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.

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

El "rejistro": Una pedagogía radical

La BIBLIOTECA es
un archivo de conocimientos
y el DICCIONARIO
el Protocolo en que están rejistrados
la Imprenta lleva el rejistro
Poner impedimento á la Imprenta
es anular la Escritura
Prohibir libros nuevos
es prohibir la Importación de conocimientos
Condenar libros conocidos
es desmembrar el depósito
Los Conocimientos son PROPIEDAD PUBLICA
Puede renunciarla una jeneración
pero nó privar de ella á las siguientes
no lea; pero no oculte ni destruya

Me ha llamado la atención como un objet trouvé el breve texto arriba, de Inventamos o Erramos por Simón Rodríguez, edición de Monte Avila, Caracas, 1988, p. 112.

Ortografía y mayúsculas arbitrarias, márgenes al centro, falta de puntación: es así la escritura del controversial educador ambulante Simón Rodríguez (1769-1854), maestro de Simón Bolívar y fundador infatigable de escuelas por toda Sudamérica. Viajó y predicó, además, por los Estados Unidos y Europa durante un cuarto de siglo haciéndose llamar Samuel Robinson. El meollo de su pedagogía--escuelas mixtas abiertas a niños y niñas de todas las clases y etnias, con un enfoque empírico a través del estudio obligatorio de textos originales, de las artes prácticas (carpintería y albañilería, por ejemplo), de las lenguas indígenas por encima del latín, y de la anatomía por medio de desnudos en vivo--indignó a las autoridades civiles, académicas, y eclesiásticas de las recien nacidas repúblicas latinoamericanas. Rodríguez mismo reconoció lo avanzado de su metodología al incluir en su libro los supuestos comentarios de otros: "¡es mucho lo que se ha adelantado!" (104). Y efectivamente, sus bases teóricas junto a sus prácticas, desafortunadamente poco publicadas y leídas en su época, aunque a mí me parezcan atinadas me imagino que aún huelen a insoportables para muchos. Hay que luchar para que llegue la tan atrasada época de Simón Rodríguez.


Friday, April 22, 2011

Nomelodés

Desatinaste
descomunal
desparpajo.
Despapaye tan
despiadado
desconozco.
Desafortunadamente,
despejaste
desconveniencias a
decenas.
¡Qué desmadre!

Friday, April 15, 2011

Chalchiuhcuicatl

I heard a Jade Song calling to me: Let me on stage, I need to speak with my husband. 
And so she came.

(The following is an excerpt from Time for Chocolate.)

TECAYEHUATZIN
[...] Yes, time for chocolate! Sustenance for us, as we, in turn, offer sustenance to the gods! Turn after turn after time after time, the cycle of the sun is the cycle of the heart. Blood! Time for blood! Time--ongoing, without cataclysm--in exchange for blood! It is the blood that inebriates the gods and for which they agree that the sun will rise, the rain will fall, the corn will grow, the cacao will blossom. Chocolate: gift of the gods. Blood: chocolate of the gods.

(Enter CHALCHIUHCUICATL house left with a basket of cacao beans. She scoops the beans and lets them run through her fingers as she speaks)

CHALCHIUHCUICATL
Dear husband, I interrupt you. I remind you that we have many expenses, yet the servant says you told him to double the amount of cacao for chocolate. Why is this?

TECAYEHUATZIN
Dear wife, you know my friends are coming. Must the value of friendship be measured in cacao? If so, then there are not enough trees to produce the cacao needed to m...

CHALCHIUHCUICATL
(interrupting)
To measure the value of your friendship. I know this, dear husband. But the xocolatl does not keep like the dry cacao beans do. The chocolate must be drunk when it's prepared.

TECAYEHUATZIN
And that it shall. The gullet of my friend Xayacamach is as prodigious as his flower songs.

CHALCHIUHCUICATL
Would you allow me to grind up so much of our savings for a gathering of my friends?

TECAYEHUATZIN
(considering)
Yes. Preferably if it were to celebrate your friendship with flower song.

CHALCHIUHCUICATL
Not everything is flower song, you know.

TECAYEHUATZIN
No, dear wife, but ask yourself: are gossip and complaint the best for painting friendship?

CHALCHIUHCUICATL
They are only natural.

TECAYEHUATZIN
And flower song is not--it must be learned and crafted, which is why it is the more precious. Flower song is a gift to please our senses, and to enliven the divine spirit. Through flower song we cast light on our condition, on our knowledge that we are here for only a little moment. As you say, dear wife: the chocolate must be drunk when it's prepared.

CHALCHIUHCUICATL
I hope you also told the servant to add only a little mushroom, only a little morning glory.

TECAYEHUATZIN
You know me as you should. Sensuality without debauchery.

CHALCHIUHCUICATL
I know you as I should. I know you wish I were as gifted in flower song as Macuilxochitl.

TECAYEHUATZIN
There you err, my precious song of jade. As you say, not everything is flower song. I do not wish for more than I receive from the divine spirit: this moment, here with you, here with me.

CHALCHIUHCUICATL
(embraces her husband)
I believe you because I so choose.

TECAYEHUATZIN
Do you hear how wise you are?

[...]




Wednesday, April 6, 2011

alto astral


ela não voa:
ressoa

o alto astral
descomunal
que ela tem
que ela nem
percebe porque é natural
nela, esse seu vaivém
abarca todo o pessoal
e levanta quem
se sente mal 

ela abre espaços além
do que pode alcançar ninguém
pelos fluxos de luz 
que ela produz
e todos ficamos
alvoroçados
da boa,
como alaranjados
num alvor enaltecedor,
transparente,
transcendente,
numa harmonia de ondas,
umas curtas, outras longas,
que vibrando assim todos fazemos
concerto de cores
conjunto de gemas

e os versos giram em universo
afinado, azul aceso

tudo porque ela decidiu
me saudar e me sorriu
divina graça que ela tem
alto astral que nem ninguém

mas ela não voa:
ressoa