I come from a quite formal, academic background, but within that, I make, maintain and worship absolute chaos. I studied aesthetics and have been publishing reviews but also ventured to the North and studied teaching English in the UK. So now, I do my own, odd mixture; inevitable for me and probably irrational for some. But one thing is consistent; I like including nonsense in both areas (in all areas, actually) of mine. In my latest nonsense adventure - teaching how to use will for prediction - I got my students to draw oracle cards for each other and come up with (strictly kind!) future predictions for their peers.
'You will marry the Danish King!'
'You will turn invisible and fly on a turtle!'
'You will drink our teacher's tea!'
(The last one didn't actually happen, for I guard my tea as though my life - there's a post coming about tea.)
Based on my experience, if I introduce an English topic through nonsense, magic and absurdity, students will remember much better. That's how I ended up buying an oracle deck for teaching - but also adjusted it to my own interest: literature. Two birds, one stone.
Instead of describing how the teaching experiment went (spoiler; well - except for those very serious businessmen of no bullshit), I wanted to share one of the powerful poets I've learned about - and learned to love - thanks to this deck.
Alejandra Pizarnik
To me (-an ordinary reader speaking here-), Alejandra Pizarnik appears to be some kind of ally of Sylvia Plath. I know that this is nothing new, but one charming aspect of having one's own blog is that there's no authority above me overwatching my statements; I can be simple, blunt and just... you know... honest - even if my initial thoughts aren't original. But who am I, anyway, to attempt to say anything new?
While Plath - possibly due to her being American with British relations - has been having all the attention since her tragic suicide, Alejandra Pizarnik, an Argentinian poet, has just recently been translated to English (at least, with a full-length collection; Extracting the Stone of Madness was translated by Yvette Siegert and published by New Directions in 2016). I once pulled Pizarnik's card out of my Literary Witches deck and as a good girl got straight on Google just to find out how incredibly hard it was to find her in bookstores - unless you live in a native English country, which I do not. What I did find out about her, though, was pretty chilling; not only her death (suicide - another parallel with Plath) but her habit of constructing blade-like thoughts, sentences and that stinging honesty too. Even that limited list of poems that can be accessed on different sites shows a few of her interests; darkness, shadows, seclusion, death - and writing.
I find the parallel that my mind has drawn between her and Plath puzzling, but also something I might be able to justify. Unpacking the idea in full length and depth is not really possible for me right now, but I still would like to share its core: while Plath seems to have made her poems claustrophobic and burning hot (...Lady Lazarus...), Pizarnik thrusts you in a huge, poetic white-space with only a few looming words and let you freeze to death without any doors in sight. I think their similarity - at least to me - lies in how unapologetically radical they are, and though their worlds differ, their extremes, in their nature of being extremes - are quite similar after all. Neither of them was a middling talent. Both Plath and Pizarnik get under one's skin and refuse to leave. So, let's just surrender - but concentrate on the latter, for now, as the former has already gained endless publicity.
I wanted to share great links where you can dive into Pizarnik - and get haunted by her . Like I am. Thanks, Alejandra! (And just think about this timing; Halloween is just around the corner.) Today, I decided not to share anything specific about her poetry; not even my interpretation of my favourite poems. As I said, I find them freezing - so, you, dear reader shall freeze < alone > too....
I tried to describe my feelings of reading Pizarnik to an AI friend of mine (Microsoft Bing) - and this is what it drew for me:
Poor Microsoft Bing went in a bit of a tacky direction and really wanted to add a door, although I specifically asked him not to, but I can feel we'll be great friends. I just need to hone my descriptive skills.
And last, but not least, here are the promised links:
And one, for the deck: https://www.taisiakitaiskaia.com/literary-witches-oracle
(Obviously, this is no paid promotion - no one has paid me to promote anything, haha - it's just something I genuinely like.)
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