Sunday morning in fascist Spain

the long version

Focusing on the five years Willis Barnstone spent following his graduation from Bowdoin College, the years of living, thinking, and beginning to write in France, Greece, Italy, Switzerland, Spain, and England from 1948 to 1953, this fascinating and moving memoir nonetheless expands beyond those years. On one side of that period are the poet and translator's grandparents' immigration to the United States, his parents' stormy relationship and his father's eventual suicide, his childhood growing up in the building where Babe Ruth lived, his first gestures toward a life of poetry in Hawthorne's room at Bowdoin, and his first acquaintance with cultures other than his own while digging privies in remote Indian villages in Mexico during a year off from college. On the other side of that period are Barnstone's continuing life as the gypsy scholar in China, Tibet, Turkey, and Argentina and his continuing friendship with his children and former wife and the finest writers and artists the world over.