Today I began private Spanish lessons to help me to advance with my education in Spanish. A bit nervous about the one-on-one attention, I concocted a project for us to focus on: the generation of poems purely in Spanish and the study of poets and trends relevant to this pursuit.
Angeles, my teacher, was up for the task even before I’d presented it to her, even before it’d been fully formed. I came with two drafts. She offered a handful of corrections and promised the poems I’d concocted on my own weren’t cliche.
After some discussion of rhyme, romance, and politics in Mexican poetry, she led me in a free association game where she called out words, and I responded with whatever staggered to mind. The list, with all of its imperfections, is depicted in the photo.
I learned three new words and wrote a poem that began with the difference between how boys and girls play and ended with a comment on how silence is expensive these days. Nothing romantic, it is a piece hardly identifiable as political. I have work to do!
How much were Spanish lessons there?
$19 per hour. At Instituto Cultural Oaxaca. I spent $152 over two weeks. It was incredibly worth the $$$.