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Aug 20, 2023·edited Aug 20, 2023Liked by Zina Gomez-Liss

excited to find your stack. I teach poetry in Colorado, and write about Madness (we recently talked about Wallace Stevens) with my best friend in Boston who is also a disability advocate, and does work with Easter Seals for families with special needs. I wasn't aware of this code document and am very interested, we have a module about allusion and another about translation and co-optation (ethics in inspiration re: Pound), so I'm excited to look into that. also, I absolutely have writers and readers memorize poetry.

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Sharing poetry is so tricky. It’s a bit of a double-edged sword. You want to share great work while still ensuring the livelihood of the artist. Also, translators used to get such short shrift, but it is such a difficult art. I am working on the part two of my post on memorization… it’s about Josef Pieper’s Leisure: The basis of culture. It’s a bit of a riff on memory and culture but also the necessity of being educated in the arts as another necessary element for culture to exist. Would love to know more about your friend’s work. Easter Seals is amazing.

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I'm not familiar with Josef Pieper, though our last names indicate we share some kind of tenuous connection (Pieplow, my last name, is of Polish-by-way-of-Germany origin). Translation is a whole thing! I try to teach a combination of inspiration—both in effecting good translation and taking wild inspiration from a language you don't speak—and balance it with the ethics of "inspiration" vs cooptation. My friend, they have done many contracts with ES so I'm not sure exactly what they're working on now—in the past I copy edited a syllabus and outreach material for families looking for resources. What advocacy do you do and where do you work in Boston?

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Yesterday I completed my orientation for being a Special Education Surrogate Parent. I have 4-6 more pro bono hours before I get my certification as a special education advocate. I should have all certifications done by November or December. But really I have been doing advocacy in the greater Boston area for 18 years or so. None of this is paid. My paid job is working part time in children’s programming at my local YMCA. And I have five kids at three different schools—one of which is a special school for autism.

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most of most advocacy is unpaid i find! like most art. that's a lot of parenting going on over there!

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