SEIS
an interview series
(conducted by Luis
Lopez-Maldonado)
4:
Natalie
Scenters-Zapico
LLM: Luis Lopez-Maldonado
NSZ: Natalie
Scenters-Zapico
LLM:
The collection of poems titled, The
Verging Cities, deals with
trauma, border issues, personal history, memory, and marriage, among other
themes. It will grab you, drag you, and put you up against a chain-linked
fence; it is mesmerizing. Thank you for your work. Which brings me to my first
question: Those of us that read your book can have a pretty good idea of what
it’s
about, but can you please maybe tell us, what it’s not about?
NSZ:
The Verging Cities
is a collection sprung out of a deep and complicated obsession with the sister
cities of El Paso, Texas, USA and Cd. Juárez, Chihuahua, México. It is about
two people who fall in love on a surveilled border that constantly denies their
existence. Threaded throughout are poems based on my relationship with my
husband, José Ángel and the ways the personal and political intersect. The
Verging Cities is about all of the things that you mentioned above, but
also about how we experience landscapes differently. How some have the
privilege of seeing a desert and how others live in constant fear of how that
same desert might consume them. It is about the body, the way we deny the
violence our bodies commit against other bodies, how the body can become
violent against itself, and how that same violence can become a part of a
landscape’s body.
LLM:
Let’s chat about the infamous Angel
character in some of these poems. He is everywhere! As a reader, I fell in love
with him by the end of the book. Could you please elaborate on how your
personal relationship with him has assisted or acted as a catalyst in this
collection of poems? Can you also tell us a bit about how you decided to focus
so many poems on Angel and how his energy shapes the tone of the book?
NSZ:
While I was working on this collection I started writing
letters to my husband, José Ángel. Later I found out that he kept all of these
letters in a small box in his desk. One day, he let me go through the letters
and I was interested in how when I was writing them I was thinking of a memory,
even if brief, of José Ángel. None of the letters were written with him near
me, so I decided to take this concept of the absent body of a loved one you are
deeply familiar with and apply it to a series that runs throughout the
collection. In these poems José Ángel becomes the character of Angel, one
you’re never quite sure is a literal angel, or a man named Angel. This Angel
character is certainly not completely my husband José Ángel, but he is a
version of him. As I revised the collection the narrative between the speaker
and Angel trying to navigate the verging cities became apparent, and important
to the book’s structure. In The Verging Cities, Angel and the speaker
are both trying to navigate their border space that is out to control and
oppress their bodies, while falling in love in that same landscape.
LLM:
“In A Half-Full Bathtub”
(pg.16) you introduce the couplet-form for the third time in the collection of
poems. I absolutely love how this form is working in this poem and how it moves
flawlessly. Can you share with us, the importance of form in your work,
specifically in how it serves this beautiful poem?
NSZ:
My poems go through many forms before they find the right
one. In fact, it’s often the thing I’m left tinkering with the longest. I
especially like the couplet form for The Verging Cities because it
creates a back and forth tension similar to the tension between the two cities.
Couplets can also be very romantic, because they exist like lovers on the page
apart from the rest of the poem, and yet dependent on other couplets for
meaning. In the poem “In A Half-Full Bathtub” I’m interested in the way the
female body is policed and how that same body can create resistance. I think as
a woman you walk always aware that your body can stand more pain than you’re
aware of. And I don’t mean only in the physical labor a woman’s body can stand
giving birth, but also for example, the recent ACLU verdict in which a woman
was finally able to get monetary compensation for an invasive cavity search
done by border patrol agents at a border checkpoint. How many women have gone
through invasive cavity searches before her and have either been detained,
deported, or let go to walk across the bridge humiliated? And while the power
of these stories is important, I do think there’s something to be said for a
poem springing out of an emotion and then turning that into a narrative, which
is how “In A Half-Full Bathtub” started. While José Ángel and I were going
through the immigration process we felt very observed, very scrutinized as
people, and the threat that there was no limit to what they could investigate
was always looming. “In A Half-Full Bathtub” poem sprung up from that anxiety.
LLM:
There is a lot of trauma with border
agents, border patrol, with crossing the border, and being seen as “the other.”
In “I Light The House On Fire And Lie Down” I see and read math, religion, sex,
love, nature, identity, culture, race and discrimination: How did you manage to
make this poem work, with the layers upon layers of themes threaded through the
speakers mind? It’s fascinating.
NSZ:
Oh, thank you. I don’t know if I have a prescriptive answer
as to how I got this poem to “work.” I suppose it began with an exercise I
would do and still do sometimes on Sunday mornings, when I can’t help but have
the old nagging feeling I should be at Mass. It begins by lying down on my
kitchen floor. At first I let myself stare at the ceiling for a bit, but then I
let my eye move down and start viewing objects and the floor from this angle.
I’ll be honest, doing this gives me a type of anxiety and I depend on that
anxiety to give me the bravery to leap from image to image. This poem came out
of that exercise in anxiety, which is probably why it’s able to encompass so
much. When you suffer from anxiety your mind attempts to carry the world, and I
think this can be useful to the poetic mind. Of course, the key is to make sure
you don’t let the anxiety paralyze you, something that can be a dangerous game.
I suppose I should also talk about why border patrol agents are such a source
of trauma for me. Growing up in El Paso-Juárez border patrol agents are often
seen as a hassle, but for people with loved ones who are undocumented they can
be the wolf capable of devouring your entire family in a moment. El Paso, Texas
for example has more border patrol agents than police in the city. They don’t
just patrol the physical border, but the entire city, into New Mexico. They
become a presence that is always lurking, always visible on a drive down the
freeway or while eating at a restaurant, capable of unraveling any semblance of
stability you might have built for yourself.
LLM:
“It’s The Heat That Wakes Us” is a
contemporary Romeo & Juliet! Beautifully written, thunderous, heart-felt,
and longing for love. How do stories like this become poems? What is your
process as a poet of writing poems that seem very personal to both the speaker
and the poet?
NSZ:
Poems like “It’s the Heat That Wakes Us” become poems by
being unafraid to enter places in your memory that hurt you. I’m asked often:
How do you enter that place in a poem and then go about your day without it
affecting your psychological well being? I don’t know that I have an answer to
that because to me, like many writers and artists before me, I think it’s
important to develop the capacity and mental ability to look and render that
pain on the page. I don’t believe you
can live a genuine life, a brave life, without immense pain. The poem you
mention above was inspired by the old tenement building José Ángel and I used
to live in. It was located in the Sunset Heights district of El Paso near
downtown, and the Santa Fe Bridge. The apartment had the most spectacular view
of El Paso, the border highway, and all of Cd. Juárez. Of course, the view was
spliced into hundreds of angles by electric wires, and the building had
foundation problems so its uneven floors gave some people vertigo, and one
summer our swamp cooler went out. We spent most of that summer in our underwear
because it was too hot to survive any other way. What I remember most about
that summer was thinking of how many people survive the heat in the Chihuahua
desert without a cooler, and how unnatural these tenement buildings are to the
heat. We would be much better off living in an adobe house because it’s much
cooler, but most builders have stopped making adobe houses. I also remember how
José Ángel and I used to ask each other if we were dead yet because there’s
nothing like extreme heat to confuse your sweat for your soul rising.
LLM:
In your poem titled, “Placement,” we read it as a
kind of interview or investigation. Was this something you intended the
audiences to interpret this way, or did you not think about how this specific
poem would be understood? And my second question regarding this poem: You end
the sections in section 7. Why? Is this a lucky number, or just a simple choice
you made without really thinking about it? I am just curious!
NSZ:
When I started working on this collection, everyone had book
suggestions for me. El Paso-Juárez is an interesting place too because many
people from all over the country have been there and have an experience to
share about the space. As I started engaging with these different books and
works of art I grew exasperated by how many people were creating art to “bring
awareness to the issues: femicide, the life of undocumented immigrants, the
dangers in crossing the border, etc.” I find that border art that arises purely
from a need to “bring awareness” is rather vapid and self-serving. Now, if you
have personal experience with these issues in a sustained way, and write a poem
that happens to be political, but didn’t begin in that space I hold much more
respect for the work. I think, of course, writers like Gloria Anzaldúa,
Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Alberto Ríos, writers who are trying to capture their
lives, and in doing so, their lives become an intersection with the political.
As for the number 7, I play with this number because it is
considered to be a Godly number and I wanted it to be a subtle reminder of the
angelic forces at play in The Verging Cities, even when Angel as a
character isn’t present.
LLM:
Kids are taught lies in school, and the
truth is hidden from us growing up in education systems. Your poem “A Place To
Hide The Body” discusses this issue. Do you feel it is important to educate
your readers through your poetry? Because this poem does it. Do you believe as
an artist that poems like this are/can bring awareness and social change? What
are your thoughts on writing “political” poetry, or poems that can be defined
and seen as social commentaries?
NSZ:
I think I’ve always fallen in the Lorna Dee Cervantes camp
here: This is not a political poem. In “A Place To Hide The Body” I experienced
the denial of the border history that I was living in a high school classroom.
The Southwest is full of contradictions like this, in which people love the aesthetic,
consumer-based beauty of the Southwest, without realizing all the pain and
blood of this region. As for bringing social change and awareness through
poetry, I think we’re living in a great era for this. There are so many poets
that are starting serious conversations that extend into the political through
their work. I think of writers like Danez Smith, Solmaz Sharif, and Natalie
Díaz. But again, part of the reason that I love these poets in particular is
that none of their work stems purely from a “bring awareness” lens. It’s about
being personal, about being unafraid to look in the mirror and put your fingers
in the open wound.
LLM:
Repetition is a tool a lot of poets
love using in their works, for it brings texture and musicality to the page. In
“The Archeologist Came To Hunt Trilobites,” we clearly see the use of
repetition. How is repetition working here for the poem? Do you expect readers
to read each repeated word or phrase as same or different? What effects did you
expect to communicate by presenting such repetition?
NSZ:
Repetition is a powerful and important tool in poetry. It is
important to remember that repetition was used in poetry before poetry was
composed on the page. Repetition is used as a way to help someone memorize
a work, guide pacing, and change meaning. Repetition teaches us not to
trust our understanding of things at first glance, but instead to read,
re-read, and observe what is happening around the repetition. When I wrote “The Archeologist Came To Hunt
Trilobites” I had just finished reading Eduardo C. Corral’s Slow Lightning
and was mesmerized by how well he employs repetition. Corral is a master at
making us look, look again, and understand new ways of seeing the same image. I
realized that I was not very good at doing this in my own work, and that I
relied too heavily on narrative propulsion in many poems, which for a
collection can make a book feel rushed, so I decided to start playing with
repetition and found that this was very useful to my ideas on gaze. Thus each
time the reader is forced to encounter the phrase, “The archeologist came to
hunt trilobites” I hope that they understand the archeologist’s horror at never
finding them, at being confronted with bones he nor anyone around him wants to
discover.
LLM:
A poem is seven parts/sections. Again!
“Epithalamia” spreads across seven pages. What is the importance of the blank
space in every poem/page? What about the space between pages/sections? I’m very
curious about the choice behind having this poem spread across so much blank
space/pages; I really enjoyed the pace of this poem, and how the white/blank
space looked on the page.
NSZ:
Most of the poems in The Verging Cities are very
dense and narrative in style. They are action-image packed. They hardly let you
breathe. They make you feel pushed against a metal fence. They make you feel
interrogated. But I like collections that have a variety of feelings, that
don’t just linger in one spot. So I wrote
“Epithalamia” with so much space to be the lungs of The Verging
Cities. To help the reader look, with space to breathe. I also knew that I
needed traditional wedding poems, dedicated to a very untraditional wedding
between a speaker and her undocumented lover, who might be of this world and
might not, who might be living and might not. I’m glad you enjoyed the
white/blank space, and hope that it serves as a place to reflect on the inner
workings of the relationship depicted on the page.
LLM:
Turns are very important and sometimes
necessary for a poem to reach its full potential! You killed it with a fabulous
turn in your poem titled, “Girl Curled Over A Bar Stool.” A poem about sex,
violence, and femininity: Can you elaborate on how this poem became a poem?
This turn at the end of the poem, in the last sentence, really makes the poem
explode! We are hit with life and trauma. It is stunning. For me, I wanted to
keep reading, for it felt that you opened many doors with the turn, “…I wonder
when she’ll
notice the blood caught in the groves of that bill.”
NSZ:
That poem started out as a much longer two page piece, in
which I compare the woman’s body to a freeway. But the piece was too
self-serving. Anytime I have a piece that is longer than a page I’m skeptical.
Not because I don’t think it can be done, but because I know myself and
sometimes in early drafts I’ll fixate too long on certain images that are only
interesting to me. One day, frustrated at my computer because I couldn’t get
the poem to work with me I opened up a new document and challenged myself to
write the poem as a sort of sonnet in fourteen lines, with a boxy shape, only
using whatever I could remember from the earlier draft. Somehow “Girl Curled
Over A Bar Stool” came to be. In it I kept the image of the girl, but instead
framed it from the perspective of a man going to a brothel. The turn at the end
came to me much later. I think because I always struggle with how to end a
poem. I hate poems that begin strongly and end weakly, I don’t think they have
bite. So this end was a way of leading into poems that would follow that are
directly about femicide.
LLM:
“Angel And I Are Both Great
Pretenders,” stood out to me and I loved it for the title of a book! Can you
tell us a bit about how the title of this collection of poems came to be? How
did you decide on the title, The Verging Cities?
NSZ:
When I was working on the collection I spent a lot of time
thinking about how I conceived of the border, my cities, my marriage, and how
these things were similar or related. I started referring to the cities as one
place, “the verging cities” in many poems, and when I finally wrote the title
poem “The Verging Cities” it became obvious to me that this was going to be
central to the book. Because while the Angel poems are important, the verging
cities are what define the love and give it shape. Without the landscape of the
verging cities, there would be no imagistic landscape.
LLM:
The cover is hauntingly tender and
perfect. How did you choose the cover for this book? Were there other options
before the current one was made official? The girl on the bed/concrete stares
at every reader that picks the book up. That is so cool!
NSZ:
The Center For Literary Publishing at Colorado State
University, was amazing in the process of picking a book cover. They asked me
to send them a bunch of options for the cover and I sent a selection of works
from the Chilean artist Pascuala Lira. I’m a huge fan of her work and while
writing The Verging Cities, I used to have the image that is now the
cover hanging above my desk. Because the book has so much to do with femicide
and the female body, I loved this image because it centers the woman in an
intimate sphere and forces you to read the image from left to right, much like
how we read. In effect, she is staring at you but you must also read her body
in order to interpret that stare. I could not be happier with the cover of this
book.
*
NATALIE
SCENTERS-ZAPICO is author of The Verging Cities (Center For Literary Publishing, 2015). She is
the 2016-2017 Poet-In-Residence at Westminster College in Salt Lake City.
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