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.

Tuesday, November 18, 2014

The Writers' Stabbing


            If you know what kind of a thing is a knife, you’re not going to grab it by the wrong end. How will you slice an onion with the handle? More to the point, —ouch—, how will you avoid slicing open your own palm with the blade? Which kind of tears do you want, if any? Knowing how to use a knife means knowing where and when and how to slice.

            Like a knife to an onion, an apostrophe slices a word wide open. The word didn’t, for example, precisely indicates where the o from not was cut, or elided, when the contraction was produced. The scarred misspelling “did’nt,” in contrast, shows a sloppy sliver where none was needed.

            Sometimes we see an apostrophe that reveals who holds the dagger, who possesses what: the student’s sins, the writers’ stabbing. We can even tell how many do the possessing; in these examples, there is one student, and there are more than one writers. To the ear, the student’s sins and the students’ sins and maybe even the student sins all sound the same. If we hear the cut at all, it is only the faint whisper between one s and another as the knife comes unsheathed. But we can see the cut, and a writer who desires clarity of meaning should carve with the precision of the surgeon’s scalpel.

            And yet ignorance of technique leads us to a strange reversal in contemporary English, in which people are given to using the handle for the blade and the blade for the handle, a mangled language of bludgeoned jack-o’-lanterns and punctured doorbells. It seems more common to see, lately, bloody botched procedures such as “Davids Pizzas” where “We have dipping sauce’s.” Plurals don’t need an apostrophe operation any more than pizzas need plastic surgery. And as for David, well, maybe someone is trying to suggest that he dispossess his pizzas. Is this just outright confusion, comparable to a misspelling? Is it the result of dependence on, or ignorance of, software such as Microsoft Word? Does it all stem from the anxiety of that persistent Sword of Damocles, the conundrum of “is it it’s or is it its?” My fearful suspicion is that all of this random slashing replicates the unfocused thrashing-about of a seething, unsettled society whose members do not know where or when or how to show, or to use, their weapons.

            Because an apostrophe is most certainly a weapon, and of the most vastly insidious kind of violence visited upon speakers and readers of the English language. You, writer—you!—you are complicit in Kennedy’s assassination when you give it to him like that, for him to possess, as if anyone wants to possess her or his own murder. This is a fundamentally unethical form of grammatical viciousness that, for as banal and accepted as it is, does not stop being a form of violence that affects the way we think about perpetrators and victims, about crimes and consequences. It is the lazy ease of slurred syllables—the unburdening of not bothering to locate a recycling receptacle; the casual, hurtful chuckle at someone else’s misfortune—that compounds wound over wound and adds up to the death by a thousand cuts. There is always an alternative way to recast the sentence, to subvert the strictures of column width or character count, to slice, if at all, elsewhere: the traitor's crime against the nation, the assassin’s murder of the millionaire, the bombs’ destruction upon the city.

            The writers’ stabbing is the apostrophe’s purpose. At its best, it’s the mark of a clear incision, a graceful stroke, a clever slash’s eye-catching curve. Can you cut it?

Friday, June 20, 2014

Manaus entre Emblemas e Espetáculos

A cidade de Manaus cresce além das expectativas. Definitivamente os limites da cidade na imaginação do mundo transbordam o que seria só o turismo da selva. Sem dúvida os turistas da Copa percebem que é uma cidade grande--grande mesmo--e não o que talvez pensavam: "uma aldéia no meio da Amazônia." Os governos municipal e do estado agendaram um número récorde de eventos culturais durante a Copa, e a segurança e receptividade da cidade têm sido louvadas. Tanto foi assim que, após serem realizados apenas dois dos quatro jogos programados, a cidade de Manaus ganhou o título de "melhor cidade sede da Copa."

http://www.silascamara.com.br/silas_camara/not_completa.php?cod=218
O desenho da Arena da Amazônia faz notícia pelos toques de cultura local e de sustentabilidade: a forma de cesto de palha, a função da armazenagem da chuva, o uso da energia solar, o reaproveitamento de materiais do antigo estádio, etc. Contudo fica claro que o preço enorme da construção e o trânsito piorado causaram polêmica, entanto os três operários que morreram por acidentes durante a construção foram lamentados e martirizados.

http://o.canada.com/sports/soccer/world-cup/world-cup-venue-arena-da-Amazonia
O que acho também relevante da Arena da Amazônia é a relação que ela tem com outra construção emblemática de Manaus: o Teatro Amazonas. Estes dois prédios, construidos para a promoção de espetáculos e para a recepção de visitantes estrangeiros (e brasileiros), agora servem como ícones da cidade. O primeiro do século XIX e o segundo do século XXI; o primeiro com capacidade de 685 pessoas e o segundo de 42.000; o primeiro com palco e o segundo com grama. O primeiro foi levantado como um monumento ao Velho Continente no coração no Novo Mundo; o segundo foi desenhado para refletir formas e valores autóctones (o cesto de palha, a preservação ambiental). O Teatro Amazonas até funcionou como cortina de fundo para a apresentação do cartaz oficial de Manaus como cidade sede, fazendo desse jeito um elo entre passado e futuro.

http://m.fifa.com/worldcup/photos/galleries/y=2012/m=11/gallery=the-host-cities-the-2014-fifa-world-cup-braziltm-unveil-its-official-pos-1954609.html
Apoio e concordo com os desejos da grande e perseverante população manauara: que a nova Arena sirva para muitos eventos além da Copa--concertos, jogos, espetáculos--ultrapassando o objetivo literal do "para inglês (vs. italiano!) ver" para ser uma jóia sustentável mesmo.

Tuesday, June 17, 2014

BRAZIL vs. MEXICO


There's a lot of me wrapped up in that headline, in many ways! What a great game it was today, one of the most exciting draws you could imagine in what was seen nonetheless as a victory for Mexico. Professionally, I've published more about Brazil than about Mexico. But I've taught more Spanish in my Mexican accent than Portuguese in my Brazilian one. If I were for some reason confined to either of those countries for the rest of my life, I would not care - I would be pleased, and I would feel at home. Such rich cultures, such variety. They are the two poles of what it means for me to be a Latin Americanist.




Because of their sizes, populations, and economies, Brazil and Mexico are the Latin American giants. But more than this, they are the giants of the soccer world. How can this be, if Brazil has won five World Cup championships (the record) while Mexico--though almost always a strong team and one of only a few nations to have hosted the World Cup itself twice--has not yet made it to the Round of Eight? It is because they have the largest populations in the world of soccer fandom. To start with the obvious, we can eliminate the global demographic colossi China, India, and Indonesia, which don't have World Cup-qualifying teams, nor do they seem to have the fan base for them. But what about Argentina? It's also an incredibly soccer-crazed nation with a large territory, yet its population is only slightly more than a third of Mexico's. In the Spanish-speaking world, Colombia and Spain have larger populations than Argentina's, but the two populations together are still shy of Mexico's.

Among the teams at this year's World Cup, it's true that the US, Russia, Nigeria and Japan all have populations greater than Mexico's (but--except the US-- lesser than Brazil's). Still, I would contend that the uniformity of soccer passion across practically all sectors of Mexican society (and including millions of Mexicans in the US) means that the nation as a whole is much more invested in its team than are the Americans, the Russians, the Nigerians, or the Japanese.

What this means is that the particular match BRAZIL vs. MEXICO holds the greatest possible combined national interest among the citizens of the countries whose teams are playing. No wonder it was an exciting game. It probably attracted the largest TV audience of the Group phase matches. Perhaps the teams will meet yet again before this World Cup is over!

Tuesday, February 4, 2014

Wrap

Flee, thought, across the distance.
runninflyinrunniflyscootrunflyflyscootrunningrunningfly
I will catch you.
And the catching of you will be the knowing, the naming of you.

Because a name you must have.
name thing name signifier name word name name
The speed of the whirling dust in your wake as you pursue the horizon,
cloud of plumes scooting at an attainable height,
I will match with my gallop.

Let your name be... ñandú.
ñandú ñandú ñandú rhea
And mine will be gaucho.
And with my shoulder I raise my arm, I swing that with which
I will apprehend you:
three weighted ropes of different lengths, joined at one end.
ora bolas bolas bolas
With these I will capture you.
I will attain and retain and ascertain you,
thought with the heft and hurl of a
rhea.

Even as you flee I have cast my stones:
ora bolas bolas bolas
one to circumscribe you quickly
your legs
patas
step no more
while the second wraps further round to categorize you
tight
tighter
and the third, the longest, encircles you repeatedly to characterize and contextualize you,
tightest
thought brought down for analysis,
quick squeeze succulent
for dissection
and digestion.

But sometimes you thoughts are best, and most enticing,
when unfettered, scattered
clouds of plumes plumes clouds plumes clouds of plumes
across the pampas
and I
can only perceive you
remotely
with longing for your form.

Yes, that's often best.
Knowing you are out there in space
potential not kinetic
is another way of naming,
of imagining.

Flocks of thoughts roam free
and live and die unknown
until the hunt.