Latin@ Featured Poets

David Hernandez @ American Life in Poetry

David Hernandez is a featured poet of The Wind Shifts: New Latino Poetry (2007); his poetry collections include Always Danger (2006) and A House Waiting for Music (2003). His poem “At the Post Office” is currently featured at American Life Poetry.

“At the Post Office,” as the title suggest, recounts a moving encounter between the speaker of the poem who is trying to mail a package to an ailing friend and a postal clerk characterized as a “giant stone, cobalt blue,” a giant “slab of night” who, despite his rock-hard façade of immortality, knows of the intimacy of decay:

              

            “I know the stone knows a millennia of rain

            and wind will even grind away

            his ragged face, and all of this slow erasing

            is just a prelude to when the swelling

            universe burns out, goes dark, holds

            nothing but black holes, the bones of stars

            and planets, a vast silence. The stone

            is stone-faced. The stone asks how soon

            I want the package delivered. As fast

            as possible, I say, then start counting the days.”

[Continue reading.]

*

Carmen Calatayud at Split this Rock

Published by Press 53 this past October, In the Company of Spirits, is Carmen Calatayud’s first book-length collection of poetry. Her poems have appeared in journals such as Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, Cutthroat: A Journal of the Arts, Gargoyle, PALABRA: A Magazine of Chicano and Latino Literary Art, and the anthology DC Poets Against the War. Her poem “Commitment Otra Vez” is currently featured at Split this Rock and offers a literary taste of her newly released collection, In the Company of Spirits.

 “Commitment Otra Vez,” like many of the other poems in Carmen’s newly-released book length collection, offers us a contemporary poet working to weave narratives of testimonio that blur the line between the political and the spiritual, where                

        […]spiritual warriors

            pray for your country

            and you can finally sleep

            through the night.”

[Continue reading.]

 *

 Rigoberto González @ Poem Flow

 Latino/a Poetry Now featured poet, Rigoberto González who was recently (along with Lorena Duarte and Xochiquetzal Candelaria) featured in this Poetry Society of America roundtable published in anticipation of installment three of the national reading series, is currently featured at Poem Flow. Poem Flow is a mobile app which everyday features and highlighting the work of contemporary American poets. Every day a new poem “flows” to thousands of cell phone screens through this poem-of-the-day app. Rigoberto González’s poem “Gila” was a recently featured on this fascinating new platform.

Titled after one of the tributaries of the Colorado River, “Gila” manifests one of the key elements of Rigoberto’s poetry, namely what Juan Felipe Herrera refers to as a “poetics of intimacy.” “Gila” like many of Rigoberto Gonzalez’s poems can infuse the most seemingly unfamiliar and alien subjects, a mummified lover, a mortician’s scar, a tributary of the Colorado River, with what Herrera calls “explosive life-force blazing toward the boundless:”

“It's no curse
        

dragging my belly across
                

the steaming sand all day.
        

I'm as thick as a callus
                

that has shorn off its leg.



If you find me I can explain
        

the trail made by a single limb.”

[Continue reading.]

*

Aracelis Girmay @ The Cortland Review

Another Latino/a Poetry Now poet whose work is currently featured is that of Aracelis Girmay (Aracelis, along with Eduardo C. Corral and Rosa Alcalá were the poets featured in installment one of this national reading series). Her two poems “When They Ask Me My Name” and “(making You a House Upon My Leaving)” are currently featured at the Cortland Review.

In “When They Ask Me My Name,” the speaker of the poem declares: “I am a city.” A city that “hums electric as an exposed nerve.” Here is a speaker that is both shedding pieces of the self while at the same time acquiring pieces of the world: “I am here,” the pieces of that city declare, “having been thrown to the dogs/ & pigeons, I am the dogs & pigeons.” Here is a perpetual of lesson of loss and life:

            “My life is very long. But short compared

            to the turtle's, the stone's. I am both

            the bird whose chest flashes red

            at the window, & the cats below

            screaming Return to me.”

[Continue reading.]

*

Rich Villar @ Thrush Poetry Journal

Rich Villar’s poems and essays have appeared in Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Amistad, Achiote Seeds, and on NPR's "Latino USA." He has been quoted on Latino literature and culture by The New York Times and the Daily News, and he directs Acentos, an organization fostering community around Latino/a literature. His poem “Aubade at 12:56pm” is currently featured at Thrush Poetry Journal and has been nominated for the 2012 Pushcart Prize. Here is one of my favorite moments in that morning love song:

          “The sun refuses the order to shine, to bathe 

            your closed eyes in winterglow, the deep 

            red purpose of your bedroom:  I will 

            compose an ode to the Triboro Bridge, 

            the dervish upon which the city spins, wishing 

            I was Miles, playing what is not there.”

[Continue reading.]

*

Deborah Parédez @ Voltage Poetry

 Deborah Parédez is a featured poet of The Wind Shifts: New Latino Poetry (2007) and a CantoMundo co-founder. She is also the author of This Side of Skin (2002) and the critical study, Selenidad: Selena, Latinos, and the Performance of Memory (2009). Her poem “The Fire” is currently featured in Voltage Poetry with a critical analysis on the masterful “turns” in this poem. “Turn” here being the place in the poem where the reader is met with “surprise and heightened engagement.” The first turn (but not the principal turn in this poem) being the point in which the speaker plunges the reader in the description of a physical fire (a suicide by fire) and a “you” who extinguishes that fire; that is into the “night Tony decided to end it all:”

                   

                 “bathing his head and limbs in gasoline


                  and igniting himself into effigy”

Only to be met again by the “you” whom “[taking] all the necessary precautions” saves Tony’s life.

But this burning figure, only serves as a vehicle by which to deliver the poems “knock-out” turn in which the speaker of the poem compares herself to Tony and to the “fire” which can envelop a person “ablaze and reckless:”

            "so that years later when I, a bright girl, ablaze

            and reckless, rushed to embrace you,


            you did only what you knew best to do:


            you stayed calm, moved quickly,


            took all the necessary precautions,


            snuffed out every ember,


            saved yourself.”

[Continue reading.]

Latin@ Featured Poets

Carmen Giménez Smith @ Words on a Wire

Benjamin Alire Sáenz and Daniel Chacón of Words on a Wire—a weekly radio show on fiction, poetry and of all other things concerning writing and its various communities—talk with poet, writer and educator Carmen Giménez Smith on how she manages to blend her role as mother, and educator with her vocation as a poet and writer, and also reads her poem “Photo of a Girl on the Beach.” 

Carmen Giménez Smith, teaches creative writing at New Mexico State University in Las Cruces, NM. Giménez Smith, is also slated to read in installment four of Latino/a Poetry Now at the University of Arizona’s Poetry Center, her latest collection is Goodbye, Flicker (Univ. of Massachusetts Press, 2012) for which she was awarded the Juniper Prize for Poetry. 

“If I thought of something I wanted to write, it had to be something that I could remember because I was holding a baby,” and so Giménez Smith explains her journey toward a form that could gave shape to the lyric essays in her memoir Bring Down the Little Birds: On Mothering, Art, Work, and Everything Else (Camino del Sol, 2010). Of Bring Down the Little Birds, Ariel Gore said: Carmen Giménez Smith “elevates the motherhood memoir to pure poetry. Who are we, beyond somebody's mother and somebody's daughter? Bring Down the Little Birds dives into all the rich and irritating questions with heart, guts, and humor."

                [Listen Here.]

*

Blas Falconer @ Nashville Review

The Mary Pickford Theater, hosting Letras Latinas at a Library of Congress event, recently featured poet Blas Falconer and writer Lorraine López, co-editors of the recent anthology The Other Latin@: Writing Against a Singular Identity, discussing the contemporary state of Latino/a literature.

Besides being an editor at the forefront of literary criticism, spurring inquiry and dialogue on the multitude of aesthetics behind the apparent homogeneity hidden behind the label “Latino/a literature,” Falconer is a poet in his own right and is currently featured at Nashville Review with the poems “The Foundling Wheel,” “Prayer,” and “A Proof.”

Blas Falconer is slated to read in the final installment of Latino/a Poetry Now at the University of Notre Dame and is the co-editor of The Other Latin@: Writing Against a Singular Identity (University of Arizona Press, 2011) and of the forthcoming      The Foundling Wheel (Four Way Books, 2012).

Two visual gems from “The Foundling Wheel:”

“The hand that throws___

__            the stone recalls its weight.”

and

“the child sleeps beside our bed


and you make toast with red plum jam.”

                [Continue Reading.]

*

Rich Villar @ At Latino USA (NPR)

With his poem “Testimony #2,” Rich Villar is featured on National Public Radio’s Latino USA. Rich Villar is the director of Acentos, a community organization that works to promote Latino literature. His work has appeared on Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Amistad, El Centro’s Letras, Latino Poetry Review, and the acclaimed chapbook series Achiote Seeds.

“Testimony #2” is a beautifully written song that captivates and carries the listener into that magical place where poet and muse dance. Where the poet feels most alive:

Some gems, I particularly liked:

“She dreams Williamsburg, before graying hipsters.”

“She dreams The Eagles unplugged on the sound track.”

“She dreams in bossa nova.”

“She dreams universes spinning at her fingertips.”

“She dreams me happy.”

“She dreams me happy.”

“She dreams and I want sleep

if sleep is the bridge I must cross to her door.”

                [Listen Here.]

*

Ruben Quesada @ The Rumpus

  

Ruben Quesada is the author of Next Extinct Mammal (Greenhouse Review Press, 2011). He teaches literature and creative writing at Texas Tech University and currently serves as Editor at “Codex Journal” and Poetry Editor at “The Cossack Review,” and contributor at “Fringe Magazine.” Ruben’s poem “On Style” is currently featured at The Rumpus. An ekphrastic poem, where we find Henri Matisse in “the aching umbra of his room,” or in “the back-scattered light of dawn/ straddling the horizon.”

                [Continue Reading.]

*

Raina J. León @ OmniVerse

Latino/a Poetry Now featured poet, Raina J. León who along with Maria Melendez, Blas Falconer and John Murillo will conclude this national reading tour at the campus of the University of Notre Dame in the fall of 2013, is currently featured at OmniVerse with her poem “Between the sea and prayer.” Raina J. León’s first collection of poetry, Canticle of Idols, was a finalist for both the Cave Canem First Book Poetry Prize (2005) and the Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize (2006). Her second manuscript, Boogeyman Dawn, was a finalist for the Naomi Long Madgett Prize (2010) and is forthcoming from Salmon Poetry. “Between the sea and prayer” is from her third manuscript How to Live Forever: A Tango Criollo, and which centers on “revelations of spirit that occur through immersion into the other.” In this poem, a family is portrayed at dawn surrounded by the

“Hagia Sophia, Topkapi Palace,
the Blue Mosque. They rise from the burning
mist while the sun gilds the earth with tender light.”

Here the city of Istanbul becomes resonant with the holy, which reveals itself through the architecture, through the dust itself.

                [Continue Reading.]

*

Oscar Bermeo @ The Rumpus

Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize finalist, Oscar Bermeo is currently featured at The Rumpus with his poem “Barry Bonds on the Witness Stand.” Born in Ecuador and raised in the Bronx, Oscar is the author of the poetry chapbooks Anywhere Avenue, Palimpsest, Heaven Below and To the Break Dawn. He makes his home in Oakland, California with his wife, poeta, Barbara Jane Reyes.

Now an excerpt from the Barry Bonds poem over at The Rumpus:

“That’s why I’m really here. My crime is never forgetting how your newspapers dogged
out my father. Hyped him to the high heavens, then dropped him at an open bar where
he had to learn to crawl through the bar sawdust floor before he could run again. And
every time he ran the press was right there, ready to remind the world how the bottle
was running just as fast behind him.”

                [Continue Reading.]

Interview: Rich Villar and the Nuyorican Poets Cafe

Rich Villar features at Friday Night Slam
at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe

The Nuyorican Poets Cafe, the house Miguel Algarín, Mikey Piñero and Pedro Pietri built, is New York's most iconic poetry venue. Punto. Ask the average New Yorker where they can find poetry and the answer is always the same: The Nuyo.

If anyone doubts that statement, all they need to do is look at the line that forms every Wednesday for the Open Slam. A solid hour before the show starts, the line starts to form with poets looking for a shot to read at this open slam and poet aficionados coming through to see what the Wednesday fuss is all about. Any Nuyo veteran will let you know, winning the Open Wednesday Slam is New York Slam Poetry's golden ticket—an invite to slam on Friday night.

And folks who are surprised at the long lines for the Wednesday Slam are left dumbfounded at the wait to get into the Friday slam. Rain or shine, in sweltering July humidity or freezing December chill, you can always spot folks lining up hours in advance of the Friday Night Slam to witness the poetic battleground that has spawned such luminaries as Edwin Torres, Tracie Morris, Regie Cabico, Sarah Jones, Willie Perdomo, Manny Xavier, Mayda del Vallle and Saul Williams, to name a few.

The Friday Slam is followed by the Open Room, an open mic that starts at 1:00am and can go on for hours. Legend has it Pietri would love to stop by at two in the morning and test out new material. To this day man poets drop by at this late night poetry stop just so they can say, "I've read a poem at the Nuyo."

The highest of all these accolades is to be invited by Slam Curator Mahogany Browne to feature on a Friday Night in front a standing room only crowd hungry for Nuyorican poetry. And your feature for this Friday Night? None other than Acentos Foundation director Rich Villar.

For a better sense of Nuyo history and what's going down now at the Cafe, I ask Rich a couple of questions for Letras Latinas:

Oscar Bermeo: With no advertising at all, the Friday Night Slam at the Nuyorican is consistently sold out 52 weeks a year. What do you think is the allure?

Rich Villar: Allure is a good word. I think people are attracted to what is considered outlaw, outsider, rulebreaking and such, though what it means to be “outlaw” has certainly evolved over the years. In the 90´s, when the hood was the number one heroin market on the planet, you really had to NEED to participate in something artistic for yourself and the people who live(d) there. Then when the Piñero movie hit, folks kinda wanted a piece of this bohemian oasis for themselves. Then Def Poetry hit, and suddenly folks wanted to see some of these poets they’d seen on TV up close, maybe even get to HBO themselves. Nowadays, it’s maybe not as dangerous and outsider…certainly not with a designer coffee house down the block…but it remains a mostly young and multicultural mix of folks wanting an experience that isn’t the typical Friday night lounge scene laced with banal conversation. It’s new. The slam is always new to somebody. And when it’s new in the mind, it’s usually the Nuyorican they step to first.

Reading Report: Martín Espada and Rich Villar at Page Meets Stage

Martín Espada, Marie-Elizabeth Mali and Rich Villar
Photo courtesy of Marie-Elizabeth Mali
Originally uploaded by OBermeo

It's 21st Century Poesia as I trade in the moleskine and audience seat for a Twitter feed and laptop then tune into the latest installment of the Page Meets Stage reading series to watch Martín Espada and Rich Villar explore and blur the lines between poems crafted for live performance and poesia drafted for publication.

First, a little about the reading series: Page Meets Stage is a monthly poetry series that pairs more page-oriented, academic poets with poets who come from a more spoken-word or performative background. Both poets are on stage at the same time and read back and forth, poem for poem, sometimes answering each other and other times taking the conversation in a different direction.

The series also donates all its proceeds to Bowery Arts & Sciences, the educational arm of the Bowery Poetry Club dedicated to the preservation and enhancement of the oral tradition of poetry via live readings, media documentation and creation.

And thanks to the Bowery, I was able to enjoy this phenomenal New York City reading from the comfort of my home in Oakland courtesy of the free and high-quality webcast via Bowery Poetry Live.

So with live stream in full effect, I open up my Mac and not only start to enjoy the poetic interchange between Espada and Villar but also share my thoughts on the reading via Twitter. Here's the time stream from @OBermeo as the reading was in progress:

• Thank you, internet poetry gods (and @bobholmanpoet) for the live broadcast of Martín Espada & @ElProfe316 at the Page Meets Stage reading.

• Martín Espada just dropped "En La Calle San Sebastian" www.martinespada.net/enlacalle.htm one of my all time faves #PageMeetsStage

• He's going ole skool! @ElProfe316 drops "Noche Buena" A slam classic for sure and a damn good poem by any rubric #PageMeetsStage

• Martín Espada schools #PageMeetsStage on the legacy of Nuyorican Poet Jack Agüeros. Don't know him? Get the knowledge: www.poets.org/jague

• More knowledge: @ElProfe316 recites a poem where he converses with THE Boricua Poet: Julia de Burgos http://bit.ly/9mAWw6 #PageMeetsStage

• Martín takes the pass from Rich and drops his own Julia de Burgos poem: www.martinespada.net/the_face_on_the_envelope.htm #PageMeetsSatge

• Did @ElProfe316 just say "misnomer maps" in a poem? I see you, sun. #GameRecognizesGame #PageMeetsStage

• "Latinos, we defy classification." - Martín Espada (Add that to the archives @LibraryCongress) #PageMeetsStage

• "Espada: cousin to the machete, peasant cutlass" www.martinespada.net/myname.htm #PageMeetsStage

• "This is part truth, part lie" @ElProfe316 reflects on the poetic origins of his own name. PS- Don't call him, Lil Ricky. #PageMeetsStage

• Time for the Q&A. @MeMali cuts to the heart of it: "What is the craft of political poetry?" #PageMeetsStage

• "Some of these poets become sanitized once they're canonized." - Martín Espada #PageMeetsStage

• “Why do we create unnecessary divisions when the true problem is unity?” - Martín Espada #PageMeetsStage

• “There’s power in collectiveness. I’m trying to reach out to people who think like me.” - @ElProfe316 #PageMeetsStage

• On Code-Switching: “English con Español like arroz con pollo, the two languages are always present.” - Martín Espada #PageMeetsStage

• On Code-Switching: “Being bilingual opens all kinds of possibilities” - @ElProfe316 #PageMeetsStage

• @ElProfe316 Sun, where that new shit? #ImJusAskin #PageMeetsStage

• Rich does a cover of Martín's poem "Thanksgiving" www.smith.edu/poetrycenter/poets/thanksgiving.html #PageMeetsStage

• Status = Stupefied. Only @ElProfe316 can do a poem with the voices of Krusty the Clown & Marvin the Martian & make it work. #PageMeetsStage

• Status = Dead. Martín covers Rich's Inauguration Day Poem and recites the phrase "Lightin MFers like Steven Seagal" #PageMeetsStage

• Rich http://bit.ly/d8Gtno and Martín http://bit.ly/cpBDbb explore how their fathers introduced them to poetry. #PageMeetsStage

• @nisao Glad they're reachin you, Anisa. It's wonderful to connect with folks.

• The necessary milk: Martín Espada reading "Alabanza" www.martinespada.net/alabanza.htm #PageMeetsStage

There's a lot of code to decipher here if you are not familiar with Twitter speak (does this make me trilingual?) so I'll translate out my thoughts and include a great Jack Agüeros story that could not live within Twitter's 140 character constraints:

"Martín Espada and Rich Villar engaged each other in an open poetic conversation that included musicality, upbringing, family ties and code-switching among the topics, and allowed the audience to listen in on this conversation.

Espada traveled through the length and breadth of his obra, reading poems from early in his literary career all the way to the title poem from his upcoming collection The Trouble Ball. Every poem was read with a sense of urgency and call to action, speaking not only to the timelessness of Espada's writing but also how very far we have to keep going as a nation (Post racial, what? Tea Party, who?) until we can say all our citizens are free. History is also alive and well in Espada's setlist for the night, not the history of textbooks or CNN but the history of a poeta who gathers allies every chance he gets, marshalls them with stories of other great poet warriors (Julia de Burgos, Jack Agüeros, Omar Khayyám) and charges forward with a battle cry that signals the arrival of the poets and the dead they speak for.  Alabanza, indeed.

Villar set it off with a signature poem from his time as a top-ranked NYC and Nationals level poetry slam competitor, "Noche Buena." Like Espada, Villar's work is holding up to the test of time, he hits every rubric for a successful oral poem while reaching deeper to not tell us he's proud of his heritages but leaving us with the lasting image of a son receiving bendicion from his ancestors and being sent out to continue the work. Vaya, muchacho/Aquí esta tu vida.  And that vida is poetry with new poems coming from Villar that take advantage of his position as poet citizen by critiquing the (so called) center at its very heart with poetry riddled in Spanglish, politics and commitment.

Both poets did this with a healthy code of code-switching and I'll let Espada take over as he recounts how true Nuyorican poet Jack Agüeros defines bilingualism in United States Poesia:

“Well English and Spanish are like two dogs I love.
For me, English is a good dog. 
I say, ‘English, sit!’  English sits.
But Spanish, Spanish is a bad dog. 
I say, ‘Spanish, sit!’ Spanish pees on the rug.
But I love em, I love em both.”

The engaging Q&A, led my poeta and MC for the evening, Marie-Elizabeth Mali, brought up issues of polarity amongst Latino poetry, defining the rigor of political poetry, the relationship between the Mother and Step-Mother Tongues and creating a body of community.  I could go over the responses to the questions but you'd find much better answers in Espada's broad body of work and Villar's community activism, two streams in the river of poetry that are bound to cross paths again."

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?

Literary Marketplace: TIANGUIS/Benefit in NYC

A Chicago publication called Chicago Journal recently published a worthwhile piece on one of the most vital, encouraging, and inspiring projects I've encountered in the last couple of years:

TIANGUIS

Read here and see why Irasema González embodies an alternative to what I'll call an ethos of complaint (which I've been party to myself) in the midst of the ongoing conversations on visibility/invisibilty of Latino and Latina writers in the U.S. literary landscape: in other words, Irasema is nourished by a passion that that she has transformed into action. In short, her efforts have reminded me that a more pro-active posture is the way to go---something the soon to be announced Latino Poetry Review will attempt to embody.

*

And speaking of action, Rich Villar and crew are at it again. Read all about it here, spread the work, lend a hand.