Poetry.org’s What is Poetry declares that, “In most poetry, it is the connotations and the ‘baggage’ that words carry (the weight of words) that are most important.”

In mine, that would be in order to sweep those connotations from on their feet.

Many majority of the Mexis I’ve known have really enjoyed asking me at least once or twice to confirm the veracity of the accepted notion that English is harder to learn (speak, read, write, pronounce, et al) than Spanish. I whip a variation on the theme couching my unstudied take: that in some ways English is more difficult and in other ways Spanish is the obstinant ortography. Almost always the first por ejemplo is my evaluation that Spanish grammer is much more complicated than English grammer. Second level examples (situationally dependent, of course) include their having an entire form, the subjunctive, that we don’t have. Two forms of past and two forms of future to our one each, consistent 5/6 conjugations for every word while we sometimes make-do with one change (two words total) for all persons, and so on. And then the big but ox: your rules are pretty regular; one can learn a lot by learning the rule. We have probably more exceptions than conformities; students have to memorize everything. And then there’s the thing they’ve all already noticed and frowned or at least puzzled over (those less confidantes): one cannot read an English word and know how to pronounce it. And, we have more sounds. And sometimes more words, for example ‘lend’ and ‘borrow’ for their bi-directional ‘prestar.’ But they, too, will nuance, fine tune, differentiate, or gradate with an extra word or two while we stay satisfied at our Leatherman-tool-like uni-word. English has nonsensities: we chop a tree down and then chop it up. And awkwardities: mother-in-law. And so on. But we can also be efficient when they pile on deadweight words. And so on, so forth, and sobriety… Pros and cons, gives and takes…

Mas o menos, son igual, digo yo.

The interesting differences are those that reveal culture and thoughtways. My favorite Spanish revelation is the common construction that says the keys (for exam) forgot the speaker, not the other way around in our confessional version. In our culture, the focus is me, me, me. Fittingly, we like someone or something here. There someone or something pleases the speaker, which could be a better assignment of responsibility, depending on your point of view. And I like that something great to us is beautiful to them. But they could use an equivalent for ‘cute.’

Bueno, that’s a too-long intro to the belowbelow. Interesting to see how things canonized, fixed, and so familiar they approach (or surpass) the rote. I like the longer Hamlet title; that the setting is Denmark has always interested me. But, man, [and this is what I’ve been gunning toward the whole time, the point that sparked:] A Midsummer Night’s Dream just doesn’t come out. Not only does it lose a limb but it picks up a thud and a limp, poor thing.

bullet Hamlet, Principe de Dinamarca, de William Shakespeare
bullet Los dos hidalgos de Verona, de William Shakespeare
bullet Macbeth, de William Shakespeare
bullet Troilo y Crésida, de William Shakespeare
bullet El rey Enrique VIII, de William Shakespeare
bullet El rey Lear, de William Shakespeare
bullet Coriolano, de William Shakespeare
bullet Como gustéis, de William Shakespeare
bullet Sueño de una noche de verano, de William Shakespeare
bullet La tempestad, de William Shakespeare
bullet Las alegres comadres de Winsor, de William Shakespeare
bullet La 1ra parte del rey Enrique IV, de William Shakespeare
bullet La 2da parte del rey Enrique IV, de William Shakespeare
bullet El rey Enrique V, de William Shakespeare
bullet Romeo y Julieta, de William Shakespeare
bullet Otelo el moro de Venecia, de William Shakespeare

I, and others differently worse, get crazy weird atomically granular with how things mean. Derrida and some people I’ve known comin’ up young professors in the new cool discipline of rhetoric (the new Victorian), semiotics, and anthropologists devoting a life to documenting the enormous global impact that the faint rising lilt that one jungle crowd put on the end of their word for fart in vulgar impetuosity toward the hoard through yonder who toed closer the line of fart’s standard jungle pronunciation.

Like me in the grammercies, insisting on the horribly esoteric nuance of a normally nonbelonging letter between normallly very belonging, which came about by just-in-time-and-strictly-fleeting revelation, so that the meaning derived from that nuance becomes the only thing that ever has been or will be completely uncompromisedly for me and by me, therefore true, and sublime, and indulgent, and irefutable, shaking.

Well,it just suddenly feels like such a kindship with pharmaceutical scientists, astrophysicists, and zen gardeners.