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, June 26, 2013

de-cor-ar

A new room, more than one empty shelf,
spaces to fill with something about myself...

Brazilian books, a museum catalog
of Mexican art, a stylized frog
from Colombia made of clay,
a Chilean invitation for a special day,
en eclipse that was a gift for the wall,
more books to display to all
the visitors, some orchestral works from Brazil,
a brightly colored mug from the top of the hill
at Sugarloaf, a Taino statuette,
a Literature in Spanish encyclopedia set,
books on cinematic splendor and Panama's gold,
a compendium of maps from New Spain of old,
an Amazonian atlas, and from Paraty
a wooden boat a colleague gave to me,
a calendar in Portuguese,
and bookending all of these,
works by Fuentes and García Marquez.
But up in the corners where the shelves are darkest,
there are many more spaces to fill...

and it may be that to never fill them, I will.