Latino/a Poetry Now: 3 Poets Discuss their Art

Now that installment one of Latino/a Poetry Now has finally come full circle with the kick-off reading at Harvard University by Eduardo C. Corral, Rosa Alcalá and Aracelis Girmay I thought it befitting to present a sampling of the rich and poignant conversation between the three poets on the Poetry Society of America’s “3poets discuss their art” roundtable. More than offering the reader a sampling of this rich discussion, my intent is to contribute a little and expand on this conversation as we prepare to launch installment two of Latino/a Poetry Now which will feature poets William Archila and Ruth Irupé Sanabria at Georgetown University on March 20^th and which will also feature a PSA roundtable.   

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The poets in this conversation are brave and generous in their conversation and engagement with the craft of poetry; and in the process they present us with a colorful tile composing this large mosaic of work being produced by a newer generation of Latino/a poets and which Latino/a Poetry Now seeks to showcase in its various installments. Rosa Alcalá writes of her need to assert and document the unspoken codes of poetry, the “general suspicion of (or disregard for) the female experience.” Aracelis Girmay proclaims her interest “in discarded information, people, places, animals, things. Scraps, first drafts.” She, like Alcalá, is also asserting the need to “write toward” the places, objects and people that have been “monstered.” The poem functions then as a body in transition, as a movement toward the beauty of what has been rendered hideous by those who fear what they do not understand. Eduardo C. Corral on the other hand finds assertion not in the too-often required autobiographical poem by the minority writer and which handles “the bodies of my loved ones with kid gloves, viewed them through rose-colored glasses.” For Corral assertion is found through aesthetic value, through rendering the “stringent spines, the funny bone, the fictitious marrow, or the brutal skin” present in a poem. 

Eduardo writes “art does something wonderful to me. It gives me language.” Hinting that while subject matter is fundamental language remains—to borrow a wonderful phrase from Eduardo—queen.  Alcalá writes, “the language of poetry is queen, not because it reproduces reality, but because it pushes against all those boundaries/limitations.” Language thus as a process of grafting, a cross-pollination of sorts involving other artists and mediums and which pushes us “toward” something previously thought impossible: the unmasking of the unspoken codes of poetry, unveiling the beauty in what has been rendered monstrous, the affirmation of the self or a particular experience through the containment of aesthetic qualities.

But audience here too is of relevance, as Maria Melendez, who served as the moderator this online discussion, points out Eduardo’s concern for the expectations for minority poets to “speak truth to power” in poems that will more likely than not be read by white audiences. For Aracelis Girmay the issue of audience is best illustrated by a “white center,” a complicated center which imposes its cosmology of the world on all people—whether they are writing for an audience or not. “Because of my white-centered education, because of the media, because of the presidential history of this country, because most of my fellow writing students were white, I had great practice in imagining the white center. One gets educated, quite quickly, in the nuances & range of whiteness—but we don't call it whiteness, we call it being American, human.” For Girmay the act of writing itself becomes an act of breaking and expanding the borders of this center of privilege—a center that renders the white experience as the only human experience by default—to include those in the margins, to validate those experiences as human. But this issue of audience is made even more complicated if we take into account Rosa’s astute observation that to write about issues of race and class is also to “write away” from these experiences, as these audiences are least likely to read our poetry. Like Aracelis, Rosa’s work is and is not for a particular audience but it is rather an act of “moving toward” a "place where my work will be deeply questioned & considered & lived with." And this place is a place of music, a place of tiaras and monsters, of magical tongues.  As Eduardo concludes: “But something magical happens when I'm writing a poem, I'm not singing in English or in Spanish—I'm singing in my mother tongue.” 

To read the full conversation click HERE.

Dispatch Desde Lake Forest, Ilinois

It didn't fully register when Rich Villar wrote his comment a few days ago:

"Serendipity is a wonderful thing."

But tonight I sat in my room (I'm at Ragdale for a fortnight), put on some headphones so as not to disturb the other residents, and listened to the whole thing:

ACENTOS'

inaugural podcast
!

But I want to ask Rich Villar a favor: please post the full names and brief bios of all the people who took part in that fluid discussion. I was sad I didn't hear the whole thing, but what I heard was great. I won't attempt to highlight it. Except to say yes: it is uncanny that while being completely unaware that this podcast project was in the works, Latino Poetry Review made its first tentative steps over at Blogtalkradio. Listening to ACENTOS' debut in this arena will serve as inspiration and incentive to slate another LPR audio segment: we create these creatures, we have to feed them. And thank you, Rich, for mentioning PALABRA PURA's effort in Chicago. We're already thinking about 2009.

Although I can only speak for myself, this podcast tonight, coupled with thoughts about the soon-to-be Acentos Literary Review; and reflecting upon the lively launch LPR has had, provoking a healthy dose of "inquiry and dialogue" thanks, in large part, to Huerta/Santos Perez/Selinger; and thinking about Gabe Gomez's and John Michael Martínez's soon-to-be Breach Press, which will showcase experimental verse; and thinking about poet/doctoral candidate John Chavez at the University of Nebraska, whose area of inquiry is Latino experimental verse; and thinking about the fact that The Wind Shifts tour is gearing up for its next installment at The Loft in Minneapolis on May 31st, where Urayoán Noel (a podcast participant tonight), will be reading, along with Emmy Pérez, Adela Najarro, and Carl Marcum; and thinking about how Letras Latinas will be underwriting Ura's appearance in DC in mid-June at a Spanish language series called "Para Eso La Palabra"---all of this, and other things I'm surely forgetting (what am I missing?) has me posing the question:

Is Latino poetry living a particular moment right now?

Poetry & Politics: ACENTOS

There was quite a lively discussion going on over at the Poetry Foundation's blog this past week, prompted by one blog contributor's response to another contributor's post. I mention it because it reminded me how poetry--a space where poetry is shared--can insinuate the political. I'm thinking of the reading that Eduardo Corral gave last Tuesday in the South Bronx; a reading MC-ed by host John Rodriguez, as well as the gracious collaboration of Maria Nieves and Fish Vargas--all three poets themselves.

The evening started with a few logistical challenges, but in the end the result was an intimate interlude that had Eduardo sitting in a chair with a music stand for his poems just in front of him. The scene reminded me of a Spanish flamenco recital with a singer of cante hondo performing his songs from a chair.

But before he took the stage, the open mic included some pieces from a couple of ACENTOS regulars, and special appearances by Urayoán Noel and Steven Cordova, who both joined me in reading from The Wind Shifts--an idea that started with Eduardo many months ago, and which led me to launch the Letras Latinas Broadside Series (thanks Eduardo). There was a short break after the open mic, which was just as well as it gave Rich Villar more time to get to the Bronx from New Jersey, where he'd had his poetry workshop at Rutgers--and hear Eduardo read. Those in attendence included a table-ful of people sitting across the way, none of whom I recall seeing when I was at ACENTOS last May (more on this table later).

I hadn't heard Eduardo read in quite some time. It might have been in New Orleans in 2002! Anyway, he read very well under the circumstances. The poem I was most struck by was his "Variations on a Theme by José Montoya." What I loved about the piece was the way it was clearly both a homage to "El Louie" (the poem recognizingly riffs off of Montoya's poem) and also a type of poem I'm especially interested in these days: a poem that is in conversation with another poem. In this sense, then, Eduardo has managed to write a poet's poem that is also a political poem--a tall order, in my view, but which he pulls off wonderfully. I'm looking forward to seeing it in print.

But when I mentioned the "political" at the start of this post, I wasn't thinking of any of Eduardo's poems or what the open mic readers read. Rather, I was thinking about something that took place after Eduardo's reading concluded. Rich took the stage and reminded us all how ACENTOS is about creating community. It sounds like an abstraction, to be sure. But as he was saying all of this (I'm about to speculate here), there was a minor commotion at the table across the way. Apparently there was a young poet who perhaps might have liked to have shared a poem of hers at the open mic earlier, but may have felt a bit shy or unsure of herself. ACENTOS is such a space that it was decided to have a couple of poems read aloud (in other words, a spontaneous second mini open mic) in the hope of inspiring our young poet to share her work. A couple of pieces were read, including one Rich shared (which I quite liked). But the highlight of this "after-lude," if you will, was when the young woman took center stage and read her poem. It happened in such a way that seemed very natural, and I was moved. I'm not talking about the actual poem itself--but rather: how the ethos of an ACENTOS reading is such that poetry, sharing poetry is a political activity. I say this because ACENTOS, my understanding of ACENTOS, is that it is a home for Latino poets of all stripes. One of the ideas floating around over at the Poetry Foundation blog by one their contributors, which has to be repeated to the dominant culture again and again, is that those who belong to communities who have been marginalized by this dominant culture are not going to be apologetic about creating spaces where poets in these communities can come share their work, regardless of how far along in their trajectories they are. If some of those poems are first person lyrics, so be it; if some of those poems take on political issues, so be it; if some of those poems take on ethnic identity, so be it; if some of those poems aspire to celebrate the very phenomena of language itself, so be it.

An ACENTOS evening can include a poem performed from a recently published university press anthology, to a new poem that years from now may be deemed a Chicano classic, to a poem by someone who feels safe enough to read something personal and raw.

Broadside Series to launch/Joyelle on Gabe

PEAR

by Eduardo C. Corral


Middle child, conqueror
of tree houses, my brother bites a pear,
the bite mark casts a pale light

that illuminates the storybook of his desk.
His favorite illustration: children
playing tug-of-war

beneath the sprawling branches of an oak.
Boys versus girls. He runs
his thumb over the face

of the tallest girl. Her socks
embroidered with yellow rosettes.
He bites the pear again, the light increases,

enough for him to notice,
for the first time, the silver cross
around the girl's neck.

If mother reads to him from the book,
he begs her to pronounce
the name of the girl. She insists

her name isn't embedded in the story.
So he's taken the jangling
of mother's copper bangles as she turns

the pages for her name.
He adores the girl's intense grip
on the rope. He can't read. Not yet.

He glances at his hands,
and though holding a pear,
feels rope sliding through his palms.


One week from today, Eduardo C. Corral will be the featured reader at ACENTOS, Bronx Poetry Showcase, curated and hosted by Rich Villar. Many months ago he made a call to local anthology contributors to join him in order to read from The Wind Shifts during the open mic phase. Letras Latinas decided to take this occasion to launch its ad-hoc Broadside Series. Fine letterpress editions of "Pear" have been produced by poet, publisher, and printer Scott King of Red Dragonfly Press in Minnesota. If someone in the NYC area would like a crack at obtaining one of these letterpress gems, I will be giving them away (until they run out). So journey up to the south Bronx next week to hear and touch some poems. Steven Cordova has confirmed his attendence, and Urayoán Noel nearly has. We are also hoping for local Macondistas to make an appearance. Taking its cue from the long tradition of small press publishing in Latino poetry and fine printing, the Letras Latinas Broadside Series aims to keep alive the tactile pleasures of poetry---holding a finely printed page in one's hands.

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And speaking of pleasures. When Eduardo C. Corral's colleague at Iowa, Joyelle McSweeney, agreed to introduce Gabriel Gomez at Chloe's Cabaret last week, I knew the audience would be in for a treat. Joyelle, in addition to everything else she does in poetry, has made the poetry reading Introduction into a mini-genre of her own. She has agreed to share this with readers of Letras Latinas Blog:

"Intro to Gabriel Gomez,
Chloe’s Cabaret, U. of Notre Dame 10/30/2007
by Joyelle McSweeney

No lesser source than dictionary dot com informs us that a free radical is—

n. An atom or group of atoms that has at least one unpaired electron and is therefore unstable and highly reactive. In animal tissues, free radicals can damage cells and are believed to accelerate the progression of cancer, cardiovascular disease, and age-related diseases.

The metaphor of the free radical is one very available to those discussing art right now. It’s graced the cover of at least one poetry anthology and titles a documentary about a experimental filmmaker being shown right now at Notre Dame. The implication of such usages is that art is an action which may be damaging to the body politic but damaging in a cathartic sense, engendering a permanently post-catastrophic, more perfect embodiedness for the state—or the state of the art—once the artwork’s performance is done.

The metaphor of the free radical makes a late appearance in The Outer Bands, Gabriel Gomez award-winning volume which we are here to celebrate tonight. His long sequence ‘The Outer Bands’ makes an accounting of the endless private half-lives of catastrophe juxtaposed against the large-font, public dailiness of newspaper headlines. At the close of the poem, thirty days after Katrina, the evacuee speaker sits in a New Orleans-themed bar, far from his home. Against this displaced scenario is set the ‘competing image of the flood/The free radical informing the cancer.” Here it is the flood, not art, triggering a destruction that will fractal both inwards and outwards destroying both the individual cell and the societal organism itself. Unlike art, this free radical makes no promise of regeneration.

Gomez’s art is gentler than the flood. Rather than destruction, his is a poetics that makes use of this area of possibility which is the border between, where one entity complements, inflects, changes another. His lyric terrain is “an idea between valleys”-- not like a mountain, as one would expect to find between valleys, but like “falling/like cello extending.” In this space, to quote from another poem, “the image/still as glass/concurs”; con curs etymologically breaking down to give us ‘run with’ and thus showing us the motion inside glass’s stillness, motion we factually know to be, to bring Marvel into this, “vaster than empires, and more slow.” This then, might be the political gesture of Gabriel Gomez, not that of the firebrand but the outlaster drawing attention to motions small yet eternal. In his minute focus, he proposes sightlines long and patient enough to survive beyond the historic wrongs embedded in our here-and-now. Hear him now: Gabriel Gomez."


Thank you, Joyelle.