"Lead me into
temptation.
My blood is
mercurial."
---Sheryl Luna
1.
You divide the book into seven sections
headlining the seven deadly sins with their seven virtues counterparts. Can you
tell us more about this choice to include the virtues? Did you decide to divide
the book into seven sections before writing the poems, during, or after? You
gave them prominence by headlining the seven sins/virtues in Spanish. Can you
tell us more about this choice also?
I
divided already written poems into themes and ended up with seven sections. I
began to see
a pattern in the poems about human emotions, human errors. Initially I thought
it was a lot of sections, but I had written, at the time, a number of poems
about numbers, so the number seven seemed most interesting. “Universal Kiss,”
for instance was originally titled “Three.” I also had a poem titled “Six”
which is essentially the number for human imperfection biblically, and of
course “Seven” which is biblically considered a perfect number. I also played
with ideas of numerology and various meanings for numbers. “Forty Days” was originally
titled “Forty.” I also had a poem titled “Nine” which later became “Small
Defiant Gods.” After thinking about the number seven in regards to the seven
sections, I came to see a pattern of sins and virtues and looked up the deadly
seven sins. I rearranged the sections in terms of the sins and virtues, and I
did this loosely and playfully because I saw the strict interpretations of
“sin” and “virtue” as not always straight forward absolutes. This is one reason
I included the virtues. I felt it was more layered and interesting to have sins
and virtues play off one another and against one another. Everything depends on
context. I did like how themes of greed, rage, and their counter-parts
generosity and peacefulness work together. I didn’t include all the number
poems in the book or ended up changing the titles, but the concept was working.
The book is essentially about the thin line between the seven sins and virtues
in light of abuse that can instill a sense of shame if one sees chastity as an
absolute. It’s about how seemingly opposite things are connected and interdependent
in nature.
I
also had a fantastic editor and publisher, Andrea Watson, from 3: A Taos Press help
me
re-order some of the
poems. Her advice was sage-like, and I am grateful for her insight.
Originally
the section titles were in Latin, due to the fact that the Latin names were what
I stumbled on when I went googling “seven sins” and possibly my Catholic upbringing.
As a kid I attended mass at a monastery where mass was performed in Latin.
I associate sin with Latin. Later I thought about putting them into English to
be more straightforward, yet they seemed boring if presented only in English. I
decided
to go with the Spanish because a number of poems deal with conquest and conquistadors
such as “Mortar,” “Ouray’s Eyes,” and “Cabeza De Vaca’s Horse.” Plus my
editor suggested Spanish would work better with the manuscript as a whole. I agreed
with her. Also poems such as “El Paso Women,” “Born In The Southwest,” and“Chico’s
Tacos,” and others, explore the attempted colonization of various people, and for
me Spanish was the better choice.
2.
I was interested in the animal imagery in the
poems. In “Cabeza De Vaca’s Horse,” for instance, I found the following line
surprising, “When I open my mouth,/ bats emerge.” One of my favorite poems was
your second opening poem “Equus” in the voice of an unruly horse. Another image
that stood out was “The cut worm/cannot forgive the plow” in “A Contentious
Woman Speaks.” Can you tell us more about your connection with these particular
animals or the function of animal imagery in your poetics in general?
I
had never thought about the prevalence of animal imagery in my work, but I have
an interest in how nature works—the Yin and Yang of the whole thing, the way
life and death intermingle in nature, how one is necessary for the other. Life
requires death and death
requires life. The paradoxes—the way opposites are always interconnected
and interdependent in nature has always interested me.
Animals
I suppose mirror what we ourselves are—animals. We too are at the mercy of
death, suffering and life. We too are driven by instinct, the need to flee or
freeze or
fight when faced with trauma.
The
bats emerging from the speaker’s mouth deal with darkness, chaos, the mad fluttering of existence. When I
was a child, my family went to Carlsbad Caverns
in New Mexico and the caves are full of bats, which emerge at sunset. They
have always had a place in my poems as they are creatures of the dark with
mysterious nocturnal behaviors, strange things like bloodsucking and hanging upside
down. They are ugly, and even when fluttering in a man-made cave at the Denver
zoo they are fascinating in that they simply flutter among one another in strange synchronicity behind glass.
The
worm cut by the plow is lifted from Proverbs in the Bible. Here for me is the fact
that being cut or hurt in some way is often met with a resistance towards forgiveness.
Not to mention the worm itself is associated with death and decay.
The
horse imagery has come up in both of my books. I did grow up in the Lower Valley
in El Paso, Texas, near Ysleta where neighbors had horses. I couldn’t help admiring
them. In “Bucephalus” I was influenced by Al Wadzinsk’s sculpture of a horse
rearing up, and the sculpture is at the Anderson Center in Minnesota where I was
lucky enough to have a residency through Letras Latinas. It is made out of
junk, yet
it was majestic and ominous.
Whether
it is aggression or beauty, animals have moved me, or perhaps unnerved me
in some way about existence.
3.
I liked the turns and emphasis in poems, such as
in the striking poem “The Photograph”
for
decades the camera shot, me
asleep
in a drug-haze.
And the stanza turn in “Our Throats
Like Fire”
When
I die,
I
will imagine his brown eyes. I will die
Again
and again at 19, shouting out, “My life! My life!”
“Am
I sexy?” he asked dark faced beneath the sky’s
moonlit
pond. He was sexy like a poem.
Can you tell us more about these
turns and emphasis? Were they conscious choices, inspired, or both? Are there
any particular poets or poems whose turns you admire?
for decades the camera shot, me
asleep
in a drug-haze.
The
turn above in “The Photograph” was due to my wanting to explore traumatic dissociation
and the forgetting or repressing of traumatic material. Although the incidents
written about in the poem occur in a drugged state, the effects of those traumas
extend this drugged or fogged state to decades. Initially it may not have been
intentional, but in the end it was an intentional choice. People who experience trauma
also often engage in substance abuse to deal with pain. I wanted the numbing
experience of PTSD and how it can devastate lives to be shown. The camera shot,
although it occurs just once, leaves a record, a memory, a wound in this case
which lasts.
When
I die,
I
will imagine his brown eyes. I will die
Again
and again at 19, shouting out, “My life! My life!”
“Am
I sexy?” he asked dark faced beneath the sky’s
moonlit
pond. He was sexy like a poem.
Originally “Brandy
Down” and “Our Throats Like Fire” were a single poem. The turn here between the two
stanzas comes out of my subconscious. The internal reflection followed by
the external memory came together for me. I like to let my unconscious thoughts come
out to play, and where it goes is often a surprise. I never did shout out “My
life! My life!” but it was and is a state of being—the preoccupation with the self.
Following that up with the voice of a character is appealing to me. I like surprising
juxtaposition in a poem. I enjoy being surprised myself as I am writing.
I admire surprising
turns in work by John Ashbery, Forrest Gander, Jorie Graham,
Charles Simic, Joy
Harjo, Cynthia Cruz, and many others.
4.
One of my favorite lines in the poem “Kitchen of
Grief” was “Lead me into temptation./ My blood is mercurial.” This line
reminded me of something a curandera once told my mother—she said, “There is a
thin line between love and hate,” which made me think perhaps there is a thin
line between virtue and sin or one cannot exist without the other. What do you
think of this interpretation? How does virtue and sin function in your poetry?
Yes, there is a thin
line between rage and patience. Sometimes rage is necessary, and
sometimes patience is
a mistake and so forth. Chastity is valued by society, yet for
rape victims and
victims of childhood sexual abuse the concept of purity or chastity
can do great emotional
damage and cause a person to feel shame. I tried to pick quotations about both
the virtue and the sin, which showed sometimes both are necessary and the Yin/Yang
association returns over and over again in the poems.
5.
Can you tell us more about the poem “Small
Defiant Gods?” I was struck by the dark beauty of the imagery and wondered at
the meaning of the lines, such as, “Some say the end of my journey is God” and
the reference to the number 9.
“Small
Defiant Gods” was originally about death, a personification of death. At some
point in the revision process, it was titled “Nine.” There were nine circles of
hell in Dante’s Divine Comedy. Nine expresses an ending, and I associated that
with death. It is the highest single digit and that also meant in my mind it
was something that drew a conclusion to things.
When
I wrote, “Some say the end of my journey is God,” I was thinking possibly about
death being a journey which ends with a God, that ideal perfection, but the
speaker seems to imply that death is simply death.
6.
Writing or the poem appears prominently in your
collection. In the poem “Crazy Ted Talks to La Virgen De Guadalupe,” for
instance, you write the funny and perhaps metafictional stanza:
He writes novels about God’s
corporation
where he’s the CEO and sells a
zillion t-shirts
of Jesus doing push-ups
to fans in sold out stadiums.
It’s all about the marketing, he
insists,
even a poem or a God.
What role do you think marketing
plays in the creative act or in writing? Do you think this affects the kind of
poetry being written or being published?
Yes,
the poem, and several poems in the collection deal with writing. This poem, as
well as others does appear to be metafictional, in that it consciously reflects
upon itself. The book took me a long time to write, in part, as my creativity
was stunted due to thinking too much about marketing and how in many ways that
opposes the act of creativity. So yes, marketing affects poetry. Much of poetry, as well as life today, is
steeped in self-promotion rather than in art or the things that really matter. It
is my hope to approach marketing and networking in a genuine manner, rather
than a forced or forceful one. Due to marketing and networking strategy, some
bad poetry receives positive attention over interesting work. Therefore it is
necessary, but there’s a way to do it with grace.
7.
Speaking of marketing, having worked as
copy-editor, I couldn’t help noticing the beautiful cover from the book, which
I must confess got me excited about reading the collection, in addition to the
title “Seven” and grazing through the divisions/quotes. Were you satisfied with
how the book turned out as a visual artifact? Was this a concern for you at
all? Can you tell us more about the artist Brooke Shaden, whose art I googled
and found utterly amazing, and how you came to work with her? Was this a choice
you made or did your publisher arrange it?
I feel fortunate to
have the cover by Brooke Shaden. She is an amazing artist. I had been looking at a
number of artists for the cover as I had been given a free and open choice, and
Veronica Golos, a stellar poet and acquisitions editor for 3: A Taos Press, suggested
the work of Shaden, and I spent some time narrowing things down to 3 artists,
but the piece chosen seemed to me to best reflect the concept of trauma and the
masks those of us who have undergone significant life-threatening trauma wear. I thought
it might be nice to link to her webpage, so others can see the type of work she
does. http://brookeshaden.com/gallery/
Thank you so much
Lynda for asking these wonderful questions. It is greatly appreciated. Also a
big thanks to Letras Latinas and Francisco Aragon.
Sheryl Luna’s first
collection, Pity the Drowned Horses, received the Andrés Montoya
Poetry Prize and was published by the University of Notre Dame Press. It was a
finalist for the National Poetry Series and the Colorado Book Award. Her second
collection, Seven, was recently published by 3: A Taos
Press. She has received fellowships from Yaddo, the Anderson Center and
Ragdale, as well as the 2008 Alfredo Cisneros del Moral Foundation Award from
Sandra Cisneros. She is a CantoMundo fellow.
