>> Want to talk?
No, by George I came here to read, right?
[ Inaudible ]
No, this was the very first and, so far, the very last.
It was appropriate, I thought.
I started writing this.
This is the third book in Spanish because the first of it had been in Spanish
and someone else had done the translation.
I thought it would be a nice to continue the series in Spanish.
Then I realized that I made a mistake.
That Army life was lived in English.
And so I said well, I'll translate it into English.
So I did. And that was another effort of another four months, and that was a mistake
as well, and it didn't work either way.
So I just finished reading Paul Fussell's book on the Great War and modern memory.
So I went back to the index and looked up English poets of WWI.
[Inaudible] WWI, it was Joyce Kilmer and, you know, he didn't have much to offer.
So I read Rosenberg -
Wilfred Owen, Rupert Brooke, Sassoon, [inaudible]
And then, I read WWII American poets.
Two in particular, Karl Shapiro who's still with us and Randall Jarrell.
And then I realized that the narrative prose, a poem would be the best form of genre
that for me, I thought, narrative prose
and just fiction would take too long to say what I wanted to say.
So I used this and I think within nine months I was done.
Well, the rewriting took a little longer, but what I wanted to do and --
Because you could say so much in so few words or use so few words to say so much.
And it just fit in perfectly.
Then I realized that because the youngsters are no longer living in the valley,
that they were going up now in their 20s, that Spanish was no longer the controlling element
or the controlling language in their lives.
So then the next time they go to the university, it's English and Spanish when they go home.
You know, so it was - Then I wrote an essay called Sense of Place
to answer myself some questions and I still have that whenever I lose my way,
I go back and see what I said about the place.
It's a big help.
But being in Japan also was of big help and being in Korea was of big help.
I didn't think so at the time.
I think it was worth a damn being there.
I thought it was very nice when I came back 20 years later, 28 years later.
It took me that long to think about it, but I don't know.
It's -- When I was done with it, by the way,
after 28 years of not having thought about it, I was done with it.
I don't mention it again, except maybe in passing, certainly never talk it.
But it's just part of the work and that's how I look at.
[ Inaudible ]
I think both, plus if they're-- the form, certainly.
And then, a wider audience and then the content, but the two main characters
one of them works at the bank and English is the language of currency there.
And the other one is County Civil Servant and of course English works
because he's a Lieutenant in the homicide squad.
And the place always controls language and, of course, [inaudible].
So it came easier, English did.
Although whenever I speak about the old or about the old times as well and I let the people talk,
then Spanish will take over as it has.
And -- Because I would write in one and then the other,
depending on where the book is situated, ok?
[ Inaudible ]
I think not more than two or three months right before he died.
He died in March and I'd just seen him in the fall semester.
And I'd just gotten a letter from him and he died two weeks after I received the letter,
making plans for the Summer to go to Germany with his wife and the kids and all of that.
And I think we had talked about that time too.
He died. Did I start --
[ Inaudible ]
Well, I canceled the whole European trip because I didn't want to go anywhere.
I just stayed home.
I think I stayed home the whole summer [inaudible] before.
He died in May and I had about a six week --
-- contract which was real nice to break with me because I didn't want to go anywhere.
I didn't write that Summer.
I think I read, probably went to the valley a lot, walked around a lot
because we'd been very close now, for about 14 years, and then all of a sudden he dies.
I never thought that I would take anybody's death that hard.
I mean, my mother had just died in 74, 10 years before.
My dad died when I was, you know, in College.
But his death really affected me a lot.
And then I came back, you know, what I did I think --
That's why I spent over a year working his own work Y no se lo tragó la tierra
and rendering it into English.
And that sort of made it ok for me.
I said fine, it's out of my system now.
And I called it This Migrant Earth because the original translation by Rios was --
I used to thought a little too biblical sounding.
I don't know if you're all familiar with it, it's called And the Earth did not part.
And I said this is very unlike Tomás and Tomás didn't particularly care for the title either.
It was about the migrants, it was about the Earth,
so I said I think this migrant Earth will work.
And, yeah.
It was a great relationship.
You reach a certain age, you don't have many friends, you know?
Not that close, anyway.