Diamond Grove Slave Tree: An Interview with Xavier Cavazos

Diamond Grove Slave Tree

an interview with Xavier Cavazos

conducted by Therese Marie Konopelski

Diamond Grove Slave Tree is a well-researched celebration of George Washington Carver's life and legacy. Cavazos brings a fresh and informative perspective on Carver as a man, illuminating aspects of his personal life that some biographies overlook. Cavazos' interpretation of Carver is both historically authentic and experimental, even exploring different genera of plants in Carver's own voice. As a skilled botanist, Carver surely must have had a deep appreciation for the beauty in nature, which Cavazos brings to life on the page.

Here Carver's inventions are recognized beyond their mere utility for their impact on farming life and indirect social activism. Carver's humble beginnings as a slave and resulting life journey are an inspirational triumph of ingenuity and spirit over racial discrimination. Having learned about George Washington Carver in grade school, I fully enjoyed Cavazos' uncensored look at Carver's writing through primary sources and coming to know Carver as a flawed (as we all are) and complex person. Race, agriculture, and themes of belonging fuel Cavazos' true-to-life narrative of Carver the intellectual and creative legend.

-Therese Konopelski, University of Notre Dame (class of 2020)
...............................................................................................................................

[Therese Konopelski]: For this book, you undertook extensive research on Carver’s life, making use of Iowa State University’s Parks Library Special Collections as well as the Carver Collection of the Deborah Lewis and the Ada Hayden Herbarium. In your preliminary findings, what details and discoveries were the most helpful in developing Carver’s voice? While you were exploring Carver as a figure, did you encounter any surprising details that you incorporated in the collection?

[Xavier Cavazos]: Mostly, it was Carver’s actual voice that helped shape the different speakers’ voices in the poems in Diamond Grove Slave Tree. There is a curious contemporary voice speaking to Carver, asking questions, telling current news/happenings, and giving praise. Then there is also Carver’s imagined voice, which was created from long hours and many months with the Carver collection at the Parks Library and in the herbarium. Carver slowly came to life, in what the creative writing program at Iowa State University calls “the environmental imagination” which is when the environment, the plant life, the biology, the sound of wind and flowing water, the soil and insects all start having a conversation with each other. Carver’s voice was at the center of all of that. 

The most surprising detail was revealed in a November 24th, 1926, letter Carver’s mentor Louis H. Pammel wrote to Carver (the letter was reprinted in Diamond Grove Slave Tree). Pammel was curious as to where Carver earned his Ph.D. and when? By this time Carver was already teaching at Tuskegee University and started signing his name with the “Dr.” prefix. In the response letter, Carver explained that a janitor at Tuskegee started addressing Carver as “good doctor” so Carver adopted the title into his name. I guess the letter, to me, felt like a slight. Carver was a genius of science and certainly was worthy of the prefix, and to Pammel’s credit, he stated that sentiment in the letter. I believe Pammel said he was asking because of records, but it just didn’t sit right with me. That letter became the catalyst to write, “Just Thought You’d Like to Know, Mr. Carver #2, because on May 14th, 1994, Iowa State University bestowed Carver with an honorary doctorate degree-so I thought he should know that.   

[TK]: The title of the collection, Diamond Grove Slave Tree, is also the title of a central poem in the section “Plants As Modified by Man.” Why did you imagine Carver being struck by the image of three trees, that were perhaps used for lynchings in the past? Do you see his rejection of the fear the trees inspired as a key moment in the book?   

[XC]: As a young boy, Carver witnessed a lynching in his hometown of Diamond Grove, Missouri. Carver wrote and talked about this experience and how it impacted him. I can only imagine what witnessing a traumatic event like this would do to a young person. In a way, I see Carver as always running away from that moment through his work. Carver rarely spoke of injustice; I believe Carver’s work as a botanist and educator was his statement and gift towards civil rights.

[TK]: The book is organized in a loosely chronological fashion following the events of Carver’s life. How did you choose which episodes and aspects to write about, and what informed your decision to name the work “Diamond Grove Slave Tree?” 

[XC]: Carver: A Life in Poems, written by Marilyn Nelson and published in 1997, drove the organization of my book. I was looking for the gaps, in terms of Carver’s story; between Diamond Grove Slave Tree and Carver: A Life in Poems. Marilyn’s book has about three to four poems about Carver while at Iowa State, so I knew that is where I needed to stay focused. There is definitely some “cross-pollination” going on in my book from Marilyn’s book. However, in the end, I focused on the events and stories that had the most impact towards Carver’s legacy at Iowa State, the stories where both Carver and the student body acted courageously. But make no mistake about it, Marilyn Nelson is the master; Diamond Grove Slave Tree is like the Iowa State appendix to her book. 

Diamond Grove, Missouri, is the birthplace of Carver. Carver was born one year before slavery was abolished, so he was born a slave and died a genius of science. The tree is a metaphor for how great Carver was for his contributions to the scientific world and race.

[TK]: What role does jazz play in your use of the line and sense of rhythm? What influence do you believe jazz had on Carver from your research, and why did you choose to include jazz-influenced techniques in the book?

[XC]: I’m not sure if what I was doing in Diamond Grove Slave Tree was jazz-influenced. What I was really trying to do with my use of the line was break language, interrupt language, and separate it as well. Carver was separated from the white world for most of his life so that was the aesthetic I wanted on the page. The other aesthetic I was looking for in terms of delivery on the page was a language that was incomplete; Carver never had all the items needed to be a successful scientist, yet he was still able to succeed with discovery. I think in Carver’s case, the saying “necessity is the key to ingenuity” was extremely true.

[TK]: The book makes extensive reference of different flora and plants that Carver used and improved upon as a botanist. Of these themed poems, how did you engage with the different genera so that you could poeticize them? Did you use Carver’s notes on them were you extrapolating from what he chose to draw in his notebooks?

[XC]: Most of that work came from my time in the Deborah Lewis and the Ada Hayden Herbarium. Carver collected over two hundred different species of genera and they are all there in the herbarium. I spent a lot of time reading his notations (his actual handwriting with a lead pencil, which I could smell off the paper) and looking at the plants, I waited and listened, and eventually the different species of plants began speaking to me in an imagined and real voice.

[TK]: Carver was a multi-talented genius, teaching and innovating throughout most of his life. Why did you choose to write about Carver, and for whom do you think the book will have the most impact?

[XC]: Carver’s legacy is one of the most important legacies at Iowa State University and I wanted to add to that story. There are several moments in the history of the university in which the student body transformed the narrative on race and social justice; I believe some of these moments are directly tied to Carver’s legacy. One example of this is when the student body campaigned to rename the football stadium after Jack Trice, the first African-American athlete at Iowa State University in 1923, who died in a football game against the University of Minnesota because of unfair play. 

I hope the book impacts other poets in regards to craft. We (poets) learn from each other, from our success and failures on the page. I really tried to do something different from what I was doing in Barbarian at The Gate, my Poetry Society of America award winning chapbook. I didn’t want to repeat myself as an artist in terms of aesthetic, delivery and voice.

[TK]: Carver possibly had an intimate relationship with his assistant Austin W. Curtis Jr., which you explore in “This Labor.” How did Carver’s somewhat sparsely un-documented personal life and guarded words influence your word choice in this poem? Why do you believe Carver was a private man?

[XC]: Carver was a very religious man. I don’t think his Christian faith would have ever allowed for Carver to consider anything but privacy. The smoking gun for me was that immediately after Carvers death, Booker T. Washington, had Austin W. Curtis Jr. removed from Tuskegee University. Carver and Curtis lived together on campus.

[TK]: What lessons from history do you believe Carver’s fame and legacy has for the contemporary scientific community or current racial justice movement? Did you find anything about his life journey from being born a slave to becoming a distinguished African American inventor relevant to your experience as a Hispanic-American and the Hispanic American trajectory?

[XC]: Absolutely, it’s that Carver succeeded. There is no remedy to counter the scales of social injustice like that of success and racial image. Racial image is everything and when young brown and black girls and boys see themselves in people who are brilliant it reaffirms that we are brilliant too.

...............................................................................................................................

Xavier Cavazos is the author of Diamond Grove Slave Tree (2015), the inaugural Prairie Seed Poetry Prize from Ice Cube Press, and Barbarian at the Gate (2014), which was published in the Poetry Society of America's New American Poets Chapbook Series. Cavazos was included in the Best American Experimental Writing (2015), and earned an MFA in Creative Writing and the Environment from Iowa State University. He currently teaches in the Africana and Black Studies and the Professional and Creative Writing Programs at Central Washington University and is an editorial assistant for Poetry Northwest.