Day: July 12, 2012

Caveat: Antipoeta Test

Banalities & Journaling / Español Aleatorio (Random Spanish) / Media (Texts/Music/Movies etc) / Not My Poetry

Test

Qué es un antipoeta:
un comerciante en urnas y ataúdes?
un sacerdote que no cree en nada?
un general que duda de sí mismo?
un vagabundo que se ríe de todo
hasta de la vejez y de la muerte?
un interlocutor de mal carácter?
un bailarín al borde del abismo?
un narciso que ama a todo el mundo?
un bromista sangriento
deliberadamente miserable?
un poeta que duerme en una silla?
un alquimista de los tiempos modernos?
un revolucionario de bolsillo?
un pequeño burgués?
un charlatán?

un dios?

un inocente?

un aldeano de Santiago de Chile?
Subraye la frase que considere correcta.

Qué es la antipoesía:
un temporal en una taza de té?
una mancha de nieve en una roca?
un azafate lleno de excrementos humanos
como lo cree el padre Salvatierra?
unespejo que dice la verdad?
un bofetón al rostro
del Presidente de la Sociedad de Escritores?
(Dios lo tenga en su santo reino)
una advertencia a los poetas jóvenes?
un ataúd a chorro?
un ataúd a fuerza centrífuga?
un ataúd a gas de parafina?
una capilla ardiente sin difunto?

Marque con una cruz
la definición que considere correcta.

– Nicanor Parra

Para si quisiera saber…

ay ¡estoy cansado! y apenas comienza el día. Voy a estudiar el coreano y después a trabajar.

Caveat: Tarot English

Teaching & Methodology / The Wonders of Work

I have tarot cards, and I sometimes look at them curiously, although I don't believe in them.

A few months ago one of my TP2 students was messing with a "tarot" app on his smartphone, and showed it to me. I said we should have a class about tarot – the meanings of all the cards are quite complicated and I intuited it could be a good "conversation" class.

Recently, I did this, and it was a spectacular success. I've never seen middle-school students so engaged, in English, on a topic. I have them all a 6 page interpretation catalog – a listing of possible meanings for each card. Then they would ask a question and someone – I or one of the students – would lay out the cards and read the future.

They asked about academic future, careers, and, inevitably with teenagers, boyfriends or girlfriends or love. But they were very interested. It was a remarkable English class.

After they ran out of personal questions they dared to ask the cards, a few of them started coming up with political questions – perhaps because they know I tend to get rather animated and interested in these questions. The cards for a question regarding the future of the neverending North Korea / South Korea conflict were eerily accurate with respect to the past – they were cards of fraternal conflict and deception. The cards for the future implied some virtuous resolution, which the students found disconcertingly optimistic.

Then they asked who would win the American election. We decided, pretty much unanimously, that the cards implied that Obama would mess something up and Romney would win in the fall. When I said that Romney was an American "Saenuri" (i.e. conservative party) one student said, humorously, "Oh, then the US is in very big trouble. Ruined! Ruined!"

We all laughed.

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