Lypophrenia

Ladies and Gentlemen,

I did not learn from books any recipe for writing a poem, and I, in my turn, will avoid giving any advice on mode or style which might give the new poets even a drop of supposed insight. When I am recounting in this speech something about past events, when reliving on this occasion a never-forgotten occurrence, in this place which is so different from what that ...

My speech is going to be a long journey, a trip that I have taken through regions that are distant and antipodean, but not for that reason any less similar to the landscape and the solitude in Scandinavia. I refer to the way in which my country stretches down to the extreme South. So remote are we Chileans that our boundaries almost touch the South Pole, recalling the geography of ...

Beaucoup de mes amis sont venus des nuages
Avec soleil et pluie comme simples bagages.
Ils ont fait la saison des amitiés sincères
La plus belle saison des quatre de la Terre.
Ils ont cette douceur des plus beaux paysages
Et la fidélité des oiseaux de passage.
Dans leurs cœurs est gravée une infinie tendresse
Mais parfois dans leurs yeux se glisse la tristesse.
[audio:...

«It was a fine day. In the west there was a massive stand of cumulus cloud so like a city seen from a distance—from the bow of an approaching ship—that it might have had a name. Lisbon. Hackensack. The sun was hot. Neddy Merrill sat by the green water, one hand in it, one around a glass of gin.»

«Then it occurred to him that by taking a ...