The Small Claim of Bones
an interview with Cindy Williams
by Ae Hee Lee
In The Small Claim of Bones, Cindy
Williams Gutiérrez words dig deep and exquisitely into the earth of Mexican
history to uncover the voices of the people of Tenochtitlan and New Spain.
Divided accordingly, the book engages in three different dialogues: between the
poet’s father and the Nahuas, her mother and Sor Juana, and Cindy herself and
the “bones” that make up her multicultural identity. Through word, breath, and
song, this collection of poetry places the sacredness and beauty of the past
right beside the present, enriching it— claiming it.
Note: As
the new ILS graduate assistant, I
was given the opportunity to choose one book from three on which to conduct my
first written interview for Letras Latinas Blog. The Small Claim of Bones
immediately caught my attention. First of all, it was because I had not
encountered a lot of Latino poetry on the ancient past and the book was like a
treasure trove from that world. But secondly, and more than anything, I was
deeply intrigued in seeing how the very history of a culture could contribute
to the composite of an identity. Having read the book, I now see I was wrong in
my initial speculation about the latter. It was not merely a contribution that
history gave to the poet's identity. It was inspiration.
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1. First of all, thank you for doing this interview
for us. The collection’s title, The Small Claim of Bones, has
the same name as the first poem in the book, one that acts like a prologue
poem. Did you decide to name your collection after this poem? Or did the title
produce the poem? For what reasons did you set it apart from the rest of the
collection? Could it be possible to say that it was to signal a consideration
of the poems in the collection— the cultures, the past and the present they
embody—as “bones” from your body and identity?
I named the
book for the prologue poem which serves as a proem. It introduces
the book to the seminal idea that “my past/ lodges in my
marrow.” Your metaphor of the poems in the collection as the bones
of my identity resonates deeply with me. My identity embodies my
past, along with the pasts of my ancestors and of those who have gone before
them. I often speak of my work as exploring “the silent and silenced
voices in the land”—individuals, peoples, and cultures marginalized by
history. In addition to giving voice to the vanquished Nahuas and to
Sor Juana who was forced to renounce her literary work, this is primarily a
book of her story—a book of remembrance by a woman claiming her multicultural
roots.
2. As a Latina poet you seem to place great importance in
remembering not only the modern but the past of Mesoamerican cultures— its
traditions, its myths, and its landscapes. And you dedicate this book to your
“father admirer of Tenochtitlan and … mother keeper of the old ways of New
Spain.” Is the treasuring of the past something that was awakened by your
family? In other words, could you tell us how did you come to embrace all of it
as your own and eventually write about it?
My father
hoarded the past: he was an avid collector and a serious history
buff. Amassing bullfighting and baseball memorabilia, as well as
stamps, coins, and autographs of movie legends, he also collected seemingly
unremarkable family mementos for their sentimental value—cards, crossword
puzzles, tallies of domino and Scrabble games, even the key to the hotel where
we stayed in Paris when I took him on his first and only trip to
Europe. He read voraciously about Mexico’s history and reveled in
retelling it. As my poem “Father’s Memory of a Mexican Mining Camp”
reveals, he was born and raised in a mining camp in Santa Barbara,
Chihuahua. Though he is the “Williams” in Williams Gutiérrez,
Mexico’s rich history and culture—“the voices in the land”—seeped into his
bones. He was not Mexican by blood, but by
marrow. Primarily Welsh- and German-American, he was also
one-quarter Cherokee. He felt a connection with Native peoples and
their way of life, and became fascinated with the indigenous cultures of Mexicans
who worked in the mines. On the other side of the family, my
Gutiérrez mother is a great storyteller with an interest in
genealogy. She and my aunts often spoke of the family history which
they traced to a 16th-century land grant from the king of Spain. The
impulse for my book—which is based on my MFA thesis—was to explore, in the
words of the Yeats epigraph, my “two selves” shaped, respectively, by my
father’s and my mother’s heritage.
3. You divide the book into three named sections: “The Gift,”
which includes a poem of the same name around the end of the section; “The
Scattering,” which is referenced in the poem preceding it (“Huehuehcuicatl, or
Song of a Suddenly Ancient Man”) and later within the section itself (“A
Scattering of Flocks”); and the “Epilogue.” I got the impression that this
division was in accordance to the order of receiving (“You said that the world
was mine.”), giving (sowing and growing), and hoping for future fruits in
prayer. What do you think about this idea? Could you tell us more about your
choices in the process of organization of your book?
Once again, I appreciate your insightful interpretation. My motivation was to
juxtapose Mexico’s history with my own personal history. The first section is a
call-and-response between pre-Conquest Mexico and my father who was fascinated
by Mesoamerican culture. The second is a call-and-response between the iconic
feminist of New Spain, Sor Juana, and my mother’s Mexican matriarchy. The
epilogue brings all the voices of the past together in English, Nahuatl, and
Spanish and offers a call to action in the present: “to make the dark earth
rumble,/ and the heart fiercely tremble” so that the earth and our bodies
reverberate with song.
4. Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, the Mexican 17th century
poet-nun, is the voice/inspiration for several of your poems. In “Sor Juana’s
Habit,” the speaker juxtaposes a fiery desire for expression to the humble and
temperate life as a nun she is expected to live. In “Sor Juana on Immortality,”
I felt there was a surpassing of such life through writing. The latter also
includes a subtle reference to what it means to be a woman and write (“I, a
mere, woman…dare…”). Could you share with us in what specific ways Sor Juana
was or is part of your life (as a woman) and writing (in general and the poems
inspired/dedicated to her)?
Sor Juana is one of the greatest literary figures of the Americas. A vital contributor to the Spanish Golden Age,
Sor Juana is emblematic of New Spain’s literature, making hers the perfect
voice for the cultural juxtaposition that I wanted to create in the
book. A feminist in a world oppressed by the Church patriarchy, she
sought a cell of her own (refusing marriage and joining a
convent in order to write) 250 years before Virginia Woolf espoused a room of
her own. My persona poem “Sor Juana’s Habit” confronts freedom of
expression and of love, alluding to the love poems she wrote to the
Condesa de Paredes, wife of the viceroy of Spain. As an emerging
poet-dramatist who explores feminist themes, I admire her deeply and rue that
much of her work was lost. This tragedy inspired me to write a
play, A Dialogue of Flower & Song, which takes place in
Huexotzinco (near modern-day Puebla) in 1490 and reimagines the original
dialogue about poetry (or “flower and song”) by seven Nahua
poet-princes. In my play, three women from different points in
Mexico’s history debate the purpose of poetry: 15th-century
poet-princess Macuilxochitzin, 17th-century poet-nun Sor Juana, and
a fictional, contemporary protagonist—Diana, a Latina photojournalist covering
the war in Iraq. Whoever wins the debate may alter the course of
history.
5. In your book, you explore different cultures (Tenochtitlan,
New Spain, Mexico, and the U.S.) not only in the context of landscape and
history but also, more specifically, using the myth and religion that are part
of them. In “Recasting the Story of Isaac: When the World was Under
a Mother’s Spell,” you present a dialogue between the Biblical character of
Sarah and the ancient earth goddess Gaia. As in The Small Claim of
Bones different gods and goddesses from different cultures find a
meeting place, I am interested to know how you view the contrasting (or maybe
they are not?) beliefs and their place in your poetry.
That
particular poem reimagines a seminal choice made by the father of Abrahamic
religions. Curious about a mother’s choice in the same dilemma, I
realized that the resulting poem fit well in the matriarchal section of the
book. Spanning Catholicism, Judaism, and paganism, the first four
poems in this section reveal my fascination with religion and
ritual. I was raised piously by my mother who was a devout
Catholic. I went to a Catholic school from kindergarten through high
school. Then I attended college in “the Baptist Belt” of Texas where
I met my first love, a Muslim from Iran. My husband is a
Jew. I began my own Jewish learning and observance while we were
engaged, though I have not converted. During my graduate MFA work, I
immersed myself in the Nahua cosmology in order to write in the voices of
Mesoamerican poet-kings. I have performed my work accompanied by
pre-Hispanic music; in those moments, I embody these voices and their
beliefs. When my father passed from this earth, I held a Lakota ceremony
and carried his Spirit Bundle for a year to honor our Native
ancestry. Despite my exposure to a wide range of faiths, I do not
feel like one of Rumi’s “spiritual window-shoppers.” Rather, I like
to think of myself as a vessel for honoring and holding these myriad beliefs to
invite discovery (the way a poem is a vessel for transformation). We
can learn much through juxtaposition if we can make room to hold things, side
by side, up to the light.
6. One of the things I appreciate from your poetry is the
rhythm and musicality weaved through the different songs you composed. Like in
“Yaocuicatl, or Song of War,” where you used the onomatopoeic sound of the
drums to accompany the words of the song (I love the words that in a sense
merge these two as one (“Tocotocotiti tocotocotiti … Raise your
word and breath/Raise your heart and sky”). I am aware you have performed
your poetry accompanied by music at several conferences and colleges. What do
you believe is the significance of oral performance in poetry? Do you think a
poem is completed by its utterance?
Yes! I
am a strong proponent of the oral roots of poetry and I am enamored with the
human voice. A poem is meant to be spoken. In the oral
tradition of the Nahuas, poetry was chanted accompanied by music and
dance. The non-lexical cues you reference are taken from extant
Nahua “flower and song”; they were cues for the musician. I
interpreted these cues as dactyls and trochees, respectively, in the first and
second halves of my poem. When I first met musician Gerardo
Calderón, I asked him how he heard those non-lexical
cues. As he drummed on the table in the café, his rhythm emulated
dactyls and trochees! We performed together for five years and released
our CD “Emerald Heart” featuring my Nahua-inspired poems (collected in the
small claim of bones) accompanied by pre-Hispanic instruments
(including water drums, turtle shell, clay flutes, wind and jaguar whistles,
rain stick, seed pods, and butterfly cocoon rattles). In addition to
these performances, I have created and produced numerous poetry productions,
including most recently, Words That Burn, a dramatization of
poetry and prose juxtaposing the World War II experiences of William Stafford,
Lawson Inada, and Guy Gabaldón in commemoration of the William Stafford
Centennial and Hispanic Heritage Month.
7. In “If I were a Nahua Poet” and other poems, you raise
the idea of the human being as a dwelling place for word and breath, and you
present words as a worthy offering to the gods (“Make my body a cuicoyan, this
house of song… Let my voice join
the ancients/To swell the sky with a thousand plumes of light”). You also
employ a great deal of three-way code switching (Spanish, Nahuatl, and English)
and translation (“Si yo fuera poeta Nahua”) in your collection. I would like to
hear more about what word and language means to you, the power they have and
role they play, and their place in your own identity and poetry.
My
childhood in a Texas border town is the root of my code-switching: I grew up
speaking Spanish to my maternal grandmother, English at school, and a flowing
Spanglish with friends and family. For me, emotionally evocative and
richly musical words often defy translation. To this once-timid girl
who gained confidence by confiding in the page and by asking questions in the
classroom, words are bridges—to the self and to others. To this same
girl who began creating semblances of poems at the age of seven and matured
into a poet, words are the medium of shamans: they entrance, enchant, cast a
spell. The Nahuas referred to “prayer” as “word and breath”; I
believe that poetry is word on breath. Words are
purveyors of meaning—mere symbols which we have learned to
interpret. But the music of the line—the rhythm and repetition of
sound—penetrates the body for a visceral experience. And when these
lines are declaimed, they expand into a communal experience. This is
why poetry is an alchemical art: it hinges on the transmutation of the most
mundane of mediums—language. This transmutable medium is a constant
window to a culture—a people’s beliefs, way of life, what they
value. The death of even a single language—irreplaceable in its
singularity—is unbearable.
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Selected
by Poets and Writers Magazine as one of the top ten 2014 Debut
Poets, poet-dramatist Cindy Williams Gutiérrez draws
inspiration from the silent and silenced voices of history and her story. Her
poetry collection, the small claim of bones, was published by
Arizona State University’s Bilingual Press. Poems and reviews have appeared
in Borderlands, Calyx, Harvard’s Journal
of Feminist Studies in Religion, the Universidad Nacional
Autónoma de México’s Periódico de Poesía, Portland Review, Quiddity,
Rain Taxi, Rattle, and ZYZZYVA. Plays include Words
That Burn—which recently premiered at Milagro Theatre in
Portland, Oregon in commemoration of the William Stafford Centennial and Hispanic
Heritage Month—and A Dialogue of Flower & Song featured
in the 2012 GEMELA (Spanish and Latin American Women’s Studies) Conference
co-sponsored by the University of Portland and Portland State University.
Cindy
earned an MFA from the University of Southern Maine Stonecoast Program with
concentrations in Mesoamerican poetics and creative collaboration. Cindy is a
founding member of Los Porteños, Portland’s Latino writers’ collective, and the
founder of Grupo de ’08, a Northwest collaborative-artists’ salon inspired by
Lorca’s Generación de ’27.
Gutiérrez’s work, The
Small Claim of Bones is available through Amazon,
Powell’s, and Arizona State University’s Bilingual Press/EditorialBilingüe. She can be reached through
her e-mail address: cindy@grito-poetry.com.
***
Ae Hee Lee is a South Korean by birth and Peruvian by heart and memory. She is currently an MFA candidate in the creative writing program of The University of Notre Dame and works as a graduate assistant for the university’s Institute of Latino Studies. You can find (or will find) her poetry in Dialogue, Cha, Cobalt, Spark: A Creative Anthology, Ruminate, The Rain, Party, & Disaster Society and Silver Birch Press.
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