The list of denominaciones de origen for Spanish wines is long and impressive, featuring such famous names as Rioja, Ribera del Duero, Rueda and Valdepeñas. The label in the photo is not from one of these, though. It’s a wine from la Mancha, and presumably the skinny little figure in red is Don Quijote himself.
There’s a huge difference between un vino de la Mancha and una mancha de vino, of course, but seeing the label made me wonder whether there are any vineyards around Staines.
While looking for a picture of a quill pen the other day, I came across several pictures I took to accompany an article on stationery written many years ago.This one particularly appealed, and though I’m not sure I’ve got anything very witty or insightful to write on the subject, I thought I’d include it here.
I suppose I could mention the confusion between the words ‘stationery’ and ‘stationary’.
Continue reading “attached to the past”
I’m a firm believer that poetry isn’t all about sunny situations and pleasant people, which is one reason why it’s particularly important to separate what’s said in the poem from the person who wrote it.
It is, however, often difficult to show a narrator’s inadequacies without the writer coming across as inadequate as a poet or as a person: if you create a convincingly weak character in your writing, it isn’t always clear that the weakness is intentional.
Continue reading “writers, narrators, realism and reality”
Well, it’s Valentine’s Day , so it seems a good day to post some love poetry. That concept always takes me back to something I read back in 2002 in an interview with Jenaro Talens in the El País literary supplement under the headline “Toda poesía es poesía de amor”. Although I don’t have the original newspaper any more, at the time I made a rough translation of the phrase that leapt out at me:
“All poetry is love poetry. But not in the conventional romantic approach; rather as seen in the impulse of desire towards an otherness…”
In a story on the BBC website, about the streaked tenrecs of Madagascar, I find the following:
Unique hedgehog-like mammals have been filmed using their quills to communicate.
I wonder if they’ll eventually progress to fountain pens, biros, and on to other, more modern, technology.
(Yes, the photo includes all sorts of irrelevant stationery items, but it was the only one I had in my files that featured a quill pen. I think it may be a porcupine quill.)
don't confuse the narrator 