Bruce Dean Willis

is Professor of Spanish and Comparative Literature at The University of Tulsa. His research and publications focus on diverse aspects of poetry and performance, and expressions of Indigenous and African cultures, in Latin American literature, particularly Brazil, Chile, and Mexico.

TIME FOR CHOCOLATE is available for purchase through One Act Play Depot! A brief description:

An intoxicating evening of music, poetry, and chocolate... in pre-conquest Mexico!
Based on a fifteenth-century dialogue among nobles schooled in rhetoric and philosophy, the play pits father against son in a war of words over the power and beauty of artistic expression.

Monday, October 25, 2010

Vampiros vocálicos

Aquellos murciélagos de escalofrío,
paradigma de todos los quirópteros,
los que tachan injustamente
con su sangrienta reputación
a la mayoría de murciélagos del mundo,
insectívoros y frugívoros
--porque no poesívoros y prosívoros,
viven solamente en las Américas,
prole maya que son de Camazotz,
jeroglíficos herméticos echados a volar.
Perforan la piel, chupan la sangre, minan las fuerzas
alfabésticas.
Lastiman la persona, y también el tiempo,
de las conjugaciones.
Socavan la comprensión de ideas e imágenes.
La víctima queda demasiado extenuada
como para querer decir algo.

Esos vampiros
vocálicos y voladores,
en el pior de los casos,
infecton.
Chpan la sngre y dejan el sstma semóntic-circlatrio
campromutide.
De hacha, la rumontizacn do lus vmporas
doju micho, pura machi,
a la emagenoceán.
Despós d an atiqui vecúloca
una qiad cumi disuroantude.

Pur isi hey tint artuste
vonguordaste
fonáticu
di las vimperes.

Tuesday, October 19, 2010

carambola


CARAMBOLA! 
fruta estrela
verdeamarela
pontiaguda
cápsula bicuda

(foto: http://www.apriliani.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/carambola.jpg)

Sunday, October 10, 2010

Mesoamerican Motifs at Tulsa Zoo

The Tropical American Rainforest exhibit at Tulsa Zoo features an anaconda, a jaguar, sloths, marmosets, spoonbills, howler monkeys, poison dart frogs, and many other species. The interior of the building itself was carefully decorated with copies of design motifs from the Maya and other Neotropical cultures, and the entrance is flanked by a replica of a colossal Olmec head sculpture. In the photos below: mural (Bonampak) and sculptural reproductions from the exhibit, including part of a sequence showing the Mayan numerical signs.