[depot]

"In February, as a plague enters America, I am a finalist for a job I am not offered."

I learned English first (American), but I don't understand grammar well enough to explain what language rules were broken. I hate when ESL friends ask about this. In Chinese they don't really modify the verb words, they just add other words. Does anyone ever break rules in Spanish for poetry? I don't know.

This author uses present tenses to talk about the past. Is it hopeless or deterministic? I'm curious.

[transatlantic38]

It's a deliberate decision to convey immediacy and urgency. Using present tense makes the memories read as closer and still unknown territory instead of farther removed and already determined, which matches the emotions of the memories that the author is trying to convey.

Consider the emotional difference between:

> It is summer, and the ice cream is melting.

> It was summer, and the ice cream melted.

These types of literary choices are a core part of writing prose at an advanced level the same way that camera angles and color palettes are a part of cinematography. Grammar "rules" don't really exist in creative prose, it's ultimately about using words to convey meaning however you can.

[brundolf]

I don't think any grammar rules were broken. The author is setting a scene as if it were the present; think of it more like fiction, even though it's nonfiction. A narrator in a fictional story might say "the sun sets over the plains", even though that isn't literally happening in the present tense from the reader's perspective.

[YeGoblynQueenne]

That's established literary style and not just in English.

The French language even goes as far as to have special grammatical tenses for different literary uses:

https://www.thoughtco.com/french-literary-tenses-1368875