Letras Latinas, Part 3: A Conversation with Emma Trelles

Listen in on an oral history conversation with 9th Poet Laureate of Santa Barbara, California Emma Trelles, interviewed by fellow poet Silvia Curbelo. Uncover Trelles’ path from childhood family field trips to bookstores through her unexpected early career as journalist and art critic to the ways her bedtime “letters to herself” in her beloved notebook form the basis of her poems.

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Transcript

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Today, I am speaking with Emma Treller on a Fine Indiana Morning on April 16th, 2012. This is part of the oral history program at Notre Dame University, the Litfus Latina. My name is Sylvia Corbello. I was the judge of the 2010 Andres Montoya Poetry Prize. and I had the great honor of selecting Emma's, very fine first book, Tropicalia, as the winner from published by the University of, Notre Dame Press. welcome, Emma. It's great to see you. It's great to see you, too. Once more? Once more. I guess I will just start at the beginning. Tell me a little bit. You were born in Miami. You've lived there all your life, pretty much. in South Florida, yes. I've lived in Miami. Miami Beach, Hollywood, and Hollandale, but Hollywood and Hollandale are just the county over, yeah. Greater Miami, as you were telling me earlier. It's all Miami. It's all Miami. Once you get to Palm Beach, right. both your parents are from Cuba? Yes, they're both from Cuba, from La Habana. Although my mother's family, Is, also from, I'm totally blanking out on the province now. It's not Santo Piritu, that's where my stepdad's family from. They do a big reunion in Miami every year of all the Santos Pirituanos. you know what? I still at home I have, oh, Rio, that's close. Close to me, yes. so your parents immigrated when they were young? Yeah, they were about, 19 and 20. So they've actually been in this country, for much longer. They're in their sixties now, who been in this country much longer than they were. And they're very patriotic. And they married in Cuba or they No, my, my mother came over with her family first and then a year later my father left his entire family and came over alone to ve Have they been back to Cuba? Had you been back? No, Nina, one of them has been back at Tela. I've asked my mother about that. she said she has no in fixing return. that this, she doesn't want to see the changes and the deterioration, and they both feel like this is their country, although, they're very Cuban in a lot of ways, but they're also fluent in English. when my mother reads, she reads in English. I think, I think, of course, there's always a connection there, and they do speak of it, more and more as they get older, but they're very, they very much consider themselves Americans, I've always thought that. That there is no one as patriotic, as an immigrant that's become a citizen and they're very much a part of that mold. So you, did you grow up speaking both English and Spanish? my first language was Spanish, and I clearly remember, starting kindergarten, not understanding what anyone was saying, but very excited about learning this mysterious tongue. What? and then I just, I guess I just picked it up fairly quickly in school and, and believe it or not, also watching Sesame Street. Oh. Have you ever attempted to write in Spanish? no. I feel like I don't have the kind of, vocabulary at hand that I have in English in Spanish. Although that's not necessarily a drawback, but I just feel like I'm, my linguistic skills. are much more proficient, in English. Although I do speak Spanish, and I do have Spanish in some of my poems. That makes sense because, I've written some in Spanish, but because I've done 80 percent or more of my reading in English, it's like I'm much more fluid, and, and it feels like I'm trying when I'm writing in Spanish. you're not listening to the poem, you're forcing something. one thing that I'm actually interested in, and I think this is my way of easing a little more into the Spanish language, is I've talked a little bit with poet Dan Vera in DC about just translating, one word. Décima by José Martí. Oh. Just one. And I just want to see what that experience is like and that'll just acclimate me a little more with the language, but, the thing that I really need to do is I need to read more in Spanish, and I don't read in Spanish at all, so it just takes me a long time to do that, but that's how we, It's much easier now because we're so much more active to books through Amazon, when I was in my 20s and 30s and I'd have to come, of course you live in Miami, so you don't have any excuse. So you mentioned that your mother is your biggest fan, and she clips all the articles about you. Is she a reader of poetry? Did you grow up with poetry in your home? we didn't, but she's a big reader. And books were very much a part of our lives, all four of our lives, my brother and my father and my mother. particularly when we were growing up, my parents always took us to bookstores. back then it was just B. Dalton and Walden Books, I think it was called. so that was pretty much one of our regular outings. we were very, we were working middle class, so our outings would consist of going to the bookstore, or going to the library. My mother took us to the library every week. And then she would also sign us up for book clubs where we would, look in this little menu of choices and select, the paperbacks that we wanted and, and then she would order them from us. So from a very early age, it was a big presence in my life, reading and books. So at what age did you transition from being a reader to, thinking you were going to become a writer? I started writing poems when I was in elementary school. Oh, good. I used to go, I used to bus some of us to this, arts program twice a week. And, I had a wonderful, language arts teacher, I think, named Mrs. McGoy. She was like a hippie. She had long hair and John Lennon spectacles and She would play Wabash Cannonball on her guitar. I loved her. And, and she would have us write, different kinds of poems. We were haiku, some of it inspired by pictures that we cut out from magazines. And so I kept on writing poems and, and then in elementary school we had a project that we had to write a book and actually physically sew together a book ourselves. And I wrote a book of poems. For my project. And I called it, From Me to You. And and I covered it with some coffee mocha colored fabric that my mother had around the house and pasted little letters on it. so I did, and then, I probably wrote an occasional horrible adolescent poem, but, I didn't really start, writing poems, in a more, con concentrated way. Until I was in my 20s, when I started taking, undergraduate, workshops after already having received my, bachelors, in finance and international business. Really? Yes. Oh, wow. Which I despise. And, it took me about six years to get them, but I had blurts because I kept on skipping class or, having to take the class over, because of some poor grade. but I started realizing that I didn't want to work in business, and the reason that I was so unhappy studying that is because it was just not the way my brain worked. a series of events led me to take a, introduction to creative writing workshop at Florida International University. I started writing poems and prose. And, eventually, I got my second Bachelor's in English because that completely suited me. every, I took so many creative writing classes, I realized, oh, I just need a few more classes and I'll have this Bachelor's. So I did, and I loved it. I'd look at the syllabus and it'd be 20 books that I wanted to read anyway. so I did that and I entered. The MFA told me I was a fiction writer, but soon enough, poetry just swept me up. There's two things that really interest me about your background. First, You were a working journalist for a while. How long did you do that and why did you leave it and would you go back to it again? I, I finished my MFA and of course there are no, jobs or professional poets, no. but in my last semester in graduate school, I, I stumbled into, a travel writing. gig, for a book. It was a series of books, called Edge Guides, and they focused New York, Austin, maybe San Francisco, and one of them was in Miami, and someone recommended me. I had never done anything like that before. But, they contacted me and another, journalist, who was a real journalist at the time and he wound up dropping out of the project and I wound up writing the entire book myself. And now I had some clips. So I finished my master's and I started applying to writing jobs. Some of them were corporate writing jobs, some of them were, online sites, and one of them was a paid fellowship at New Times. Which is now owned by the Village Voice Media. Sure. And, I sent them my clips, and they really liked them, and they, called me in to interview me, and I just told them, listen, I didn't go to journalism school, I have no experience whatsoever, but I can write, and they were like, yeah, clearly you can, and we think we can teach you the rest of it. So they hired me. And then after the paid fellowship was over, they hired me as a staff writer. And how long did you do that? I was there for about a year and a half, but it was mostly hard news, which I did not want to do. It's just, it can be very dispiriting. I got a really wonderful education there about how the world really works. Not that, justice is not always served and, those that are in the right are often neglected or abused. And, it's important work, but it's not what I wanted the focus of my life to be, on. I, applied for another staff writer job at an arts and entertainment weekly called Street, run by the Miami Herald, and I was there for about three years. And I went off on my own as a freelancer, and after a while, I was hired as the art critic at the Sun Sentinel, a tribute paper, and I was there for three years, that was a full time staff writer position, so in total, in between freelancing and newspaper staff jobs, wow, four years ago, I can't make this out, maybe ten years? Twelve. A decade. And why did you finally do that? the Sentinel was bought by this sort of evil corporate pirate named Sam Zell. And, he just started disassembling all of the Tribune papers. And, almost from the moment I was hired, people were getting laid off. And it was like the third or fourth round of layoffs, and I was offered a buyout. Which is essentially, we'll agree to leave in exchange for, yeah, a certain package. And, and I just realized, it's, I'm not getting any younger, and, journalism is a completely consuming job. I really had very little time to put together a book. I was eking out poems a little bit at a time, but I just didn't have the mental or even physical energy just to sit down and give that my all. And I figured this was the right time to do it, so I leapt off the cliff and so far it's worked out. And here you are. Yes, here I am. Here I am. There, there's so much attention to detail in your work and, Almost like a documentary feel to many of your pieces. Do you feel like you bring a journalist's eye to your work? I think that's just my eye, and I think I brought it to my journalism. Because you already had it. Because, but I developed it there, certainly. And I love that you say that, that documentary feel, because I do think of the poem as a document in various ways, and I've often thought of it that way. It's nice that it comes across. it certainly does. did you ever feel that there's a conflict, or maybe you don't see yourself as a journalist, it was something that you fell into, but there is, the journalist's version of the truth, which is just the facts, ma'am, and then there's the poet's version of the truth, which is the spirit of the truth, and you take huge liberties to arrive at that. You find that there's a conflict between those two. it's interesting because even journalism, yes, it's just the facts, but the facts that you select, there's a subjectivity involved there, that kind of shapes the story in one way or the other. And then certainly with poetry, it's just much more liberating not to have to constantly triple check everything and make sure everything is spelled correctly and accurate, although I do that anyway because I've been trained to do that. it's liberating in some ways, but it's also daunting because now, you know, everything is invented. Everything is coming from, the landscape of my own mind. So there's good parts about it and more challenging parts about that idea of You mentioned that you were an art critic, which is something that a number of poets have made, quite a career out of, like John Ashbery, who we were talking about last night, John Yao. And yourself. In a small, in a lesser sense. Ricardo Pagliosa is as well known an art critic as he is a poet. Yes. why visual art? Why not literature? I, I did for many years write about, local bands and music and, acts coming into town. And, and I have written, a lot of book reviews. Honestly, I was very surprised to be hired as the art critic because I only had A few stories that were, centered around visual art, but I think they were looking for somebody that was flexible and could write a lot of different, kinds of art stories, and, I just don't think the editors really knew a lot about visual art, so I came across as I did. I learned on the fly. Sometimes that's the best way. let's talk about Tropicalia. Okay. it's You know, it's a wonderful book, it was, I was telling you before, it was one of the first manuscripts I read, and it became the one that all the manuscripts turned out I compared to, and in the end, of course, I selected it as the winner. the book is named after the Brazilian art movement of the 60s and 70s. Tell us a little bit about that, how that came about. I was introduced to that, by a very good friend named Steve, so he's a musician. He's, probably better known around town as Mr. Entertainment. he's a real character. And, he's just taught me a lot about music. And, one time I was in his house which was full of all this folk art and collectibles and books and music. It's just incredible. Him and his wife are just avid collectors of the unusual. he had a CD that he lent me, by Caetano Veloso, called Sunday. And it was just this, dreamy, liquid bossa nova, and then I started investigating a little more about who he was and, how he connected to that movement and, so I didn't have a title for the book for a long time. I had some other working title, I don't even remember what they were now, I think Sugar Land was one of them because I lived at the sugar industry in Florida for other reasons. But one day I just, I started thinking about the tropics and how much of my book is centered around all aspects of living in Florida, not just the natural environments, but the urban, environments as well. I, I just figured it really worked. I think of the book as a mash up of sorts. there's, there's music, there's art. there's the greenery of South Florida, this persistent sort of wilderness. but there, it's, there's a lot of, city living in there too. And the movement in Brazil was also a kind of method of different art and socio political ideas. I just figured it worked. It was the right one. And as soon as I thought it, I just felt that click inside and I knew that we had selected the right time. In spite of the sensuality of a lot of the language and the lush imagery of the copics that you bring to the book, it also has a very urban feel. Very, hard ed, shadowy figures and express ways and crime and, We get the occasional glimpse of the art deco, Miami, picture postcard Miami. But mostly it's the hard edges that you focus on in a lot of the book. And from some of the descriptions it could be New York City, it could be D. C., it could be Detroit, it could even be Rio. But it's not, it's Miami, and it's very apparent from the outset, I mean I knew by the third poem that this book was set in Miami. What is it that you think makes Miami so distinctive and so recognizable? I think it's the convergence of This, indefatigable, wildlife. And not just actual creatures, but the flora and the fauna. it just, it just won't be stopped. it's so overly developed and so crowded in, in ways. I was talking to you how, Dade County, where Miami resides is two and a half million people. Yeah. that's even an older census, that's incredibly condensed, but despite all of that, there are abundant waterways. The egrets, and ibis, and hawks, and hummingbirds, and hibiscus, and sable palms, and foxes, and they just co exist alongside this grit. And I think that is a very, Miami, a very Miami thing, this idea, this exotica, it's very exotic, the kinds of species that dwell there, it's such a fertile place, I like to joke around that you can just fling a tadpole into a puddle of water and there'll be a colony of frogs in a week, but it's a place where, life thrives. Yeah. despite, odds. And that's true for the people there as well, I would say. let's talk about your writing process a little bit. what are triggers for you? How do you begin when, you sit down to write a poem? I am completely codependent on my notebook. I write everything in my notebook first, for the most part. But there are some poems that I have written directly. on the computer. So you actually draft your first drafts by hand? I don't even think of them as drafts. I just, I like to write in my notebook before I go to sleep at night. That's typically when I write, unless I'm traveling and then I write at different times. But, I just write down whatever I'm thinking about and then it ignites and goes off into whatever direction. But it's very, free form and, Sometimes I'm writing in line breaks. I'll catch myself doing that and I'll be, I realize that I've been subconsciously thinking of it as a poem. But I just try to, anything that's whirring around in my head, I try to get that down on the page. And then later on I'll go back and I'll start reading my notebook, almost like a letter to myself. And I will be able to identify this is going to be a poem, that's going to Then I'll take it and start typing it in to the computer and start shaping it from there. And that's predominantly how I work. Sometimes it varies, but that's usually it. Do you do many drafts or do you pretty much kind of tape it as you go along so by the time you have the first draft it's almost finished? I think, I, both. I think I'm shaping it as I'm typing it to the computer and I'm also reworking it as I'm lifting it from the page onto the screen. And, sometimes I finish it, and I think, okay, it's finished for now. I have a poem that I was recently working on, not that recently, but a few months ago about Iowa, a place in Iowa, and, I knew it wasn't finished, but I've just been leaving it alone so I could come back to it and really make it what it wants to be. And sometimes you read, you leave a poem for, some weeks or months and you go back to it and you say, Oh, you know what? This is funny. Has that ever happened to you? Yes. Yes. That has happened. That's very delightful. Yes. That is a happy day. Actually, there's another, I said two things, but three things about your background that Fascinating. And that's your musician. you sing and play bass. Your husband is a musician and you've been in band. I would say my husband is the real musician and I'm the dilettante. but, but yes, a few years ago I was writing a story about an indie label in South Florida called Spy Fi Records. And, I became friends, as I usually do with my subjects after the story, is, Finnish, at least the ones I really like, and he's a great guy. His name is Ed Artegans, and he just called me up one day and was like, I think that you, Andrea, and Mindy should be in a band. And Andrea was the art director at the paper, and Mindy was the freelance photographer. I was like, and he's I think Andrea should play the drums. Are you playing the instruments at that point? I think you should play the bass and I think Mindy will edit, I don't know how to pose. So what? And I went, okay. And so we started meeting at this practice space we had in Hialeah. And, I remember the first time I got there, just going up the stairs, I could literally smell the rats in the roof. It was so disgusting. But his face was actually very nice. And he just put the Rickenbacker on me, and he's okay, this is A, this is, E D A, I don't even remember now, E A D G. E A D G. I'm like, okay. So I just started playing it. and singing while I was playing with it. And I started, that's how I started writing songs. I like to sing more than I like playing the bass, but I didn't want to stand up stage on stage without anything between me and the audience because I was so terrified. so I just insisted on playing a very bad bass guitar. But you're a songwriter as well. Yes. And in some of this, at least one poem in the collection feels to me very much like a song lyric and it's the one. country data song in 4'4 time. Yeah. Is that written as a song? I, yeah, I started writing that, the first few lines of that poem many years ago as a song, just for my own amusement, and, and then one day I decided to finish it and thought it would be funny if I put it in the book, funny for me at least, often think that, I worry about being too serious and too sorrowful, too melancholic, about my work sometimes. Write it into a polka and it's better. Exactly! Put a beat on it and it cheers things up a little. So I just thought it would be fun to put it in there. And now when I, on occasion, I'll read that poem but I'll sing it. Oh, really? As a song, yeah. Maybe you'll do that tonight. No. do you feel like you use a different part of your brain when you write songs? Is it a very different process, the writing poem? I think so. Very much I think, I actually hear a melody in my head first, you were, speaking earlier about your own work and how you hear the music of a poem first. So with songs, I hear the music first, and then I write. The words, to it, and I don't sweat it as much as I do poetry. It feels a lot looser. you have to pare it down. Yeah, it has to be simpler, and I just try to take all the cliches out of it. what I do. Exactly. Cut them out, but for the most part, it just seems like a much more relaxed process, and not as intense, I feel, that writing poems are. For me. music seems to inform your poetry tremendously, I think, if, I think it's the most salient feature of the book. But I feel if there's a soundtrack to all these poems, it is not Brazilian jazz, it's more like loud searing rock guitar, dissonant and harsh, maybe even punk music. Yeah. and it seems to me like the book was organized with this very much in mind. Were you conscious of it as you were writing the poems, or even as you were putting the book together, or did this just happen? I think that was a direct result of, me being very part, very much a part of the local music scene in Miami at one time. like I mentioned, I'm reviewing a lot of bands, CDs, and shows, and, but I also, a lot of those people were my friends. So I would just go to a lot of shows. that's how I met my husband, I went to see his band play, and then we were a groupie. We were friends for many years before we started dating, but, it was just such a big part of my life. Music was such a big part of my life. back then, and it still is to some degree, but in a different way, I'm not as involved in that kind of environment, and we would go to these, rock clubs that were very hard and gritty and, edgy, punkish type of thing, so it was a great source of inspiration. Why don't you read one of the poems from Tropicália that would illustrate that. I was thinking maybe Chicken Lady, unless you can think of something. No, I'll read Chicken Lady. Sure. Chicken Lady. Gunshots. Back alley screams. Cats caught in garbage bins. And the rubber faced man who paced my front sidewalk day and night. His back spooled to a lowercase r. At dawn, I plotted murder when the santera next door sang rum and holy cadence to her nicotine chickens. You pay a price for spackle and spit. For rent, raid, utilities. Then the dropkick fee no one tells you about. For living in the guts of your city. It can kick your skull clean. I'm moved to a land of green. Medians and swept gutters. Guillotine windows and invisible neighbors. The cats are collared. The garbage doubles as sculpture. I am five minutes from arterial highways, holistic parks, the best and brightest pre Ks. I'm cornered by oak, ficus, streets named Pleasant Fairy and Sweet Lover. I've bought a chick, the puff and peeping kind. We watch for sirens and salesmen. Eat pears and pecan pie. At night, stars shine like knives through my eyelids. There are snakes in the trees. I can hear the ticking of their tongues. That's excellent. Very soon. Can I ask you something? I'm just curious, what is it about that poem that reminds you of that loud crashing rock music? Some of the language needed dropkick. The guillotine windows, the garbage doubles as sculpture, that, to me, that's just a very urban kind of heart, and if you were going to read that to music, it wouldn't feel waltz. No. it's a subtle thing. there are other poems that are more obvious, like Noiseband Concerto, it's about that. But I wanted to go with something that was just, More subtle, and just showed the music in the way that you read it. let's talk about another one of your poems. How to write a poem, Theory No. 62. This is a, it's a directional poem. follows instructions and you'll end up with a poem. Why Theory No. 62? Is there Sixty one other theories that we can look forward to reading about. I think there's innumerable theories that you could, you could come up with. And I think this was just my homage to that idea that there is no one way to write a poem. And every time I come to the page, In some senses, it feels like the first time, and there's always that sense of anxiety. Have I forgotten how to do this? Can I still put this together? It's a different map every time, to find your way there. There's just no one way to do it. So this was, that title's a little like snarky way of me saying, there are no answers, this isn't an equation, but rather a, You journey into a place that you really don't see or even know what it looks like, until you start moving towards it. this is one of my favorite pieces in my book. Why don't you read it for us? Sure. How to write a poem. Theory number 62. The beginning should eat the eyes. It's the part of the movie where you step into line at the bodega with Our Lady of the sponge curlers. She's buying toilet paper and mahatma rice. This is her life, and you happen to ease into it at the wooden lull between explosions. You could also begin while she's watching her husband drop the scot he's sucked for days. Hear glass break magnificent rain over the linoleum. If you are still mouthless, use seraphim and penumbra. Both will drape the frame in velvet. Pearl the hems with high art and smart girl words that hide. God, please, God, don't let me flinch, fail, fall into the dark. A mention of Babel or blackberries wouldn't hurt either. The question of where to snap the line at its finest edge can freeze the brain with dread. The blade must be sharp enough to halve the moon and the dark clutter of sky. Ignore this for the moment. There is nothing left except the flutter of wings beneath the stabbing. A woman before the stove, Stirring rice and wishing death. The river outside her window, How it glosses after rain. Not like mirrors or a polished lens, Simply water fallen dark. I think those commas make the poem. That pauses in between the words. but this is a great piece, the beginning should eat the eyes. That's one of those seminal lines, that kind of lines that you know, people will remember 20 years from now, Oh, that was that line. I hadn't thought of it that way, but it's nice to hear. The thing about it is, it's almost shock value, and it brings It builds a, it presents a tremendous tension right at the outset, and the reader doesn't know whether to laugh or to be horrified. And then, then there's humor, which, I love the combination of the humor and the pathos in the poem. Our lady of the sponge curler. So we've all stood behind her at the bodega at some point or another. It was great to hear you read the poem, so there's nothing I love more. Learn to hear a poet, read their own words. what are you working on now? What is next? Ah, what is next? I'm, I've written, finished one poem for the next book. And, I have page one. Page one, yes. Many more to go. But, and then I have, as I mentioned, assorted drafts of something in my notebooks and in my computer. That I really need to sit down and hammer out. And I'm thinking about, just working, part time this summer, even less, so I can really focus on doing that because, I'm freelancing, I'm adjuncting. I do, I work at a writing center, at another university, it's just a lot of hats. It's a lot of hats, and like you, I have my family and my friends and my home and those, that, that part of, those parts of my life are very important to me, as, as important as, as poetry, so I don't want to neglect them. so sometimes, I think you have to I've had to give up some of the more creature comforts that come along with a regular job, in order to really be productive. Yeah. Any plans to write a book of prose, with your journalism background? Yeah. I think it's logical. Very much I've written a couple of essays, A few essays, over the years here and there, and, one was actually, published in Gulfstream and then was picked up by the Best of the Net. And I think of that as the beginning of that collection. But that is very much something I want to do. And, maybe I'll wind up finishing that before the next book of poems. I don't know yet what's going to happen. I read this great, quote, by, Doctorow. E. L. Doctorow, who she was. And, he says that writing a novel, but I say, I think this is true of all writing, is like driving a car on the highway at night. You can only see as far as your headlights go, but that's enough to take you the whole way there. And I always think about that. Unless, of course, the lights go out. Yeah, no. I don't want, I don't want to think about that part, but I always think about that, when I feel frustrated or anxious that I'm not moving along as far or I don't know what's coming up or, what shape is this going to take? And I always just remind myself this. one inch at a time, as a friend told me once. Sometimes you just gotta ride the wave and see where it takes you. Definitely. who are you reading now? I just, I just, I'm rereading your book, The Secret History of Water. I read yours too. and I just finished Slow Lightning by Eduardo Corral. Which is great, he was, he's one of those writers, that you were talking about how you read outside your comfort zone. I really enjoyed that experience of reading his work, it's surreal, it's got little touches of narrative, but it's just very imaginative, logistic. and then in the wings, I have, Waiting, Larry Levis, Winter Stars, which I already sneaked a peek at the first film. And and I'm also reading a book of essays edited, co edited in part by Blas Falkenrath called The Other Latino. It's all about personal essays about, from different Latino writers all over the country about, how they perceive themselves and. What part, if any, their culture takes in their creative work and in their personal lives. It's very interesting. I actually plan on interviewing them soon. Oh, okay. And possibly writing a little post for a blog. in closing, I would like to hear one more of your poems, if that's okay. I wanted to, because we've been talking about the hard edges and the really, the book is actually very balanced. There are some beautiful love poems, there's some nature poems, and there are poems that show a kinder, gentler Miami as well. And so I'd like for you to read one of these, which is actually one of the loveliest poems in the book, in an alcove between the beacon and the Avalon. I mentioned, I'm really glad you asked me to read this poem. I, I never read it. it's one of the oldest poems in the book. And, I just feel like, I have not been giving you enough attention and love, so it's nice that, that you've asked me, and I'm glad that you've enjoyed it. It was inspired in part by a walk I took on Ocean Drive one summer evening, and, the beautiful pastel hotels that line the ocean there. And these are two of them, in an alcove between the Beacon and the Avalon. Hotels, sure, but also pastel monoliths. To fortune and revival, to traveler's palm, to citronella, to mambo and techno. Praise bay leaves, star jasmine, alleyways seeded with saffron and ordered refuse. Praise the diamond clad ships cruising the horizon, fluid and preordained, and the sky chalked cobalt and plum, Everything rose soaked until the very air is water colored solace. So what if we're rum drunk? If we dined on too much chocolate and salt and the good meat of grouper? These are the godly nights. The longing exact for what is loved. A friend's voice. The familiar hands at the elbow. And the wind plucked the skin with autumn, Showing how beauty is better felt than seen, How gratitude is another word for joy. Very lovely. Thank you so much, it's been great. And good luck to you in your next book.