Against the mighty
forces of my
discontent
your bird flocks
amass
---Carlos Parada Ayala
Cover by: Oscar Camilo De Las Flores
1.
The last stanza in “Seed” seems to hint at
reincarnation. Is this something you explore in your poetics or an
inspirational concept for you?
I wrote this poem after I had been through a difficult period in
my life and dedicated it to Maria Blanca Ayala, my mother. Mom has had a life
full of obstacles and has been through several near-death experiences. She's a
deeply religious woman and her resilience is based on her faith. Even though
she believes in the afterlife, her life here, on this earth of ours, is a prime
example of constant renewal. As I was going through my own troubles, her life
inspired my own spirit of survival and my own search for renewal. Even though
I'm not a religious person, like her I'm deeply spiritual. She strengthens her
faith by praying to God, I strengthen my faith through poetry and an
appreciation for the arts. "Seed" tries to encapsulate this dynamic
of the human experience.
2.
I love the personification and juxtaposition in
the poem “Fall” where “a flock of razors/ sips multiplied light” and “Outside,
an army of oaks,/ bald and mild/ coats itself with wrinkles.” The barbers then
become “a loathsome forest” shrouding itself with roughness. In your world, I
am reminded of the Maya world where plants, objects, and humans are on the same
level with one another. Was the idea of unification something you had in mind
in creating this world?
Absolutely. One of the running
themes of The Light of the Storm is
the idea that we are one with all the elements on earth in our cosmic journey
through the universe. This is precisely the reason why the poems are populated
with images of flora, fauna, rivers, oceans, the sky and the stars in the same
plane as humans. In "Fall" I decided to incorporate objects made by
humans, such as mirrors and razors, in a world that integrates the artificial
space of a barber shop with nature.
One of the great flaws in our
thinking as modern humans is that we have broken those links and, as a result,
have turned ourselves into a major threat to our very existence. In this
regard, the Mayans have essential lessons to teach. They are one of the people
in our hemisphere that have withstood permanent aggression and have managed to
survive despite this history. They are a prime example of resistance, and I
think their ability to survive has much to do with their understanding of a
deeply connected and interdependent objective and subjective world.
3.
From the ancients to Camus’ The Stranger, I had always thought of the sun as having a god-like
status and, in The Stranger, being a
source of punishment or delirium to humans. For this reason, one of the most
surprising images in the poem “Winter” reads: “under a reluctant and imprisoned
sun.” In other poems, such as in “Banalidades,” we see an inversion of this
personified astral body with the image, “the sun cut the day with machete
blows/ and the moon hid her coin in her cleavage,” which reflects this source
of punishment. Can you tell us more about the inversion of this image and the
sun as a running symbol in your book?
I see the sun as a representation of the dialectic between
creation and destruction. More
often than not, the sun or stars appear in the book as a symbol of life, hope
and beauty, but sometimes they appear as a symbol of death as in the poem
"Whale," or as you point out, in "Banalities." The book
begins with "Instructions to Save the Sixth Sun" to remind us of the
beginning of a new era, according to Aztec cosmology. However, the poem also
reminds us of the cruelty of war as experienced during the just passed era of
the Fifth Sun, in which, among other events, imperial capitalism emerged and
expanded to the detriment of Indigenous peoples around the globe. The last
verse of the poem "The Light of the Storm," which is also the last
poem in the book, evokes the stars in the constellation of Libra, the symbol of
justice. I purposely decided to end with this cosmic image because Saúl
Solórzano, who devoted his life to the struggle for peace and social justice
and the person to whom the poem is dedicated, was coincidentally born under
that sign. I'm not a believer in astrology, but the coincidence was so powerful
that I decided to make use of it as an inspirational poetic device.
4.
In “Day of the Dead” there is a transition where
the narrator says, “I carried my country on my back like a sack/ full of
ill-fated chapters” to “Now I rise with my head held high,/ carrying my country
in the deepest part of my chest.” Can you tell us more about this transition or
metamorphosis?
"Day of the Dead" to me is like a prayer. The ending
is more of a wish than a reality.
The fact is that, given the levels of impunity favoring those who
committed egregious human rights violations during the civil wars in Central
America, I still feel like I carry my country on my back. There have been times
-- such as when peace treaties were signed, when enlightened progressive
governments are elected, or when someone like dictator Ríos Montt is brought to trial -- that I have felt the deep sense
of hope that I express in the poem's ending. Most of the time, however, I feel
like the struggle for social justice is an uphill battle that, no matter how
hard, must continue to be waged.
"Day of the Dead" is thus my prayer to keep up the hope.
5.
The title poem “The Light of the Storm,” seems
to encapsulate some of the themes in your book, evincing a feeling of universal
hope with the images of light, dreams, and a victorious voice confronting the
storm, loss, and death. I found it a fitting way to end and begin. Can you tell
us about the dedication to Saúl
Solórzano? How did you come to pick this poem title as the book title?
I wanted this book to be a
tribute to hope without overlooking the fact that humans are also capable of
committing acts of destruction and despair. I had decided on the title months
before I wrote the poem. However, when Saúl Solórzano died tragically after an
accidental fall, I decided to write the poem and dedicated it to him. Saúl was
an organizer in the Christian Base Communities in El Salvador when the military
government in power in the Seventies and Eighties was waging war against those
who were working in the movement for peace and social justice. Fearing for his
life, Saúl fled El Salvador and settled in the New Jersey area. Despite the
fact that he had no documents, he began working as an organizer of the
thousands of Salvadorans who like him sought refuge in the US. It was around
this time, in the early Eighties, that we met and became good friends. He then
moved to the Washington, DC area and became the director of the Central
American Refugee Center (CARECEN) where he led a multi-pronged effort to protect
the rights of the most vulnerable immigrants in his country, the undocumented
ones. Saúl was one of those extraordinary community leaders who never relented
and whose work had an impact nationwide. Were he still alive today, he would be
where he was for over three decades: at the forefront in the struggle for the
rights of Latinos in the US. He died two years ago, but his light shines like a
beacon of hope in the storm of our history.
6.
Your poetry reflects the macro and micro in both
structure and content, ranging from the Astros to the lone stanzas located
throughout the text. How do these mini-poems function? Do they serve as brief
reflections, rhetorical pauses, or interludes? Contrast to the others? Were
they written as you were working on the collection, before, or after?
The haiku in the book are
intended to work as separate voices that relate thematically or emotionally to
the narrative in the longer poems. The idea is for them to serve a function
similar to that of counterpoint in baroque musical compositions. To a great
extent, and particularly in the first section of the book, the haiku provide a
contemplative rest stop after longer poems charged with complex imagery.
I wrote the haiku at the same
time I was writing the other poems. Rei Berroa, a Dominican poet and friend of
mine, gave me a book called Haiku a la
hora en punto, by Spanish poet José M. Prieto. The book contains hundreds
of haiku in Spanish. I studied and learned to write them since I realized that
they were a great resource for capturing those poetic flashes or ideas that
flow through your mind as you read poetry, when you are in the process of
working on other poems, when you meditate or as you go through life in general.
The inclusion of the haiku as
counterpoint essentially reflects the simultaneous experiences, ideas and
voices that went through my mind as I worked on the book's manuscript.
7.
Speaking of mini-poems, can you tell us more
about the following:
—The Donkey Hottie…
must be Platero’s brother—
was the girl’s first thought.
My wife and I raised our two daughters in a bilingual household.
When Celia, my oldest daughter, was around four or so, I began to re-read the
Don Quijote. I was constantly talking about the book with my wife and kids. One
time when I was having a chat with Celia, I discovered that in her bilingual
mind, whenever I mentioned Don Quijote, what she was hearing was the words
Donkey Jote. I also realized that for her, the extraordinary detail in the
image of Don Quijote and Sancho Panza, was not that of a lanky man riding a
scrawny horse, but rather that of a small donkey capable of carrying Sancho
Panza, a very large man. As such, I built on Celia's imagination to bring in
Platero, the donkey from Platero y yo,
Juan Ramón Jiménez's poignant classic lyric novel.
8.
Poems, such as “Hip-Hopera by Two Immigrants,”
translated particularly well given the challenges of the rhyme scheme. Did you
write the poems in English first then Spanish, or the other way around? What
was the translation process like?
I wrote the
"Hip-hópera" in Spanish. Translator, Andrea Johnson, whom I met in
Bethesda's Writer's Center, helped me translate the "Chirilagua
Blues;" and José Ballesteros, Zozobra Publishing's editor, translated
"The Migrant." Both poems follow metric and rhythmic patterns found
in the Blues and can be sung as such. Chilean singer Patricio Zamorano and his
band sang the Spanish version of "Chirilagua Blues" in a poetry and
music recital at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC in November 2011.
Both pieces can also be rapped as they work flawlessly with hip-hop or
reggaeton beats.
Due to the fact that they use
rhyme and meter, translating the songs was a challenge and, in this sense,
working with talented translators was key in achieving very good English
versions of the Spanish originals.
Carlos Parada Ayala
(San Juan Opico,
El Salvador, 1956)
A recipient of
Washington, DC's Commission on the Arts Larry Neal Poetry Award, Carlos Parada
Ayala, is the author of the poetry book La
luz de la tormenta/The Light of the Storm (Zozobra Publishing, 2013) and co-editor
of the anthology Al pie de la Casa Blanca:
Poetas hispanos de Washington, DC, published by the North American Academy
of the Spanish Language (New York, 2010.) Co-edited with Argentinean poet Luis
Alberto Ambroggio, the US Library of Congress selected this anthology to
celebrate 400 years of Hispanic poetry in the United States in September 2010. Parada
Ayala is a member of the poetry collective Late Night Hour and is a founding
member of ParaEsoLaPalabra, a collective of writers, artists and activists
whose goal was to promote the arts, music and literature in the Spanish
speaking communities of the Washington, DC metropolitan area. Parada Ayala has
participated in El Salvador’s International
Gathering of Poets, the Festival of
New Poetry and the Latin American
Poetry Festival in New York, and in Washington DC’s Teatro de La Luna’s Poetry Marathon. His poetry has appeared in
anthologies and cultural journals and has been included in the US Library of
Congress’s poetry series The Poet and the
Poem. Parada Ayala graduated from Amherst College with a degree in Spanish,
Latin American and Brazilian literature.
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