in a prayer gesture Italians often use that has nothing to do with prayer. “The answer is no. Because no one cooks real Italian food here.”

Then he made a clucking sound, which like many nonverbal sounds in Italy had a specific verbal import.

“What’s wrong with the food in Pisa?”

“Oddio,” he replied, “it’s fine for people like you, Madeleine.”

“What do you mean people like me?” I injected the phrase with all the weariness I could summon from my 21 years on Earth. 

“Oh, you know.” He moved his hand in circles, stirring the air like cake batter. “People who eat hot dogs, and ruin something wonderful like pizza with pineapples.”

I smirked. “You mean Americans.”

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What I haven't done

Lost diary archive (Jersey Shore edition)

Yesterday: Arguments. Yesterday: the reality that my parents are quickly aging. Yesterday: all that I don't want to know.

Today: Better. Today: 8a walk and jog on the beach. Today: 5 p.m. swim in THE Atlantic Ocean. Today my essay on not writing about Daddy’s illness went live on Brevity’s NonfictionBlog.

Layers of thought, covered in layers of meaning. Mommy and Daddy pass into and out of different moods, different eras. Daddy wanted fried flounder tonight for dinner. He’d unwittingly tuned into my nostalgia channel.

But there's so much to face, so much I am not facing. When Mommy talks about wanting to go to an assisted living center, after the first few minutes of grappling with that idea, I realize once they leave this house, this house leaves me. Right now, times are tough, the visits full of chores and difficulty, but I’ve loved coming here. Loved the way it instantly became my second home -- owing to all of the summers spent on the Jersey Shore -- even though it’s not my childhood home. It’s the childhood home I probably would have preferred.

I've loved the way the beach is a short walk away … so short you can pop down to the shoreline for 30 minutes in the afternoon, or you can go down quick before breakfast. Tonight, since Leo and Mike are not with me, I went before dinner, when the 5 p.m. surf is delicious. 

Loved the way the blocks tell stories, the lanes behind the houses provide a new venue, loved the way everyone bikes, loved the way the train horn is even louder than the one I heard from my childhood bedroom in Hicksville, growing up. Loved the fog horn emerging from the darkness. Loved the way I almost always sleep well here. 

I am not ready for them to go to assisted living -- or anywhere for that matter. I have not memorized the inventory of houses on every street. I haven't walked enough along the deadend blocks that front the Shark River Inlet on the town’s southern edge.

I haven’t learned to surf. I haven’t paddle-boarded here.

I haven’t spent a winter here.

I haven’t

 

Please keep a notebook!

I wrote a piece for Longreads a few years back that was like inscribing the instructions on the inside of my head. I say that because it was about keeping a notebook.

I keep a notebook. Ernest Hemingway kept a notebook. So did Leonardo da Vinci and Pablo Picasso! I think you, too, should keep a notebook (or maybe just notes). I love reading the notebooks other people have kept!

Longreads is in the business of recommending longreads [essays and works of journalism that require time to read and effort to produce] so the piece was a hybrid; it begins with a short personal essay about how I began keeping a notebook and then I segue into recommendations of some stellar reads about the art and craft of recording our thoughts. One writer I cited even quotes a long-ago author who questioned what was lost when we moved from writing everything by hand to typing our thoughts. There is something fundamental about using our hands to record our thoughts (although it's the writing -- the recording -- that counts.)

All of this to say, please keep a notebook! Give it a chance in 2021 (there is so much to say, no?) 

Write in it whenever you have a moment (also, if you can, create a moment to write in it. Maybe Sunday morning at 8 a.m. Or how about Friday evening at 9 p.m.? Discover what works). 

Write whatever you'd like to remember -- even your grocery list. Even a laundry list of ordinary moments that make up your day. Write in it as often as you can -- but DON'T let occasional hiatuses discourage you from maintaining the notebook. In other words, do not hold yourself to some unattainable or as-yet unattainable standard -- such as writing in the notebook every day -- and then abandon the project because you haven't kept up this absurd bargain.

So like I said, write in it when you can. Once a week? Cool. Once a month? It's something. Specifically: something you'll be able to revisit later. Your future self meeting your former self on the page (or screen, if you're keeping a digital diary).

Here's how my piece for Longreads begins -- click the link below to read the whole thing:

(From Longreads)

"On Keeping a Notebook: A Reading List"

“I can feel my brain changing.” Those were the first words I wrote in what would eventually become a continuous journal spanning thousands of pages and dozens of notebooks.

It was the middle of the night, and after I jotted the thought down, I added, “Is it permanent?”

I felt as if a tuning fork had been struck, its echo reverberating in my head. We were living in Atlanta then, and our house had one of those oversized master suites, inherited from the previous owner, so once out of bed, I was standing in a small sitting room that adjoined the bedroom. Next to me, a lamp I’d spirited away from my grandfather’s house cast a small glow, easing the insomnia I was experiencing. I kept repeating a phrase to myself, “The rough places made smooth.” I wasn’t sure if it was a biblical quote, or whether I had combined two different sayings (Atlanta is the birthplace of Martin Luther King, Jr., and I had the vague idea that Dr. King had said something to that effect). I only knew I felt relief at committing some of my inner turmoil to paper.

The next night, awake again at 3 a.m., I wrote about what I called “adventures in mind-expansion.” The journaling struck me as unusual. I was a reporter at an NPR station at the time and had been a news journalist for more than a decade. But this was different — akin to the writing I’d done when I was 9 and my teachers predicted I would be a writer.

I can partly chalk it up to something that happened a week later — my son’s birth. When I went into labor and headed off to the hospital that warm July day, I packed a notebook, a practice I’d abandoned years before when my expat days in Italy had concluded. One of the first photos I have with my newborn shows me writing in the maternity ward while nursing him. From there, a notebook became my constant companion. Some days in early motherhood, I couldn’t stop writing. I’d fill notebook pages at different intervals of the day, like an ongoing Twitter thread.

I was preparing for motherhood to change my life; it was the transformation I’d trained my eyes on entirely. But instead a parallel transformation involving writing also emerged.

Writing anchored me through my first year as a working mom. I’d pull off the road to write on my way home from work, or jot a few lines in the daycare parking lot. I found the twister of passing buildings, pedestrians, music on the radio, and the sounds of my son floating up from the backseat inspired me to experience new joys or simply savor old ones from a new vantage point. Sometimes I would even write while leaning the journal against the steering wheel, my eye moving between the page and the road.

*

To read the rest, click on this link:

https://longreads.com/2019/07/23/notebook-reading-list

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We are all poetry people when we are young

From the lost diary archive

May 12, 2020 (in Avon)

Leo is learning about poetry this week in home school, and he will even have to write two poems. While out for a walk, we discuss the types of poems he’s studying and suddenly he says, “What kind of poem is the one by Sean O’Casey? Where he says, ‘I often looked up at the sky/An I assed meself the question, what is the stars?’”

THIS REALLY HAPPENED. 

It shows he’s paying attention since we have up in the hall the famous poster about Irish writers, which features 12 quotations from the works of Irish writers including one from a play in verse by O'Casey. But still: My 7-year-old American son said the name ‘Sean O’Casey.’

We then went back to my parents' house to study their version of the poster (but of course, they, too, have the post of Irish writers). Truth: as often as I looked at the poster, I never actually studied the rhymes in the quotations! Never studied the meter! And there we were counting syllables in the poems. 

Literature is life. 

And...

We are all poetry people when we are young.

I don't know if he will write much more poetry in his life or if he'll write in general; he likes to draw, which even that, may wind up being simply a childhood hobby.

But what I do know is that he's at the age that predates 'I'm not into poetry.' That predates 'I'm not a poetry guy.' And: 'Who reads poetry?' And I'll aim to have him linger at this age as long as possible. Because we are all poetry people when we are young.

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Books I read in 2020 & Books I'll read in 2021

I've begun to be much more systematic about what I read, and it's a habit that may trace its way back to my MFA days at Bennington where one professor encouraged us to "fill in our gaps" as we compiled our reading lists for the term. For me, that meant some classics I had overlooked, especially in the Shakespeare oeuvre. Also women writers -- now a full-time project, reading as many women authors as I can. (I want to be a woman author, I want to translate women authors so I need to read women authors. And it's surprising how even an avowed Feminist like me wakes up one day to find she's read far fewer women authors than merit would have.)

So I set out to fill in my gaps. Nonetheless, the year in reading is always an adventure, right? I did want to read a Primo Levi biography, but I had no plans to read The Death of a President by William Manchester. No plans to re-read it obsessively, no plans to pore over it on sleepless nights. But once I stumbled upon it in a cabin in Vermont lined with old paperbacks, I couldn't put it down.

Indeed, two of the books that I lingered over the most -- partly because of their lengths -- were the biography of Primo Levi (The Double Bond: Primo Levi A Biography by Carole Angier) and the Manchester book. It didn't seem coincidental; one book covered in excruciating detail the demons that brought down a survivor (and literary legend), 40 years after he left Auschwitz and the other, also with excruciating detail, summed up the climate surrounding one of the most devastating public events of the last 100 years of American history -- the assassination of JFK.

I also wound up reading a lot of Italian fiction! That's pretty typical, except this year I was a judge for the Italian Prose in Translation Award, a prize that's given by the American Literary Translators Association, of which I am a member.

What I didn't do was read 50 books, an informal goal I've set the last few years. Do I get credit for re-reading parts of lots of books? Reading parts of books I am auditioning for reading lists? Unclear. 

I have all kinds of ideas for books I'd like to read in 2021, including Will's Boy by Wright Morris; Art and Ardor by Cynthia Ozick; What You Have Heard Is True; The Spy Who Came in From the Cold; Little Drummer Girl; Emily Wilson's translation of The Odyssey; and A Stranger's Pose, by Emanuel Iduma.

Here's what I read in 2020:

Books I planned to read and did

A Small Place by Jamaica Kincaid

Le Piccole Virtu, Natalia Ginzburg

Books I did not plan to read but did and LOVED:

The Death of a President by William Manchester

Nobody's Son by Mark Slouka

Pedigree by Patrick Modiano

Zinky Boys, Svetlana Alexievich

Bad Feminist, Roxana Gay

Books of Italian fiction (select)

La vita bugiarda, Elena Ferrante

I Am God, Giacomo Sartori (translated by the late, great Frederika Randall)

The Bishop's Bedroom, Piero Chiara (translated by Jill Foulston)

At the Wolf's Table, Rosella Postorino (translated by Leah Janeczko)

Arturo's Island, Elsa Morante (translated by Ann Goldstein)

Ithaca Forever: Penelope Speaks, Luigi Malerba (translated by Douglas Grant Heise)

Books I read for reviews

A Girl Returned (Kenyon Review, March 2020)

(Read the review here: https://kenyonreview.org/reviews/a-girl-returned-by-donatella-di-pietrantonio-738439/)

Review: Penguin Book of Italian Short Stories (edited by Lahiri; reviewed for Three Percent Jan 2020)

(Read the review here)

Books I planned to read or re-read when I began this list but did not:
Tutti i nostri ieri -- Natalia Ginzburg (AGAIN)

Jesse Wegman, Let the People Pick The President: the Case for Abolishing the Electoral College

Il Partigiano Johnny by Beppe Fenoglio

Mavis Gallant, Paris Notebooks

The rest of the list of books I did read

La strada che va in citta' -- Natalia Ginzburg

Twyla Tharp, The Creative Habit

I Could Tell You Stories, Patricia Hampl (memoir)

The Art of the Memoir, Mary Karr

Handling the Truth, Beth Kepkart

What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, Haruki Murakami

Nobody Knows My Name, James Baldwin

Essays from the Nick of Time, Mark Slouka

Pedigree, Patrick Modiano

The Devil and Sherlock Holmes, David Grann

Dante's Inferno

An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination, Elizabeth McCracken

The Other Wes Moore, Wes Moore

Upstream, Mary Oliver

One Brief Shining Moment, William Manchester

Happy reading!

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The Year in Writing ... and Surviving

Each year, I write a post about what I’ve accomplished in writing (and also literary translation) over the previous 12 months. And even in this apocalyptic year of 2020, I have made some (SOME!) progress in my efforts to be a consistently-published writer and translator.

But I’ve also struggled, and I don't have a long roster of accomplishments to boast about this December. When I post my Year in Writing roundup every year, I ask other people to chime in with their successes. I suspect this year many of us don’t have much to report or don’t feel like celebrating.

We may have accomplished some things in 2020, but chief among them may simply be surviving a blockbuster year in heartache, conflict and troubles.

I have admitted to my students that our current learning model – and our current living model – is falling short. To be sure, we are doing the best we can. We’re all masked up and practicing social distancing and engaging remotely with whatever endeavor we’re involved in.

But what are we missing? What are we silently forgoing, without necessarily acknowledging the void produced by never seeing friends and family? What are we silently forgoing, by never lingering after class to chat? Never impulsively stopping by a friend's house or visiting a museum or catching a movie on a Tuesday afternoon.

What aren’t we admitting?

This isn’t an easy question to answer because Covid-19 in some ways exacerbated existing trends that take us away from pure lived experience. We were already way too much online, and now more so. We were already meeting each other digitally  -- via email and text -- way more than in person. I know that many introverts have welcomed the cancellation of events, the wholesale nixing of keeping-up-with-the Joneses socially. But Covid-19 has given us permission to look at Twitter (or insert your preferred point-of-scrolling here) instead of the world around us. 

There will come a moment perhaps when we reckon with what's been lost. Of course, for those who have lost family and friends to Covid-19, that moment has already come. One more way we are divided, as a nation.

Oddly, what I did manage to accomplish in the world of writing this year is almost completely tied to these Coronavirus Times. Namely, I published three short essays with the Brevity Nonfiction Blog that all sprang from the Covid-19 era’s new routines.

The first, in April, described the sudden move to teaching remotely, and the small silver lining afforded by the shift, inasmuch as I used the moment to inspire my students to take journal writing seriously. My students wrote about their new lives of sweatpants, screens and snacks. As I mentioned in a previous post, the tenderness, loneliness and fear embedded in their posts made them seem less like grad students and more like high school students (and I said it as a compliment because they didn't hold back). 

You can read “My Students are Finally Keeping a Journal” at Brevity’s Nonfiction Blog here: https://brevity.wordpress.com/2020/04/27/my-students-are-finally-keeping-a-journal/

The second – about my ailing father who has multiple myeloma -- speaks to the ways Covid-19 has complicated caring for loved ones, and also how the virus has underscored the fragility of our world. 

"One small pleasure these days? Saying the word ‘apocalypse.’ A-poc-a-lypse. Apocalyptic is even better. Not only because the bread aisle is barren, but also because the father who was intent on not going ‘gently into that dark night,’ to quote his favorite Dylan Thomas poem, may wind up going gently after all, nestled as he is under an avalanche of blankets on the couch in the living room, where he remains day and night.”

You can read the whole essay, “What I’m Not Writing About,” at Brevity here:

https://brevity.wordpress.com/2020/07/01/what-i-am-not-writing-about/

And in the third essay, published just last month, I wrote about the dog we finally adopted because heck, we were going to be home all the time anyway, so why not hole up with something furry? It's forced me to discover all kinds of things, but perhaps the best thing is the sky. 

"The sky is always there, isn’t it? There above me now, like every moment that’s come before. But forced to spend hours under its shifting gaze, I feel as though I am only now noticing that it’s a chameleon, a compass, an all-weather friend. You could hang it in a museum, so compelling is its composition."

You can read it here: https://brevity.wordpress.com/2020/11/25/the-dog-journal/

Even the few other publishing world accomplishments I managed to notch that were not tied to Covid-19 restraints seem to nonetheless evoke the apocalypse. For example, I published my translation of four poems by Holocaust survivor and Italian transnational writer, Edith Bruck, in Asymptote Journal, including one that asks if the list of men who count in life can be pared down to one: "The father who is missing." You can read those poems here (you can also hear Signora Bruck read them in Italian):

https://www.asymptotejournal.com/poetry/edith-bruck-versi-vissuti/

As always, there is so much I didn’t accomplish. Some of it was out of my control! Like I didn’t have the two-week fellowship I'd won at the New York Public Library because like everything else, the library shut down, and has been re-opening very slowly. And I received dozens of rejections.

Maybe I will just conclude this roundup by saying if you don’t want to share what you’ve accomplished, maybe share what you’ve given up and how much you miss it. I think we owe it to ourselves to admit we’re not living in a normal way.

After publishing the essay that touched on not wanting to write about my father's illness, I began to force myself to record almost every word my father said. In my diary, I wrote about how he coughed, and it was his cough. The way he has always coughed. He almost never speaks now but the cough? It "sounded like him." Another day, I pointed out the blossoming pink roses outside of the dining room window and Daddy said, “Yes, I’ve been watching them for weeks.” Golden. What else is he contemplating?

Writing my way through this brutal year. Well, look at that -- I am ending this entry on a positive note. I hope that writing is seeing you through -- writing or painting or cooking or running or reading or whatever you can lose yourself in, without losing it all.

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For BREVITY: The Dog Journal that Became a Diary of the Sky

Grateful to the Brevity Nonfiction Blog for publishing another essay of mine, this time about the dog journal that evolved into a meditation on the masterpiece above us every moment of our lives:

"... forced to spend hours under its shifting gaze, I feel as though I am only now noticing that it’s a chameleon, a compass, an all-weather friend. You could hang it in a museum, so compelling is its composition.

"As I age, I’ve come to crave the outdoors. Yet one morning last month, when I looked up at the blue cathedral roof above me, I felt as though I were seeing it for the first time."

Please read the rest of the essay at this link:

https://brevity.wordpress.com/2020/11/25/the-dog-journal/

On Judging the Italian Prose in Translation Award

This past year, I was a judge for the Italian Prose in Translation Award, given each year by the industry association known as ALTA (the American Literary Translators Association).

And what that's meant is tons of Italian literature making its way to my house. Or maybe better yet, just more than usual. It has also illustrated to me in a very personal way how difficult it is to nail a good translation. So many variables, so many tricky word combos to get right.

The five finalists were all quite worthy. They included an intriguing murder-mystery by an author I'd never encountered before (Piero Chiara) and a translator (Jill Foulston) whose work was so fluid, I forgot at times I wasn't reading in the original language; and a fictional account of the women charged with pre-tasting Hitler's food to screen out poisons (written by Rosella Postorino and translated by Leah Janeczko).

Ultimately, the award went to Frederika Randall, who translated the wonderfully innovative novel, I Am God by Giacomo Sartori. I am sorry to say the awarding was posthumous as we lost Randall this year (after impressive careers in journalism AND literary translation).

More information and the full list of IPTA finalists here:

https://www.literarytranslators.org/tags/ipta

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