Letras Latinas, Part 5: Poetry & Conversation with Richard Blanco and Rigoberto González

Continuing Letras Latinas’ yearlong 20th anniversary series, in October 2024 Notre Dame welcomed visiting poets Richard Blanco and Rigoberto González, moderated by Susana Plotts-Pineda, Latino Poetry Fellow at the Library America. Latino Poetry: The Library of America Anthology was released in September 2024, and was edited by Rigoberto González, and includes the work of Richard Blanco.

Thanks for listening! The ThinkND Podcast is brought to you by ThinkND, the University of Notre Dame's online learning community. We connect you with videos, podcasts, articles, courses, and other resources to inspire minds and spark conversations on topics that matter to you — everything from faith and politics, to science, technology, and your career.

• Learn more about ThinkND and register for upcoming live events at think.nd.edu.
• Join our LinkedIn community for updates, episode clips, and more.

Transcript

0:06

Thank you all for being here. My name is Francisco Aragon and I direct Letras Latinas, the literary initiative at Notre Dame's Institute for Latino Studies, it is now my great pleasure to welcome to the podium the director of the Institute for Latino Studies, Luis Fraga, who would like to share a few words. Hello, everyone. Thank you very much, Francisco, for asking me to say a few words about The Institute for Latino Studies I've been director for, five years, six years, something like that. I'm also a professor of political science. I always enjoy programs put on by Letras Latinas. I've come to realize in over 40 years of being a political scientist, that, the research we do in the social sciences, doesn't last. There's always new research new paradigms, or new statistical methods, All part of the progress made in intellectual inquiry. But the literary arts, poetry especially, last. They last for generations and generations. There is a foundational sense of culture and emotion and perspective. that poetry, I think, brings, as some of the other literary arts do as well. it's especially an honor for me to be invited by Francisco and the Letras Atenas program. welcome to all of you. Bienvenidos y bienvenidas We appreciate you being here very much. This is the celebration of Letras Latinas 20th anniversary. We just, finished, celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Institute for Latino Studies. the Letras Latinas program was one of the first programs. established at the Institute for Latino Studies and has been thriving under the leadership of Francisco Aragon. now the mission of the Institute for Latino Studies is simple. We're the best of Notre Dame. Notre Dame has always been a place. Where predominantly immigrant and immigrant origin, predominantly working class, predominantly Catholics could find a home, receive higher education, study hard, and try to transform the world, as we say, following Father Sorin's charge to us that we be an institution committed to doing good in the world. who is that community today? a substantial part of that community is the Latino community, the Latina community, Latinx communities, whatever your preferred term is, Notre Dame, through the Institute for Latino Studies, made a commitment 25 years ago to make sure that it put its, although we would always want more, financial resources, its faculty resources, its intellectual resources, its student body, That it always was going to be a place that was at the forefront of the best research, teaching, and service with a clear understanding of the role of Latino communities. why would it do that? it did it because, as Latinx communities are the future of the country, or at least part, an important part, an increasingly growing part of the future of our nation, and an even more sizable part of the future of the Catholic Church. Notre Dame, as a preeminent Catholic institution, said, we need to do something. We need to be intentional in our demonstration. and recognition of the changing Catholic community and the changing country. we want to be asking the most important questions. We want to work with our faculty and students to develop answers to those, challenging questions. Questions like, to what extent are Latino communities similar and to what extent are they different? Questions like, what is the role of Latino communities in expanding our, multicultural democracy, or at least attempt at a multicultural democracy, which as all of we still struggle with today to try to build and have struggled throughout. the history of our country. We at the Institute take these questions and others that come from our faculty, many of whom are seated here in this room, whatever their disciplinary expertise, and we try to support them in that work, and support their graduate students in that work, and support our undergraduate students in that work. More recently, the Institute for Latino Studies has established what we call our Latino Studies Scholars Program. That program is the only one of its kind at any university in the United States. We give a scholarship, about half of Notre Dame tuition, from revenues that we have very generously received. From individuals like a former member of our board of trustees, Nacho Lozano, and members of our advisory council who have contributed as well. We're able to give a scholarship to eight to twelve students a year of half Notre Dame tuition because of the leadership they have already shown in Latino communities as high school students. And if they can gain admission to Notre Dame through the traditional process, standardized test scores GPA and letters of recommendation And they have a demonstrated commitment to Latino communities. We tell them, we want you at Notre Dame. It's a merit scholarship, not a need based scholarship. It's because of the work they've done and the work that they're likely to want to do in the future, whatever their chosen career, art, medicine, creative writing, poetry, the academy ministry, or whatever. area of work they're in, they also want to be working on behalf of Latinx communities as part of their professional development. Major in whatever major they want. They can come from any ethnic racial background. It's not just for Latino students. They can come from middle class families and upper income families. middle class families are particularly challenged in meeting our annual budget. For a student and expenses, and of course, if they're come from a family of need, a family of limited resources, the university provides them the financial aid they need, we want them here because of their commitment to get ahead as individuals through our program. And to bring others with them. Their commitment to simultaneously get ahead and give back. We now have about 40 students in our program. If you're interested in contributing to it, please let me know. I'll hang around the entire time. but give to the Letras Latinas program first, because that's the reason that we're here. Letras Latinas, has been a gift to ILS, the Institute for Latino Studies. And to Notre Dame under Professor Aragon's leadership because of his position and standing in the poetry community we have had access to incredible poets such as the ones we're going to hear from tonight. the Letras Latinas program, the Institute for Latino Studies, and the University of Notre Dame. have been present at major poetry readings, and we have award presentations where we've been at, and we've been able to have individuals who are poet laureates of a variety of, at a variety of levels of our society, including poet laureates of. the United States and other communities as well. We grow because of the Letras Latinos program. And it gives me great pleasure to welcome you and to invite Francisco Aragón to please come up to the podium again, as we continue with our program. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you, Luis, for all the support the institute has provided to Letras Latinas under your leadership. I'd also like to echo Luis's welcome for what promises to be a special program. One, we could not have carried out Without our co sponsors, both on campus and off, starting with the Library of America, the Poetry Foundation, the St. Joe County Public Library, and on campus, the Creative Writing Program, the Jose E. Fernandez Hispanic Caribbean Studies Initiative, the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, the Initiative on Race and Resilience, and the Center for Social Concerns, and you'll find our roster of private benefactors on the last page of your program. The two poets we're presenting today, I'm happy to report have long standing ties to Letras Latinas. My affiliation with one of them predates my time at Notre Dame. The year was 2000, when I found myself at Chamartín train station in the north of Madrid. I was there to pick up Rigoberto González, who was spending a few days in the Spanish capital before traveling south. He'd recently completed the manuscript of poems that would become Other Fugitives and Other Strangers during his month long stint in Andalucía on a bus. On a writing residency, he would work on Butterfly Boy, Memories of a Chicano Mariposa, his award winning memoir. To date, Rigoberto Gonzalez has authored teen books, About ten years ago, he accepted our commission to write a lecture on the state. of Latino poetry. And he delivered that lecture at the Library of Congress in Washington, D. C. A few years later, he wrote, at our behest, an essay that became this artisan chat book. A gorgeous, sprawling reflection of On six folios of ekphrastic poetry published in six literary journals, including the March 2016 issue, of Poetry Magazine. The poems in question were all responding to the Smithsonian American Art Museum's multi year traveling exhibit, Our America, the Latino Presence in American Art. One of my favorite memories of Richard Blanco was when, in early 2008, he made the trip from Miami to the Society of Four Arts on the occasion of a Letras Latinas multi author book tour to promote this anthology. Later, Richard read from this volume at Hugo House in Seattle. He would eventually make his way to Notre Dame for both a reading and an oral history interview. Unfortunately for the latter, his lapel mic malfunctioned, so one has to lean in to hear precisely what he's saying. Thankfully, poet Emma Trellis, who you can read about in your program, Conducted a new and, dare I say, tell all interview with Richard this afternoon, and who will be introducing him in a moment. A few years into our friendship, unprompted, Richard sent me, a lovely pocket journal with a handwritten note. Expressing gratitude. That's Richard. Before we hear from Emma, I'd like to invite to the podium a very special guest. She is both an artist in her own right, as you can read in your program, and also a representative of the Library of America. these last several months, since she assumed her post as the Latino Poetry Fellow at the Library of America, she has been a delight to work with in devising ways to amplify the groundbreaking anthology we are celebrating today, in addition to Letras Latinas 20th anniversary. Please join me in giving a Notre Dame welcome to Susana Platz Pinella. Thank you so much Francisco and Letras Latinas for having me to the Institute of Latino Studies. I'm really honored to be here. I'm the Latino Poetry Project fellow at the Library of America and I'm going to briefly talk about that in a second, but I'll just speak a little on the Library of America. so founded in 1982, Library of America is a non profit organization dedicated to publishing great American writing. in authoritative editions, prioritizing authorial intention through careful scholarship and research. Library of America editions encompass all periods and genres, collected works of seminal authors, anthologies, acknowledged classics, neglected masterpieces, and historically important documents and texts. showcasing the variety of American literature. the Library of America seeks to redefine and expand the boundaries of what we consider an American literary canon. today, in addition to celebrating the new and selected poems of these two brilliant poets, Richard Blanco and Rigoberta Gonzalez, We're also celebrating the monumental collection of Latino poetry put together with brilliance and care by Rigoberto. Spanning five centuries and featuring the work of over 180 poets, Latino Poetry the Library of America Anthology is the first comprehensive collection of Latino poetry of this size and breadth. It offers a full picture of the multifaceted, multilingual, Continually evolving poetic contributions of the Latin American diaspora, starting with poems documenting first encounters between indigenous people and settlers on this continent, to the contributions of monumental revolutionary figures in exile in the 19th century, such as Lola Rodríguez de Tío and José Martí, to paradigmatic texts of mid 20th century movements, aesthetic and political. Essential contributions from the Chicano movement, the Fresno School, Nuyorican poets, as well as songs, corridos, contemporary lyric, and experimental poetry. Something that I think is really special about the anthology is that 140 of those poets, are living and writing today. as an extension of the books that Library of America publishes, we also support a wide range of free public programs that bring these books into people's lives and communities. Where they can take on a new cultural life. So this collection is the centerpiece of a national public humanities initiative supported by the NEH called Latino Poetry Places We Call Home and it includes events around the country ranging from launch events at major festivals like the Miami Book Fair which both Richard and Rigoberto will be at to intimate library discussion groups as well as an online media archive featuring readings and interviews by poets such as Ada Limon, Brandon Somm. Richard, Rigoberto, and many others. you can learn more about this project and these events and the book at latinopoetry. org. thank you so much. In addition to today's event, which is a partnership with Library America, Letras Latinas will be doing one at the Folger Library, next month, and we'll also be doing one next April at the Martin Luther King Jr. Library in downtown Washington, DC, among others. I now want to invite to the podium the person who will be introducing our first reader. I've known Emma since 2008. She was at that reading in Palm Beach, Florida as well. Emma is the winner of the Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize. She also was instrumental in our Pintura Palabra initiative where she taught one of the ekphrastic workshops. at Florida International University in 2014. Please join me in welcoming Emma Treyes. Thank you Francisco and thank you all for your presence tonight. It's a pleasure to be here to celebrate the art of language and the enormous contributions Letras Latinas and Latine poets have made to it. I've been asked to introduce Richard Blanco in a way that speaks to his poetry and his personhood. I'm delighted to do this because I've known Rick now for more than 25 years and I've watched him grow as an artist and as a generous human who's always given back to our communities in ways that elevate poems and the poets who make them so both feel as necessary as sleeping or breathing. In her essay, Poetry is Not a Luxury. Audre Lorde, writes that the quality of light by which we document our lives has a direct bearing on the way we change and shape them. Richard illuminates many fractals of the Latinx experience through his own work and by amplifying the poems of others in myriad ways. Decades worth of writing, teaching, reading, sharing, publishing, and more. His light is an abundant one, and it centers on creativity as a conduit for recognizing our shared humanity. The first time I laid eyes on Richard was also the first time I heard him read, and it was at a Barnes Noble. In a Miami mall, the kind with, bad fluorescent lighting and indoor ferns where young poets had gathered nervously to share our work. His reading was quiet understated and vulnerable, I like to remember that he read a poem about his mother shopping for produce and how beautiful she looked holding grapes that he likened. to dusted rubies. But the truth is, I don't know if that was the poem he read. My memory has shaped that time similarly to how we mostly write poetry. Even at the very beginning of his own artistic trajectory, Richard's poems were complete. and authentic, true to his humble beginnings as an outsider in a working class immigrant family, and true to the visual heartbeat in all of his writing, the image. I didn't realize it back then, but in that Miami mall, he inspired me to begin cultivating that fledgling aesthetic in my own writing. To consider poems as documentary, how they are also films. Or photographs constructed from the presence. and absence of language, and to understand that poetics can be a method of preservation, of remembering what matters and what it means to be alive. I'm grateful to him for this, and for so much more. I ask you to join me in welcoming a poet who I've long admired, and a dear friend who is also my family, Richard Blanco. Ah, Emma, thank you so much. There's so many beautiful moments and memories. thank you everyone, it's an honor and pleasure to be with all of you here today. Thanks to, Francisco, Letras Latinas, the Institute, everyone responsible for putting together this wonderful gathering. I'm just going to read, from my most recent book, Homeland of My Body. which is a new and selected, volume. and so I'm going to share just for some context, maybe some artistic historical context, one of the earlier poems, which I think touches on my main question throughout my entire body of work, which is that proverbial question of home. And all that calls into mind with respect to family, community, culture, identity, just a brief background on this first poem. I had, traveled, trying to find that answer to that proverbial question of home. I lived in several countries, several cities and traveled extensively. eventually, I fell upon this quote by Pascal that says that, the sole cause of a man's unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room. And so I thought, what is that figurative room that I left? Has this search for home been a wild goose chase? I moved back to Miami, which is where I was raised, thinking this is the only place that understands me, this world, between two worlds, between the Cuba and the America S. moved there, thought I was just going to pop right back in as it was home. And, this is what happened on one of these trips to one of my, locale, taking that proverbial trip down memory lane to a place I used to vacation with my parents. Since I was a kid into my 20s. Looking for the Gulf Motel, Marco Island, Florida. There should be nothing here I don't remember. The Gulf Motel with mermaid lampposts and ship's wheel in the lobby should still be rising out of the sand like a cake decoration. My brother and I should still be pretending we don't know our parents, embarrassing us. As they roll the luggage cart past the front desk, loaded with our scruffy suitcases, two dozen loaves of Cuban bread, brown bags bulging with enough mangoes to last the entire week, our espresso pot, the pressure cooker, and a pork roast through the marble lobby. All because we can't afford to eat out, mijo. Only two hours from my home in Miami but far enough away to be thrilled by the wider sands on the west coast of Florida where I should still be, for the first time, watching the sun set instead of rise over the ocean. My mother should still be in the kitchenette of the golf motel, her Daisy Sanders from Kmart still squeaking across the linoleum, still gorgeous in her teal swimsuit and amber earrings stirring a pot of Roscompoyo. Adding sprinkles of onion powder and dollops of tomato sauce. My father should still be in a terrycloth jacket, smoking, clinking a glass of amber whiskey in the sunset at the golf motel, watching us dive into the pool. Two sons he'll never see grow into men who will be proud of him. My brother and I should still be playing Parcheesi. My father should still be alive, slow dancing with my mother. On the sliding glass balcony of the Gulf Motel, no music, only the waves keeping time, a song only their minds hear, 10, 000 nights back to their life in Cuba, my mother's face should still be resting against his bare chest like the moon resting on the sea, and the stars should still be turning around them, My brother should still be 13, sneaking rum in the bathroom and sculpting naked women from sand. And I should still be 8 years old, dazzled by seashells and how many seconds I can hold my breath underwater. But I'm not. I'm 38. Driving up Collier Boulevard, looking for the golf motel, for everything that should still be, but isn't. I want to blame the condos, for ruining the beach in my past. I want to chase the snowbirds away with their tacky mansions and yachts. I want to turn the golf courses back into mangroves. I want to find the golf motel exactly as it was and pretend for a moment nothing lost. is lost. So, a couple of the new poems, from the new and collected. where I'm on the space of home now, after so many iterations and hopes and disillusionments after so many dead ends and happy moments I'm realizing that I've never lost a home, that all the homes exist in me they're all part of my psyche. They're all part of who I am. this is where the title comes from the collection homeland of my body, that it's all in me. there's a lot more going on in the book, but I also realized that in a way, language itself is a kind of home, Art itself is a kind of home, poetry of course is a kind of home, and this poem is a very early childhood poem, that moment where I think I found language for the first time where I would become conscious of language, of abstract language, and it was centered around, this narrative of, that happened, the splintering, as a boy, I was all body. My body part of all that was. My ears were the wind, my cheeks heard. My mouth the thunder that roared in my chest. My face in the face of rain puddles clopped in my palms. My lips the wet petals my nose kissed. And I blindly saw the stars as my eyes. Luring me that night to climb up our backyard mango tree. It's trunk, the will of my spine, my arms, every branch's arms, coddling the wind. It's bark, the thick flesh of my hands, Needled with splinters when I fell into my mother's terrifle cries. I, the Omeo, I couldn't grasp her urgency. Why she had to tenderly soak my hands. As if I was some hurt animal she had to heal. Why she spent hours pulling out every splinter with her tweezers, a surgeon operating on me in her housecoat and terrycloth slippers. Why her teary words, It's okay, just a few more mil. You could have died. Died? I knew nothing of dying. Then she kissed the last bead of blood on my finger and said, I love you. Te quiero. Meaning, what she'd love forever was more than my body. Which suddenly split from me. Into abstract breaths in the mouth of my mind, for the first time saying to itself death, joy, loss, saying, I love you too, Mama. I think I'll end with this poem, Brevity is not the soul of any Cuban's wit. So my poems tend to be longer. in this process of reexamining home, I ended up moving part time back to Miami, living three blocks away from where I wrote my first book. And so that does things to you. in part, this is one of those reexamining those beach scapes. So seascapes are still part of my psyche, but also, This is a little bit of a, other Genesis as well, as many stories start, I heard on NPR, there is, a discussion about when Moses is called, by God, by the burning bush, that he says, here I am. Instead of I am here, and the semantics of that, was really interesting in the discussion, which is if you place the I first, the ego comes first, But if you say here I am, the implication is that the ego comes second, that I'm answering the call without even knowing what I'm being asked to do. and so for me, my burning bush is is the beach, is that landscape, it's my God, it's where I go to think try to connect with the divine. this is no political complication. I know we're in a time now, but this is really just about language. the Hebrew word for here I am is Hineni. God of these waves, gracious hands anointing my feet, Hineni, here I am again. Trudging along the shore with the sins of my greed for love, sins of my gluttony for a homeland, sins of my wrath against myself. Hineni. Here I am. Again. Asking the ebb to wash my guilt back into the depths of forgiveness. God of these salt latent breaths, these breezes. Hineni. Here I am. Again breathing their balm into my body of hurt. That I might heal, exhale words to ease this world's aching. God of these devout seagulls peering into our everyday eternity, inscribed in you across the pale blue of the sky's vellum, Hineni, here I am again. Reading the clouds ellipses, following their drift into glimpses of a divinity I must divine. God of the infinite possibilities of sand, I was sculpted from Hineni. Here I am, again, and infinitely, a boy. With bucket and shovel, still wanting to sculpt something almighty out of the sparkly grains of myself. Something sacred. They can't be washed away, something eternal, God of the sunset's tangerine eye, burning holy between eyelids of sky and sea, Hineni, here I am, again, called by your gaze, to ask once again, what would you have me do with this undone life? Thank you, Richard. Another of Letras Latinas mission is to enrich the education of our students, including our graduate students, and whenever there's an opportunity to provide an occasion for graduate students to, introduce our featured poets, we do that. So I want to invite to the podium Emiliano Gomez, who is a MFA candidate. In poetry, please join me in welcoming him. Once upon a time there was a soldier, Who marched to Mictlan in his soldier boots, And every step was a soldier's step, And every breath was a soldier word. Do you know what this soldier said? So flows the march of his unpeopled Eden, This Rigoberto Tempo of Gonzales special. Gosh, this guy's not gonna talk like this the whole time now. Or is he? Dizzy little thing called language. Pain is rarely so written, but here it's rewritten and rewritten as a queer taboo. Trauma's some. A patriarchal death cult. Trauma's son. On atrocity street. Everywhere, USA. Unpeopled Eden is one of seven, parenthetical showbook, here collected. Black Blossoms intonates inquiry. Its syllabics swell through sweltering erotics. This poet's soft tongue lapping up the often unbearable but rarely barren. Other fugitives kinkily and desperately demands, good boy. Decades later, dispatch answers. Confident. Butterfly. I am taken with this collection. Paul Valéry, the Ralph Lauren of criticism, expounded, Poetry forces poetic feeling into poetry. It makes you want to make. Po, the inventor of criticism, expounded, Respond to art with art. Voila. Quista. Like so. The boy who was knight is the only son holy. El hijo santísimo. A trove of pearls, pearl clutchers, secrets, suicides. Missing fathers. I'm simpatico. To know death divine. Is it an allegro? No. A dirge? No. It is a beauty who sips tea, made from flakes of gold. Still not quite. An architecture of abandonment? Yes. don't forget it's also the inverted nipple. A sense of humor, be blessed. In face of slaves and fury and fallen fruit, Rigoberto sings these songs as a one man ensemble. I wrote this under a full moon. St. Joseph's Lake was baby indigo, and water bugs rebounded ripples. I wrote this a recent yesterday, that's memory, a recent yesterday. Rigoberto's twisting yesterdays, avant garde and the formalists at large may snap and nod, is both spiraling and sparse. It sees shadows twitch, the brain heart hold, and a fever love. Its pains flow where joy has stopped. As poetry unclogs, he makes his pains as bright as a bright boy can be. Gleefully join me in welcoming a G, the poet, Rigoberto González. Juan Francisco was, mentioning Spain. There's so many wonderful memories, strange memories, but one of the ones that I cannot shake is that he invited me to go see a play. Dónde estás? Oh there, you remember that play? it was the first time I encountered all the range of accents from Spain. So I could understand maybe one or two of the actors. And it was like a long play and it seemed like everybody was having a great time. It was a funny play and I just sat there wow. La Pelona is Bird Woman and La Pelona is the nickname that Frida Kahlo had for death. Tonight I dare to crawl beneath the sheets to be nailed down around me, waiting for my lover. She who enters without knocking. She who will unstitch my every seam along my thigh. My side, my armpit, she who carves a heart out of the heart and drops it down her throat. Sweet surrender this, slow death in sleep as I dream the love making its autopsy. How else will I be hers completely? Be her treasure box, I said. A trove of pearls and stones, the ding of coins cascading through her fingers. The bird over his shoulder, not a parrot but an owl, to be my mirror when I close my eyes and shape a moon white bowl out of my face where she can wash the hooks of her caress. Still with water, I'm one more thing to penetrate, I'm one more spill of secrets on the floor. A puddle glowing green, she doesn't have to be a sleuth to see I've taken all the antifreeze. A puddle thick with red shall kneel next to my wounds and pray for me, a string of pigeon skulls her rosary. By dawn our bone Pieta breaks out of its shadow, unleashes its cicada cry. My daughters drag their bodies, bruised as bats, out to the light and burst into flames like miracles. The crows will leap down from the trees to pick them clean, and my beloved bride, beloved wife will laugh until it hurts her teeth. It's the feather of her tongue, eleventh finger, I recall, and not the catheter, while the priest recites his holy dribble and the churchyard workers take a leak. My sons hold up their chins with pride, that they have done their part to hide my suicide. They clip my fingertips to lose the track back to my prints. But my beloved knows She crouches on the highest branch And drops an egg that cracks my coffin Concussion light squirms through And I'm in heaven once again Those times we screwed Like hen and rooster I, the squawking chicken Blacking out And she, that hammering cock This next poem was commissioned by Ida Limon for MoMA. And she was very classy about it because, we could go to the museum and pick any of the paintings. I just happened to pick the one that she had picked, and, she withdrew her poem and probably wrote another brilliant one. this is, Xolo's Quintin, after Rufino Tamayo's Animals, and the other thing you should know is that my grandmother is Puerpecha. Xolo's Quintin, after Rufino Tamayo's Animals. Or in my grandmother's tongue, Wee choo wee cha. Or does it matter? The bite is just as cruel. I would know. I stood safely behind the gate with the family dogs at my side. Pepe so hairy and loud, Pina so small but vicious. When the boys who pestered me at school walked by, I threatened to let the dogs out. The boys laughed at my sudden courage. Me, flanked by these nervous animals whom I had not seen attack anyone. Not even my uncle, the man who stuffed their puppies in a sack. The log struck, and then the night grew quiet without the whimpering. Pepe and Pina became even angrier after that. Barking at passers by with such force, my mother was certain that one of these days the dogs would lunge from the roof and tear a body apart. I began to imagine canine teeth sinking into flesh, a fountain of blood and a fountain of tears, cartoonish yet horrifying, like Ohokanika's fake eye. How at birthday parties he would grant a boy's wish and place the eye on top of a slice of cake. The children cackled while the old man looked sullen, resigned to the truth that this was the only reason he was ever invited. Oh, the aches of my childhood. Here is how to pluck a man's dignity and pretend it's all in fun. And here is how to tell a boy who made me touch him that I like him too. With the hook of my finger, I opened the gate's latch. I'm gonna keep it at three palms. Otherwise, Richard's gonna talk. Behind my back, he read four and I read three. this was a poem that was, commissioned. I don't do commissions for my friends, and this is why, I write the poem, and then they tell me they censored it, because they had to read in public. this was my friend's, wedding, and he asked me for a poem. So I wrote this poem. then he said, I had to take a couple of words out. I was like, why did, why do you do that? It's my mom was in the audience. She was in front. what do you want me to do? So I'll read this and end with this. It's called Two Widowers from Aguascalientes. in Aguascalientes, the people are called hidrocálidos. Not so strange. there's a certain speech, idiosyncrasy, in certain rural areas in the South. adding an apostrophe N. they would say, for example, Guadalajara, puesn. Not so strange at all this queer arrangement between two hidrocálidos who lost their wives. Neighbors, puesn. Guava farmers, both. Don Artemio's mustache matches a seagull's silhouette of hair connecting Don Lucho's collarbones. none of us had ever seen their spouses when they were supposedly alive. Gossips claim the graves are empty, though some swear the men have cried before their crosses, and others say that's where they buried their beloved horses, a stallion and a strawberry roan that, like their masters, never trotted out alone. Who could blame the men for grieving such losses? If the priest did not object to holy burial, pray your outrage apse. On Saturdays, the men run side by, ride side by side on the guava truck, Don Lucho takes the wheel, Don Artemio tips his leather stetson, the load of guavas in the back blows kisses from the road. Nuns grind the seeds and stir the powder into milk to induce erotic dreams, I think. What do you think? Nah, I'll just pluck the fruit off the trees. Save a few to make my pulque, a real working man's drink. I don't judge and I don't say, and even if I catch a glimpse of Don Artemio feeding guava slices to Don Lucho. Men without wives still long for tenderness in their lives. The lesson in Aguas Calientes is that the heart's the center of everything. The guava, the mouth, the bites it, the palm of a man's hand wiping juice off another man's chin. Call it sin, I'd call it Eden if it hadn't lasted, this paradise made complete when two widowers placed their empty beds together. When I conceptualized tonight's program, I was inspired by what took place last April between Ada Limon Carmen Jiménez and Heidi Anderes, I asked Rigoberto and Richard to read each other's new and selected poems and select two poems for the other person to read. So we're going to hear Rigoberto read two poems, we're going to hear Richard read two poems, but they were selected by the other poet. Then they're gonna ask each other some questions and our moderator for the next segment will be Susanna. Are the mic's on? yeah. No, that's not what I'm asking. Okay. So is Susan, can you hear me go? Alright. You are so hateful. You know why Because you pick the only poem that has a typo. Shows you what a good proofreader I am, right? No, I didn't notice that until I read it out loud. I realized that's my fault because they give you so many times to look at the work and it works and nobody notices, I just say, you know what, I'm just going to be transparent about it. So there's a line in here that says heavy heats first, it's supposed to be heavy hearts, but it works as heats. Yeah, there we go. but I didn't come up with it, so I'm not going to read that. Anyway, I'm going to read it as hearts, if I remember. Stars breaking. We've always been violent towards stars. As children, stick in hand, we strike at the piñata in the dark. Our cousins guide near misses with screams. Our mothers suck in their tongues in fear that we might club the neighbor's son and knock him to the hospital again. The way one random swing fine in his head did last year. But not even a bleeding ear or a bandage the color of crushed plums could stop us from sharpening the seven tasseled cones and raising yet another star up, that plump bellied sacrifice waiting for the rib shattering blow that throws its contents out, heavy hearts first. These rewards are enough to pacify the savages in all of us, and no skull cracking or tearing open of skin as easily as pink tissue thin paper Can keep the stars from hanging or us from the inflicted wound and victorious unhooking. This doesn't keep you up anymore, Abuelo, bedridden, broken boned, and outnumbered by a riot of children shrieking like witches on the patio. Last week you fell off a horse. Tonight that horse was galloping without you. Even from that there was a lesson to be learned. You said we are only mass, becoming heavier with age, until nothing can endure the clefts of our wrinkles, the thickness of our calluses and toes. Listening to the posada in your sleep, what, abuelo, can you make me understand from that? Unafraid to hear a clay and paper star break open like a peanut shell between our back teeth. We've always known those stars are loose like overcoat buttons. They are the elbow scabs. They're the eye put out by the firecracker. One of the firecracker's sudden eyes. They're the glass of the soon blown fuse. They're decapitations of the guillotine, destined long ago to come tumbling down. Piñata stars teach us the valuable lesson of defeat. The lesson of the fall into the dark and how we each follow that identical path. They show us not to be disappointed by our loss of strength or by our separation from the sky. We are as temporary as these piñata stars, which masquerade their mortality with three shades of gold, that like the crowns of your two front teeth, abuelo, will glitter to the very end. Until that instant when sound overthrows light, when the blindfold becomes a permanent one, and the cries become distance as moons or stars. Stars because they float above you, because you don't need to see them to know they're no longer part of what you are. my question is, as we develop them, so it starts breaking. So family, obviously figures prominently, and most poets work for obvious reasons, right? but for Latino and queer and immigrant, migrant exile poets like us, that goes double at times. In Stars Breaking, you render a beautifully haunting, blatantly honest, and multivaliant portrayal of Abuelo. Though the poem is fairly straightforward, can you tell us a little bit more about your Abuelo's life, or a witness of his life, how it affected your own? What were those valuable lessons of defeat that you note in the poem, and more specifically, how did Abuelo and other male figures, or even the absence of them, shape your manhood, your queerhood, your Latin y hood, and all their intersections? Yeah. it's one of the rare times that I write about my mother's father. Usually I write about my father's father who raised me. But my mother's father was always a blurry figure. He was very religious, everybody went to church on Sundays. He would go to church on Wednesdays because it was very private for him, his relationship to God and his faith. I appreciated that intimacy. that sense of taking ownership of manhood as the vulnerability was very private. He was never vulnerable in public, So I think that's why he wanted to go to church. And I've only saw him cry once and that was after my mother died. It was the only time I saw my grandfather cry. one of the things I remember about him is that he was very quiet, very reserved, very gentle. But he was always very willing to. be present. He showed up to everything. He showed up to everybody's school graduations, looked like he had just come down from the mountain, that's fine. We accepted that. even those fleeting moments of vulnerability, knowing that he had a private relationship to God that we weren't privy to, and also that moment of hearing him cry. he didn't know that I was witnessing that because he went up, we had a, He had his house and in the back we kept like the pigs and the goats I was out there away from the fuss down the house and he went out there to cry privately. So he didn't know idea that I was there and he cried and I felt even though he didn't know that I was there, that I had somehow been invited to this moment of vulnerability and that's how I always remember him and I always see them. And and the other thing that I associate him with, because even when he had Alzheimer's towards the end of his life, he kept telling the same story that he fell off a horse. And this is before the poem was written way before that. and it seemed I tapped into the one moment that for him defined not only that vulnerability but also that strength. And so I began to see that crying where the pigs die. as not only a show of vulnerability, but a show of strength because he allowed himself, to, to express that even though he didn't know there was being Britness. I fell off a horse was not only I failed as a horse rider, but I survived it. that's what I connect with. maybe I connected with the poem on another level with male figures in my family to make me think about that like my father. It was like a piece of furniture in the sense of, but he was there, like he was always there. it was this, he wouldn't show vulnerability, but there was a tenderness in showing up. And now Richard's going to read Mania at Miami. I split my time recently between Maine and Miami. Native Miami, maniac Miami, the soft heart of snowfall plucking through my pine trees lulls me to peace and yet I still hear the bongo of thunderstorms wrapping on the rooftop of my queer childhood, dancing to the rage of clouds raining away my sorrow. Soon the snow will melt silently into the gurgles of my creek, even as my grandmother's voice remains frozen in my ears. Each time she'd call me a sissy. It also praised me as her best friend. I marvel over spring's abracadabra Every time the lilac blooms appear Only to disappear back into my grandfather's tobacco smoke Exhaling nostalgic stories about his lost Cuba Inhaling the scent of his jasmine tree flowering the night With its tiny perfumed stars Despite the stars Peeking through the lavender clouds Swaddling the mountain peaks In my window at sunset, I rise, To the sun of my youth rising over the sea, After a night's sleep on a bed of sand, Dreaming of dreading who I'd become, or wouldn't, Though I grew courageous enough to marry a man, Who only loves me in English. Darling, sweetheart, honey, I love him in my Spanish, whispered in his ears as he slept. Amorcito, tesoro, mi cielo. After all the meatloaves and blueberry pies we've baked in our kitchen, I still sit down to the memories of my mother's table. Savor my loss of her garlicky fricassee de pollo and coconut flan. No matter how tastefully my throw pillows perfectly match, my knickknacks and art on the walls. It all falls apart, sometimes, just as I do, until I remember to be the boy I was, playing alone with his Legos in the family room, still enchanted by the joy of his sheer self and his creations. mortal as the life I've made here. I just love grandparents poems. I don't know what it is about, but, this poem works beautifully as a series of bridges between contrasting energies, locations, Maine, Miami, languages, English, Spanish, timelines, past, present cultures, American, Cuban, but it's the emotional journey of the poem that draws me in. The tough love of the grandmother, the bittersweetness of memory and nostalgia for places and people. That might also be hostile to the queer speaker. For this speaker, what is the bridge between queerness and acculturation? Yeah, and we talked a little bit about this afternoon. the bridge has been my grandmother in some ways. when I first started to write about my queerness. I hadn't found a way into it. I didn't understand what story I wanted to tell. I am a gay man. So what, right? Every human being has a distinct story, including a gay man. my grandmother's tough love. became a way to discuss that, or I should say a way to, something to explore, and thinking about a lot of layers that intersected with my culture and what I came to think of as cultural sexuality, This idea that those two things are intertwined. and that my sexuality in a way has to do with my longing for home and all the family poems so that place of belonging as well in terms of safe space, in terms of community, in terms of a supportive environment. what I figured out is that, and I allude to, but there's many more poems about grandma and she's in the memoir, Or as she said, that would call me a sissy and my best friend. And that was one of the most complex, relationships that I had. through the writing, I realized that it was the one person that loved me most and hated me most. and that's a really complex thing to take in. She was also very xenophobic, so anything that was too American, she also lumped into being queer. Oatmeal was queer. she factors into that formula of home, sexuality, she just became the force to tell my story as a gay Cuban man. Thank you for these contrasting grandparent poems. now Rigoberto, Casa. This was inspired by a book called Exiles in Eden by Paul Reyes. this took place in Florida, during the housing, bubble burst down in Florida where all these people were given, the banks gave them loans to buy houses, and then nobody could afford to keep up the payments, so all these houses were repossessed. So Paul, when he was in college, he went home for the summer job and his father's task was to clean out homes that were foreclosed. one of the interesting features about these homes is that when people lost their homes, they just walked out. they would not take anything. that's it. Because they lost their home, so they lost, their soul. And so then they just, even the family photographs, it was just people would just walk out. they had lost it. So that's it. was the most bizarre and sadly moving thing. And this is in the point of view of the house. I am not your mother. I will not be moved by the grief or gratitude of men who weep like orphans at my door. I am not a church. I do not answer prayers, but I never turned them down. Come in and kneel or sit or stand. The burden of your weight won't lessen, no matter the length of your admission. Tell me anything you want. I have to listen, but don't expect me to respond. When you tell me you have lost your job or that your wife has found another love, or that your children took their laughter to another town, you feel alone and empty? Color me surprised. I didn't notice they were gone. Despite the row of faces pinned like metals to my walls, I didn't earn them. The scratches on the wood are not my scars. Either the smell of spices in the air, blame the trickery of kitchens, or your sad addiction to the yesterdays that never keep, no matter how much you believe they will. I am not a time capsule. I do not value pity things like locks of hair and milk teeth and ticket stubs and promise rings, mere particles of dust I'd blow out to the street if I could sneeze. Take your high school jersey and your woman's wedding dress away from me. Sentimental hoarding bothers me. So off with you, old couch that cries in coins as it gets dragged out to the porch. Farewell, cold bed that breaks its bones in protest to eviction or foreclosure, or whatever launched this grim parade of exits. I'm not a pet. I do not feel abandonment. Sometimes I don't even see you come or go or stay behind. My windows are your eyes, not mine. If you should die inside me, I'll leave it up to you to tell the neighbors. Shut the heaters off, I do not fear the cold. I'm not the one who shrinks into the corner of the floor because whatever made you think this was a home with warmth isn't here to sweet talk anymore. Don't look at me that way, I'm not to blame. I granted nothing to the immigrant or exile. That I didn't give the border crosser or the native born. I'm not a prize or a wish come true. I'm not a fairy tale castle, though I used to be, In some distant land inhabited by dreamers now extinct. Who knows what happened there? good riddance, grotesque fantasy and mirth. So chintz. Take care, you fool, and don't forget that I am just a house, a structure without soul, for those whose patron saints are longing and despair. I can see why I love that. I'm forever amazed by the capacity of persona and personification poems like this to explore and interpret, themes like home that are often so cliched or just overworn in some ways. I love this poem in that sense of the perspective it offers. it's masterful. it's from the fourth collection, I believe for the Unpeopled Eden, which is roughly halfway, between your first book and the new poems of the volume. And as you can rightfully imagine, I'm curious where you stood, emotionally, psychologically, on the matter of home, when this poem was written. What led you up to this poem and what happened since that poem with respect to home, tu casa? I think it's in the second book, Black Blossoms, I wrote the line, and it's about the death of one's mother. And it said, the woman next to you is the place of your birth. And so this book on people leading is actually written after the death of my father, which was a very different kind of loss. And so I think that's why this poem found its way into that collection, because it was a loss, that I was trying to reconcile, for another complicated figure in my life, my father, after the death of my mother at 12, I was 12, and then at the age of 13, my father just left and began a different life for the different family. And so that, and I never forgave him for that abandonment, even though he tried many times to reconcile. when he died, I thought, that conversation not only didn't never get started, it's never gonna end now, it's left suspended. And so that's where psychologically, emotionally, that's where it was. so what happens to the spaces left behind when the bodies. the memories, the people are gone. if in the line I mentioned earlier, the woman next to you was the place of your birth. I thought, what is then my father in this sense? Is that another place in my birth? I thought, it's, it certainly is the place of my awareness of life. The place of my awareness of who I am. The mother too, but the father was very different There's nothing like knowing that there is this person, with the abuela, that once they see you, you begin to see yourself through their eyes as well, which can be both damaging and hurtful. But it could also be a wonderful thing when they express love and say, what is it that this person loves about me? What do they appreciate about me? But also, what is it that they dislike about me? And then you begin to adopt the same kind of relationships with yourself. the loss of that then means, what do I do with all that? Because now I don't have anybody looking at me that same way. The house is empty. When you started that anecdote it's like coming all together. How do you feel like you find that when you write from the perspective of not a human, how do you feel like that voice comes into shape? I usually don't. And that was the first book that I did. And there was, I think there's two poems in there. But that prepared me for, the next book, because I thought, okay, the first book is about the border and my family. the second book is all men. The third book is all women. And then there's my father, and I thought, what happens after I'm people leading? I said, let me then write about the elements. Let me then write about things. the last book, which I'm forgetting the title. Oh! What's the title of my last book? The last book? The Book of Ruin. Thank you. Oh, that's embarrassing. Bye. Bye. In that book. it's, it's so many persona because I was finally woke because it's a book of ghosts. That's what it's when you told the anecdote about your grandfather and the horse, like I had actually thought that was Aama reference.'cause there's that Oh yeah. There's that fall and the horse Ghost. and the blurb mentions Pedro Paramo You're right. it's very, yeah. do you want to read, The Island Within? Oh, yes, that's right. I was just getting lost. Ruth, right? It's a poem dedicated to a dear friend of mine. Who is, an ethnographer, cultural anthropologist, and, Cuban Jewish, poet, she's brilliant, I think there's ten of her, because there's a new book, every three days, long standing relationship, as, friends, as colleagues, as artists, as Cubans, The Island Within for Ruth Behar. I am still thinking about your porch light, like a full moon casting a foggy halo in the frigid air last night. The bare oaks branching into the sky like nerve endings, inches away from the frozen stars. The pink gables of your Victorian home protesting yet another winter for you, captive in Ann Arbor. As you practice Mambo by the fireplace, I'm following your red velvet shoes to conga beats and bongo taps, taking your body, from the snow mantling your windows outside, 1, 600 miles away from Cuba. I'm tasting the cafecito you made, the slice of homemade flan floating in burnt sugar. Like the stories you told me you can't finish writing. No matter how many times you travel through time back to Havana to steal every memory ever stolen from you. Wanting only to imagine faces for names chiseled on the graves. Of your family at Guanabacoa. Walk on Calle Aguacate and pretend to meet the grandfather you never met at his lace shop for lunch. Or pray the Kaddish like your mother at the synagogue in El Vedado. Stand on the steps there like you once did in a photo you can't remember taking. Still trying to reach that unreachable island within the island you still call home. I thought I was done with Cuba. Tired of filling in the blanks. But now I'm not sure. Maybe if I return just once more. Walk the sugar cane fields my father once cut. Drive down the road where my mother once peddled guavas to pay for textbooks. Sit on the porch of my grandmother's house. Imagine her still in the kitchen making arroz con leche. Maybe then I'll have an answer for you. Last night, when you asked me, would you move to Cuba? Would you die there? the conversation between Cuba and Exiles is so unique that only they can truly understand the premise that an island 90 miles away from the Florida coast is unreachable. Distance is also measured by the years of separation, the aging self, the fading memories, the time spent living with the feeling of loss and longing for home. The starting question at the end of the poem is charged with implications because it's challenging the speaker to consider. If healing or reconciliation is impossible anymore, reentering is not the same as returning. How can Cuban poets sustain such nuanced conversations during this period of divisiveness and simplistic assumptions made about Cuban exiles, Cuban Americans, and their participation in Florida politics? I've been thinking about that one for a while. I'm not sure I could answer all of that, but I could have some thoughts that float around a lot of that. one of the things is, I think when you mentioned saying specifically Cuban poets, right? And I think when you say that, it's also obviously our generation, right? So I think. that's always been a job of ours, to mediate, to find the nuances, to, celebrate our culture, but then also push back against it, to be educators of our elders in some ways, in terms of, shifting some of their positions, right? I'm happy to report, my mother for the first time voted Republican and for a woman, for Hillary Clinton. And so we've opened up that conversation because I think in partly of who I am, and what I do in the world. so anyway, I think that's part of, our roles as poets. one thing about the idea of whether you can come back and go back it comes to mind for me that when Castro died, for years, everybody's waiting for Castro to die, Castro's going to die. Castro's going to die as if the world's going to change. And I remember when it happened, I just felt this sadness, because the next day was Tuesday and nothing changed. all these years of waiting for something that was just mythological, fighting some kind of myth that was so anticlimactic so that was one observation I had where the cycle politics, of what happens, in Miami and not all Cubans, of course. another thing that I've come to think a lot about, is that, I don't know if my therapist told me this once, but it's easier to scream than to cry. I think a lot of the older generation Cubans, it's really hard to accept that loss. They act like they do, but they're not. They keep sweeping it under the nostalgia rug. when Castro dies, we're going back. not dealing with that pain or that loss or accepting it in some ways, all's fair in love and war, somewhat, gets channeled into this politics, gets channeled into screaming, gets channeled into, a falsified, a, also a cognitive dissonance, right? And. those kinds of political stances or this idea, I am not going to Cuba because until that man is dead, he's dead now. It's not that they don't want to go to Cuba because of the politics. To me, there's also, why would you go back to a place where you knew, why would you go back to the Gulf Motel? If you knew it was going to be ruined, or at least it was ruined from the way you remember it. And that kind of, for me, I've seen, and again, being the intermediary of the observer, that kind of, leaks into all these kinds strong stances and political, political stances. And I think we see that also in some other Latinos, but I think in Cubans, you got to mix in this idea of exile too, right? on the one hand, they're super grateful for this country but we're going back. that creates a kind of odd dichotomy. We're part of this country, but not part of this country. then they become one issue voters. It's just who's the person that's going to give us back this Cuba, which is an impossibility. doesn't matter what you think politically, it's just an impossibility. I've been a Cuban. You can't go back to 1958 anywhere, right? I was just telling my mother, the other day, she said something about, no, because in Cuba and like in Cuba, I'm like, mom, it was like that here too in 1958. It has nothing to do with Cuba. Of course the food tasted better or something like that. It was, they weren't, there wasn't GMOs and all this stuff. So I don't know. it's this perpetual, tight rope that they keep on walking, I think my role is to think about those nuances There's so much more. I feel like we can do the same. my husband says, don't press the Cuba button. It's four hours. No, yeah, before moving on to the next section, I was just wondering, because you both, in both your poems, talk about, reconciliation as, an impossibility and a possi and do you feel like the poem is a space that offers that, or is that, an illusion that the poem can, reconcile certain, impossible, feelings? Even in this particular context, or, Yeah, for you in this context, and for Gilberto, for dealing with, the relationships that we can no longer heal after someone has passed, for you, This relationship with Cuba that no longer exists, is the poem a vehicle for that? Or does the poem happen anyway and the grief is there? You were saying that it's when you sweep it under the nostalgia, or you keep it silent, that's another kind of damage, right? Another kind of hurt or wounding. And so even acknowledging, that it's there, that it exists, that even acknowledging that something cannot be fixed at least owns up to that something exists, as opposed to, oh, no, I'm okay, nothing's wrong, which the inside has a very different way of dealing with And so then you hurt yourself. in this poem, I wanted to put Cuba behind, I'm done with Cuba, I can't deal with this anymore. I'll answer, in a related way, I agree, it's reconciliation, but for me it's also about, Accepting the ambiguity of life, right? when we teach portrait, it's really hard for students to live in the ambiguity of something, it's not black or white. it's both portraits, often both, in that way, it's also reconciled but it allows me to be okay with living in a question. because at least I looked at the question, at least I'm understanding the question better by writing a poem. Right. shall we move on to Luis Omar Salinas? Sure. This is from Luis Omar Salinas, and the poem is That My Name Is Omar. I suffer that my name is Omar Salinas, that I want to touch someone in the incredible loneliness of nights. That I frighten away those I should be close to. I suffer when I go crazy and can't love anyone. Whether it is Tuesday or Sunday, I suffer. I suffer a lust for fame and immortality. That I try to commit suicide. That I have compassion for the unfortunate. I suffer the death of matrimony. The death of my mother. The eyes of God. I want to understand this and that and come up with zero. What should I do but walk and look at the lovely sky? And so the reason that I gravitate toward this poem is that, contemporary poetry, we see how poets are negotiating some very difficult subjects. especially younger poets, there's a different, relationship to emotion, to mental health, to, the pains that we are moving through this world, to faith, right? And so Beliso Marcelino was writing at a time where, this is like a poet from the 70s, 80s, that was his heyday, where male poets were not doing this. They were not being vulnerable on the page. going back to the inner question that Richard said, that would question masculinity, that was considered a weakness, which is the reason why I think so many men hurt themselves, because they don't allow themselves to be human, to be vulnerable. And so this is a poet who is doing that on the page Being very upfront, very honest about it, and also give an exact language. he wasn't being cool, he wasn't working with metaphors very clearly says suicide, very clearly says the end of my, because that's something that he suffered through the entire life, was that his marriage didn't work out. And that was the love of his life, and even towards the end of his life, it was something he always, you that he was dealt with. He said that his loneliness because he didn't have the love of his life. So to carry that pain all the way through, and also to write it down, so that now it's I can't remember when he passed away, but here we are still reading about that pain. And so that's an interesting gift to the rest of us. Going back to your question, is there something we can learn from, and can we draw strength from that? Because even though there was a lot of pain for him, there was also a lot of strength. Yeah, I love this poem, and I think what's so striking about it is that it's filled with feeling, but it's unsentimental, his work is unsentimental, Gary Soto said he had, a propensity to deal directly with the facts, and that's really his poems are always like this unmasking, and I feel like your poems are also very filled with feeling, but unsentimental in the same way, I wonder if you have thoughts on like how can one like do that in poetry, say things as they are, I think that's a part of the journey because I think that if I knew how to be more sentimental, I think I would do it. And maybe I'm approaching that. Maybe, in my old age I'll finally get to those poems I want to write. Because at the moment I'm able to write directly in front of that pain. So the advice I give my students is, if you can't write something, directly, then stand on the side and write about it from the periphery you're still approaching it, but you are not blinded by it or the fires that are going to burn you up because you're right in front of it. And is that kind of like where the other voices and characters you think, I think so. Absolutely. Absolutely. Thank you. should we move on to maybe part of Marti How are we doing on time? We're just past 6. 30, Just read the English. speaking about vulnerability. I'll just read the first four, I think. Yep. this is Jose Marti de Versos Sencillos. Monte Flores and gangs. I have seen in the dark night rain on my head the rays of pure light of divine beauty. At birth, I saw on the shoulders of beautiful women and out of the rubble of the earth. Volando las mariposas. I know, in English. It's a great translation. He's so hard to translate. and this is by, Anne Fountain. A sincere man I am, born where the palm trees grow. And long before I die, my soul's verses to bestow. No boundaries bind my heart, I belong to every land. I am art among art, a peak among peaks I stand. I know the exotic names of every flower and leaf. I know of betrayals, claims, and I know of exalted grief. I've seen how beauteous streams flow through the dark of night and descent as radiant beams in a luminous shower of light. As if by wings set free, I've seen women's shoulders rise and beauty emerge from debris in a flight of butterflies. So why did you choose this? very personal reasons. Every Cuban knows this, right? So since you're a little kid, and heaven forbid someone breaks out a bottle of rum and they start singing my D. and I think, obviously I picked it for that. It's just part of my being, and my mother every once in a while would go into one of these verses or one hour or any of my Ds. But in thinking about it for today, I think, One is that this made me realize how, poetry can be part of our lives, and I think culturally different than the way poetry is in America, how my sense of my own poetry and what I want my poetry to do in the world comes from this cultural attachment. I remember the first time I went to Cuba, my cousins were like, you're a poet. And I'm like, yeah. And they break out a bottle of rum and a guitar, and they're like, Come sing, then. what do you mean, sing? And they're improvising decimas, and they're quoting my tea, and Nicolás Guillén, and these are country folks, right? they're not, the idea that poetry is part of the folklore, it's part of life. And yes, there's high poetry and low, they don't look at it that way, they just see it as poetry, right? so that's one thing. And I think in a way that also, what I love about this poem is how, the subject matter itself, It is the common, the things that are accessible to people in beautiful language. But I think what you choose to write about also in a way is a way of being political. And as Sandra Cisneros, I'll paraphrase, said to me one time, I want to write poetry that my bus driver wants to read. and by that, we don't mean broken down, simple, of course there's craft and paying strict attention to the rigors of the art, but the idea being that I want poetry that lives in the very people that I'm writing about. I want it to do both. I want it to live in, I want to win a Pulitzer and I want it to be also my bus driver, my proverbial bus driver as they say. I admire how his work lives again in society. he's an incredibly accomplished poet by all rights, in the history of Latin American literature, I feel he was very intentional in that, in like writing and then to have it be like popular song. Yeah, yeah, I feel like there's, I was just thinking about how he wrote Verso Ciencillos in the Catskills and that felt so resonant to your Maine, yet Miami, Like these like cold landscapes and thinking about, but yeah, and also just like this attachment to like very Beautiful, lyrical, linguish, that's also plain spoken, and also not sentimental, but it's beautiful. Yeah, there's something that's played off by that incredible musicality, so hard. it's just, I've read translations, I'm like, ugh. yeah, no, this is a great translation. Do you feel like because of what you're saying of how he was prevalent, these words were so prevalent, do you feel like Martí was, like, something you put aside as a influence, or do you feel like he was, like, no, I just think that, and maybe this is my bad, I should say also was not an English major, so I don't comment poetry from that angle, but, I was also educated, obviously, in English, my capacity for, really, I have enough with one literary tradition in American, and so I look more to these poets in terms of more of, the cultural connection, but I didn't toss them aside in that sense, frankly it was never put in front of me either, right? but yeah, and so I've studied a little bit of Borges too, and, obviously Neruda. And, I think what I take from them though is that beauty of language that I think I reconstruct in my head in, it tend to be a little at times too Baroque, but, my sensibility of language still comes from that kind of expression in poetry and in family.