“Who
knows why the sun beats us into considering it glorious”
---Raina
J. León
1. Various poems in Canticle of Idols, such as “Voz:
Sweet Child” & “Three Women and a Man” weave biblical passages or reference
biblical names. Can you tell me about the importance of this text growing up,
in your poetics, and how it has shifted through the years if so?
I grew up with
copies of the Torah, the Qur’an, and the Bible (King James and New
American). As a very curious child, I would flip through all of these
texts. As a student at a Catholic school, I had intensive study of the
Bible as part of my faith formation process. Although I have explored many
religions, including those outside of the Abrahamic tradition, I often return
to Catholicism. A dear friend once asked me why, and I responded, “I know
the stories. I can read the stained glass.” There is something
magical about that. Just put yourself in one of those cathedrals, those
sacred spaces, with all the light transformed through colored glass. Every fleck
tells a story. Churches, indeed all sacred spaces, have always had that
mystery and magic for me. Going back to another anecdote, as a child, I
didn’t understand sound systems. When the responsorial psalm or the Alleluias
would be sung, I would look to the ceiling of my home church. The whole
ceiling formed this multilayered cross. I kept looking for the faces of
sisters in habits as they peeked over the cross’s barriers. I just KNEW
that such heavenly singing had to come from cloistered nuns hiding in the
ceiling. The singing was mystical, mysterious. Such has been my
experience with the divine.
When I was writing Canticle
of Idols, I was recovering from a break up. I had moved to North
Carolina for love, which I discovered was totally one-sided. I had been
admitted to a PhD program there as well, but I had this summer of hardship to
go through. It was a hot summer, one in which I was desperately
poor. I could pay my rent and utilities, but there was one week during
which I literally ate two peaches and a few ramen noodle packets. One day,
I passed out from the heat and my self-imposed starvation. Pride wouldn’t
let me ask others for help. It was reading the psalms that captured my
imagination. It drew my attention from my gurgling belly to something
higher. I took to opening the Bible and the Qur’an to random spots,
looking for clarity. My emotions were still all muddled. I had a
singular purpose of beginning my PhD process, but everything else was an Impressionistic
painting through which I was walking, lost. I am definitely not the best
Catholic – my beliefs are far more syncretic after all I have learned over the
years – but reading sacred texts helped me then.
I have only
recently rediscovered a regenerating faith, mostly because of my beautiful
goddaughter. My sister trusted me and our other sisters enough to be her
daughter’s godmothers. I take that very seriously, so I go to Mass every
week now at a Black Catholic church, which feeds my soul in that it draws so
much from cultural traditions that were alienated in my early church
experiences, themselves tainted by racism, classism, and a lack of cultural
competence. All of that comes through in the way I approach the world and
in my poetry, too.
2. In poems like “Believe,” “Ascend,” & “Husband,” in Canticle
you re-imagine biblical stories in a way that humanizes characters who are
thought of as holy or belonging to the spiritual realm. Did you set out to
humanize them or did you have in mind to apply a feminist intervention by
deconstructing the grand narrative of Catholicism? I wonder if some of this
re-imagining might unsettle believers. What has been the reaction of believers
vs. secular readers if they have shared their reactions with you? Have you
shared your poetry with family members who may belong to either camp?
When the book came
out, I expected lightning to strike. I expected excommunication, shut
doors, and riotous family dinners. I expected trouble, but I was still
going to write the story I felt was necessary. I always hated that
disconnect between the divine and the human. I believe that we have been
given so much in seeing the unity between both, that the divine is attainable,
not in the way of having super powers or something like that, but in the way of
just being better to one another and to the earth. When that disconnect is
fostered, it speaks to how the divine is unattainable, that there is no hope
for something greater. As one who also is well-versed in postmodernism in
relation to my own field of education, I was also enchanted with the ideas of
questioning those metanarratives, challenging them, even destroying
them. I expect that I will upset believers, but if I upset them enough to
think about their faith and to think about their own potential as human beings
connected inextricably with the divine, I have to say that I would be quite
pleased.
3. In the last lines of “Over café” in Canticle, you
reference Madonna’s “just like a prayer.” The song stirred controversy for what
some deemed “religious and profane” themes. How old were you when you listened
to the song/watched the video? What did you think of it? What did you make of
the controversy? I remember watching the video as a child and hearing of the
“controversy” years later as an adult.
I was around 8
years old when “Like a Prayer” was released. I remember the tumult. At
the time, I used to spend much of my time at my grandmother’s house, especially
over the summer. My cousin, Juanita, loved the video, and I remember
watching it with her. She would have been 10 at the time. My
grandmother was so angry. She forbid us to watch that video as the Vatican
had condemned it. We couldn’t even watch television for a while. I
remember thinking that the video was beautiful. I didn’t understand the
whole concept at the time, but to this day, I think the visualization of a
personal relationship with the divine is shockingly beautiful and awe-inspiring
… well, if you allow yourself a surface reading rather than looking at the
other layers within the text.
Canticle of Idols literally came to me in a dream. I had been reading
the psalms that evening. I remember that it was a night when cricket song
was at its highest. I am from Philadelphia. At the time, I had just
moved from New York. While ambulance and police sirens or the rush of passing
cars were a lullaby, the sounds of nature like those of crickets deeply
disturbed my sleep. I tried to cultivate a wonder by thinking of their
songs as canticles, praise songs to God. I had just learned the word,
“canticles”, in an insomnia-fueled research session on psalms. When I
finally came to rest, there was a voice that said my first book should be
called Canticle of Idols. I don’t mean to layer on all these portents,
but that’s the story of the title. That’s how it came to me, in a dream. The
praise songs to God of those we idolize, those who are intertwined threads of
human and divine.
Boogeyman Dawn came from a question: What happens to the
boogeyman when dawn comes? The whole book focuses on children,
innocence and the corruption/loss of innocence. Who better to embody that
than a “boogeyman”? While most would say that the proper spelling is “bogeyman”,
I have always produced a long u sound in saying the word, so I wanted to
replicate that in the title as a way of making it very personal. The book
also allows me to critique society, particularly in respect to education, in
protecting the welfare of children. As an educator, the well-being of
children is sacred to me. I myself suffered abuse as a child, which had an
impact on my personal relationships growing up. These are realities that I
consistently have to examine so that I can have healthier relationships with
others. I write this, because I want to tell the little girl I wrote
about, the one on a playground, hiding her bruises with long sleeves on a
summer day, that she needs to tell her story, because the boogeyman lives in
secrets and shadows. I want to tell her; I want to tell the football player
in “On the football field”. I want all those children in my poems who are
as much a part of me as they are of you and of us all that they are beautiful
and lovely and deserve the same. I think that hurts any boogeyman, when
people realize that they don’t have to wait on the sun to shine to be free,
that they are the dawn.
5. The poem “Body” has a striking last line with a complicated
notion of “American.” Also, “Cousin Flakes” with lines, such as “America will
kill them again” in reference to Mis parientes (my relatives). From the
back-book cover, you were described as having an Afro-Puerto Rican legacy. Can
you talk a bit more about how your background has complicated your notion of
“American” or “The American Dream”?
This background has
definitely complicated my understanding of identity and an American
identity. My mother is African American, from one of the poorest counties
in Western Pennsylvania. My father is Puerto Rican, from New York and then
Philadelphia. He was the first of his siblings born here in the U.S. I
was born just outside of Philadelphia and raised in Philadelphia proper. Still,
with cousins on my father’s side, I will talk about how “Americans” act, especially
towards people of color. I am American and yet other. On my mother’s
side, my ancestors are so American that they were originally given land by
George Washington himself for scouting during the French-Indian and
Revolutionary Wars. I suppose I could probably seek membership as a
Daughter of the American Revolution. I oftentimes don’t feel a part of this
place, though. I remember my father telling me once when I was
particularly hurt about some racial or cultural clash that Puerto Rico was my
homeland, essentially that we were living in a place that was not our own even
though he himself had never lived in Puerto Rico. On the other hand, in an
interview with my grandmother about coming to this country, she always lauds
Americans, what this country has done for her and our family. My
grandfather, her husband, served as a Merchant Marine. While she only had
a first grade education, my uncles and aunts all graduated from high school and
many received bachelors degrees. I have an uncle who is a lawyer. My
cousins and siblings, most of us have masters degrees, some multiple masters
degrees. My youngest brother will be a lawyer once he passes the
bar. I have my doctorate. As far as education, we have had many opportunities,
but it has been very hard. So, identity, American identity, the American
Dream, they are filled with incongruities, inconsistencies, mysteries. I’m
always coming back to questions of self and other. The narratives change
depending on what information one has. Am I American when the girls in my
first grade class pull and twist my hair around their fists in line and ask me,
“What are you”? Not “who” but “what”. Am I American when I teach
military dependents overseas for three years how to question (in Journalism
class) and Spanish (Spanish 1 through AP Spanish Language)? Is the American
Dream getting the doctorate? Is the American Dream also knowing that I
will probably never own a home because of all the loans I have for that
doctorate, knowing that the degree is a home I will never live in? Who am
I in all of this? Every discovery leads to another question for me, but I
suppose that also leads fodder for writing.
6. Some of your poems, such as “The Pistol’s Confession” have
dedications—can you tell us more about this poem and how the dedication relates
to it?
“Pistol’s
Confession” invokes Ross Gay and Quraysh Ali Lansana, both of whom have work
that is written in the voice of an inanimate object, a weapon. I wanted to
create a relationship to those previous works and to also bring to the fore the
idea that a weapon has a voice independent of the one who wields it.
7. An ongoing debate us MFA students had re: poetry was the
reader’s tendency to equate poetry with autobiographical material. This makes
me wonder if you had any thoughts on why this is the case and to what extent
autobiography shapes your poetics. For instance, in one of my favorite poems
like “La voz de ‘Buela: reflections on an interview with a woman I love” your
name is part of the poem. Poems like “Spanish interpreter certificate” with a
dedication for Edwardo “Eddie” León and “On the football field” with a
dedication for Tito seem to hint at autobiography.
Autobiography does
come through in my work, but not to the exclusion of an attention to the
poetics. Even then, just as with my re-imaginations of the narratives of
saints, not everything is totally linear or bounded by facts. “La voz de
‘Buela” comes from a transcribed interview with my grandmother. I was
interviewing her for a genealogy-enriched nonfiction project. What
captivated me throughout the interview was her language, tone, enchantment, especially
with familial and divine devotion and yet the inconsistencies with what she
said and how I know her to be and act in the world. Yet, for her, there
are no inconsistencies. These are just my interpretations, which cause me
angst, but how could interpreting someone else’s life and its impact on yours
not cause some disturbance?
“Spanish
interpreter certificate” was written for my father after he told me about
working to obtain further education. Education and the struggles to
achieve it have been returning narratives. He had difficulties in high
school, had to drop out of college to support family, and only completed his
bachelors degree as an adult when my brother and I were in high school. I
think that one of the reasons that I continue to be eager to learn is because
of the dedication I saw my father express at the kitchen table, dissecting
classic Spanish literature. All of his texts were written over in the
margins and in between thin lines of the prose. I don’t know how he found
time for class, working full time and sometimes overtime. My mother, too,
did the same, taking over our dining room table while she was working on her
doctorate degree. I learned from them that life would never be easy, but
that what could be dreamed, could be accomplished, oftentimes through
sacrifice.
“On the football
field” is dedicated to my brother, who had such a rough time growing up.
Because he could pass for white, there was always a tension when his friends
and their families, those who had deep-seated racist passions within them,
would meet our family. In meeting, I was asked, “What are you?” I wasn’t
quite Black enough. Growing up, our neighborhood was mostly white; the
only other Latinos in the neighborhood were related to me, and one of those
families moved to North Philly once I started school. The children in our
neighborhood didn’t know what to make of me but knew that I was
different. My brother blended in, especially with those of Italian descent
– León is very similar to De Leon or Leone - but when they realized that he
wasn’t Italian, there was tension. This is my reading of it. While I
was in school, no one bothered him, but we are three years apart. Three
years is a very long time.
All of this comes
through in my writing, all of the stories I hear. I primarily work in
narrative with some experimentations with disjointed narratives or more imagistic
writing. My work often connects to a real subject as a way of drawing the
reader in to a particular world. I am interested in the emotional
connection to the foreign and yet familiar experience. One of my strengths
is that I have been a writer since I was a child. I have kept journals
since I was 8 years old, and most everything that I write down, I
remember. I have a visual memory. I need those cues, but once I have
them, it’s done. Though I may have only written down “cricket song”, I remember
the heat, the creeks of the floor, the swelling of the door’s wood, the rare
breeze. All of these visceral details remain, which, in the process of
writing, can overburden me. I have to swim through and decide what will
remain. Sometimes, imagining the hidden places within the memory are even
more fruitful for writing. So, yes, I love drawing from experience, but I
do a lot of dreaming. In the end, does it matter which it is if a chord within
the reader is struck?
8. In Boogeyman Dawn you explore a range of topics
including Islam, education, military life, race & gender, among others,
whereas in Canticle, many of the poems explore biblical narratives,
though also race & gender issues. Would you say that your concerns shifted
from Canticle to Boogeyman, or do you find more parallels?
I think that Canticle of Idols allowed
me some opportunities to talk about childhood, innocence and corruption/loss of
innocence. Boogeyman Dawn extends that, but Boogeyman Dawn is
darker, even its humor is darker. It’s a descent down the rabbit hole, and
one doesn’t know if there is even a hope of getting back. It’s the
ultimate catharsis, as for the purification and purgation part, but the renewal
happens just at the tail end of the book. Even then, there is just a hint
of light. My third manuscript is much lighter.
Raina
J. León is the author of, Canticle
of Idols (Word Tech 2008), a finalist for the Cave Canem Poetry Prize and
the Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize. Her second book, Boogeyman Dawn (2013), was a finalist for the Naomi Long Madgett
Prize and is forthcoming from Salmon Poetry. She is co-founder of the
online quarterly journal, The Acentos
Review and continues as its editor-in-chief. She has received
residencies with the Macdowell Colony, the Vermont Studio Center, Ragdale, and
the Tyrone Guthrie Center in Annamaghkerrig, Ireland and others. She is
currently an assistant professor of education at Saint Mary's College of
California, and a member of CantoMundo.
