The ThinkND Podcast

Letras Latinas, Part 7: A Conversation with Blas Falconer

• Think ND

Share episode

Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.

0:00 | 29:01

Listen in on an oral history conversation with poet Blas Falconer, interviewed by Notre Dame’s Rev. John A. O’Brien College Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures Marisel Moreno, as part of the Letras Latinas Oral History Project. Discover Falconer’s artistic journey from the idyllic Eden of his childhood and the unexpected opportunities of a broken ankle to how he keeps writing and parenting in balance and how teaching feeds a deep appreciation for the work of poetry that becomes a source of inspiration and purpose.

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.
2

My name is Blas Falconer and I live in Los Angeles. I teach in the MFA program at Murray State University and at the University of Southern California. And I'm a poet.

1

Good to have you here, Blaise Falconer. can you tell us about some of your earliest memories of the impact of literature in your life?

2

I think one of the most, influential people in my life was my grandmother From Puerto Rico. she didn't have, much of an education, formal education. She, I think was, finished the sixth grade. She spent most of her life working in a restaurant, but she read a lot. I would often, talk to her about the books that she was reading. She would read poems to me. And explain the devices within the poems and how they were working to, make the point that the poet wanted to make. that stuck with me for a very long time. And probably started my interest in poetry.

1

How old were you

2

I was pretty young. I have this memory of, cause she would be very tired at the end of the day. So she would get into bed and, she would be sitting there reading I would walk past her room, looking in and then walk by again. finally she would call me in and I would get in the bed with her. I was probably eight or nine when I first started doing that.

1

When did you become interested in writing yourself? How did that come about?

2

I wrote a lot when I was 12 13 I would write poems and short stories Then that kind of fell away I stopped doing it for a few years In college, I got back to it. I started taking Lit courses. I, took a poetry, contemporary poetry class and I just wanted to be a part of that poetry community. actually what happened was I was a gymnast and I was, I went from probably writing to dedicating a lot of my time to gymnastics. And I did that for a long time. I went to Penn State and within a few months of getting there, I broke my ankle. I was in bed for a long time. I couldn't really do much. so I started reading again, reading a lot more. that's what piqued my interest again in writing.

1

So that was during college then?

3

Yes.

1

Wow. That's incredible. during that time that you were, doing a lot of reading, can you tell us about some of the, poets or works that became influential For your own work.

2

Sure. The first poet who I really gravitated toward was Lucille Clifton, an African American poet. I loved her voice. I loved, her humor. I loved how she would take biblical figures and reinvent them, speak in their voices. she just seemed so innovative and fresh and fun. when I realized that contemporary poetry could be like that, I started to read more, take more of an interest.

1

Okay. I want to hear in general about the role of poetry in your life. there's a few things you can touch on, I'm interested in hearing, who do you write poetry for? Do you write it for yourself? Do you write it thinking of your audience? And if you can just elaborate.

2

I really write it for myself and, I don't really think about what's going to happen later, until I'm usually in the final stages of revision. For example, right now I have about 20 poems for what I think will be my next, my third book. And I'm not really thinking about too much revision right now. I'm just really trying to generate the material, figure out. What the themes are, what kind of techniques seem to be, coming up again and again. I'm not really interested at this point in sending them out to publications, to journals, I'm really in this creative process. And it's thrilling. It's exciting. It feels soulful. it's, meditative. most of my life, I have two young children. So most of my life is figuring out, how they're doing, making sure that they get to school on time, or that they're, taking care of, when I get to write, I really get to pause and, contemplate things for extended periods of time. shut the world out, and just being very present. And so for me, it's almost a spiritual experience.

1

how do you handle the daily responsibilities of being a father, but also being a poet who's very, Committed, to your craft. Do you have a schedule, for writing? How have you, incorporated, these two sides?

2

That's a great question. I'm still figuring that out, but I think I'm getting a lot better at it. When I wrote my second book, The Foundling Wheel, I wrote it in bits and pieces. It took me a long time and I was filled with a great deal of anxiety because I felt that my role as a parent was taking this thing from me that had become so important. I think I was resentful about that, that, I didn't have more time to write though of course I was thrilled to be a parent and I wanted, a lot of joy from being a parent, Recently, within the last year or so, I have just, let go of this idea that I would write all the time, that I would write every day. And now what I do is I give myself, a week, every few months to get away and just focus on my writing. that seems to be a really great solution. So that when I'm with my children, I'm with my children, I'm at their swim class. on the floor with them building blocks drawing or going over homework. And I love doing those things. Knowing that I'll have this time to myself later allows me to do that.

3

Okay.

2

And then when I get away and have these residencies or, I can get away for a few days and have these blocks of time, I do nothing but write. I write for 10 hours a day, probably. and that's, I get my fill and then I go back to my life, my family.

1

Excellent. so I was going to ask, when you said you get away, you go

2

places. physically get away.

1

do you go to?

2

Okay, yes, I have to physically get away. Otherwise, I start thinking about, How much lunch did he eat? Did he eat his vegetables? I start to think about, bills or whatever, things one thinks about when one tries to keep a house together. so yeah, I've done a couple of things like, Squaw Valley Writers Conference, the Napa Valley Writers Conference. I like those, conferences where you go there's a group people in a similar situation and you have to write a poem a day.

4

Oh, okay.

2

those are great. I just go into my hotel room or my room write. all day, I, don't really socialize very much, but I've also gone to Puerto Rico for quite some time. I've done, a residency, in, Virginia. I did a residency in Wyoming where, they provide a space for you to write.

1

Just to dedicate yourself exclusively to that. Yes. Okay. So that's good. Now that you mentioned Puerto Rico, that's, another question that I'm very interested in. can you speak about your relationship with Puerto Rico, with the island, the role it has played in your life? we can just take it from there.

2

It's really complicated. It's a very complicated relationship. My mother was born and raised in Puerto Rico, and she moved to Washington, DC, when she was in her twenties, she met my father there, who's not Puerto Rican. They were married, raised three children. I would go back to Puerto Rico every summer and, many Christmases and spend time with my cousins, my aunt, my uncle, my grandmother, and had a marvelous childhood there. Developed a lot of great bonds. as I grew older and started to acknowledge my own sexual identity as a gay man, it complicated my relationship with them. It was a very homophobic environment and, they knew I was gay, but they didn't want me to talk about it. they really, pushed me to be in the closet without explicitly saying it.

1

Yeah.

2

And, so I just became resentful and it made that place seem less, obviously it was less Edenic, right? I thought as we all grew older, it would get better, but it hasn't really, unfortunately. And I have cousins my own age who have said horrible things and done things that have made it seem as though, it would not be even a safe place for me to go. now it does feel like maybe, an Eden I've been exiled from. So not a place I can go back to. I don't think the place that doesn't exist anymore, it existed within that time and it was very loving and, very comforting and magical. And now it's feels threatening and, oppressive. And so that's a kind of in a nutshell, the relationship to this place.

1

You mentioned earlier that you had gone to Puerto Rico to write. How long ago was that?

2

I did that in 2006 and didn't see my family.

1

Yeah,

2

I went because I loved it there and did enjoy it quite a bit, but I didn't see, I saw one cousin, but, the others, I didn't see anybody else. And I have a lot of family there, many.

1

Do you still feel threatened? When you were there, distanced from your family, do you still experience those feelings?

2

I was just sad because I was so close physically to them. I knew they were there.

4

Yeah.

2

But that we wouldn't, be together or, talk or anything like that.

4

Okay.

1

And, so you're obviously, a poet who, you, you claim, Puerto Rico as part of your heritage. what role, if any, have Puerto Rican authors in the U. S. played, in your development as a poet?

2

I've written about this. I didn't, immediately turn to Puerto Ricans on the US mainland. I turned to them hoping that I would identify with a lot of the work that they were writing. And I did really respect it and admire it and I was moved by it, but It was very different for me because my experience was so different. I didn't grow up around a large Puerto Rican community. my mother was always getting strange looks, people treated us differently. it was a good childhood. It wasn't, that rough, but I didn't feel like I was a part of a community is the point I'm trying to make. And a lot of the, Puerto Rican poets who I admired, on the U. S. mainland were writing. to a community or from within a community. And so the experiences were very different. And so I often turn to other poets like Lucille Clifton, sometimes, poets from other marginalized communities, and that helped quite a bit.

1

So you found you had. Even more in common than with poets who were other minorities in the U. S.

2

yes, there were Puerto Rican poets who were doing similar things, Ray and Arroyo, Judith Ortiz Kofer, they were also, in a similar situation, I'd say.

4

Yeah.

2

I thought, oh, you can write about identity. And not write about community necessarily. I saw that they have wildly different aesthetics. from each other and from what I think of as the New Yorican poetry. so I thought, I can just do what I want to do and write about what I want to write about. it doesn't make me less Latino. I thought there's room for all of us to express our own, whatever we want to express and whatever style we want to express it in.

1

I think that's really important. Puerto Rican literature in the U. S. has obviously been, conceived as a product of, life in the barrios, mostly associated to New York, et cetera, but obviously, Puerto Ricans are Dispersed throughout the U. S. and not everyone can relate to that type of experience that we associate with Puerto Rican literature in the U. S. unfortunately. this touches on your essay, and the concept of the other Rican, which I'm extremely interested in, can you say something else, about this? idea, of the other Rican.

2

I talked about this with Reyna Royo a bit, and so that's where the idea came from.

1

Okay.

2

when I started to think about Latino literature, and I started to wrestle with my own place within Latino literature, I started thinking about some of my closest friends who are poets. One of them is Helena Mesa. a Cuban American poet who grew up in Pittsburgh. One of them is Lisa Chavez, who, is a Chicana poet who grew up in Alaska. I started to think, wait, my experience isn't so unique, actually. And, there are a number of us who are out there writing and, have these very different experiences and different, aesthetics. And I started to think about the ways in which Latino poets are challenging this notion of a, prototypical Latino poet and Latino experience. there's so much diversity within Latino literature right now. I want to celebrate that and get a better understanding of that. Lorraine Lopez, great fiction writer, and I, started to work on this anthology of essays called The Other Latina, writing against a singular identity. we looked at everything from, theme to, identity to aesthetics. And we just, had these authors write these great essays about. The ways in which, they are maybe bucking ideas about stereotypes about Latinos and Latino literature and how important it is to do that.

1

I was going to ask you about how that whole project came about, it was, out of your own experience, feeling like you were not necessarily being represented by these other voices.

2

I thought. there wasn't support there, but I was wrong. I, started thinking about it. I thought about my friends and then I thought, we should do a panel at AWP. So I put together a panel, with Juan Morales, another great poet, and we presented The, acquisitions editor from the University of Arizona Press was in the audience and she approached me afterwards and said, I think this would be a great anthology. That's how it came about.

1

Okay.

2

I submitted a proposal and one of the reviewers recommended that we open it up to, fiction as well. I contacted Lorraine Lopez and asked her if she'd be interested. She said she would. She was amazing to work with. She contacted 10 fiction writers. I contacted 10 poets. it happened very organically from there.

1

And how has the reception of the book been?

2

It's been very positive. I think there are a number of people, who like me. Wanted to see this diversity, within the community. And like I was saying, there was a lot of support within the Latino community for this kind of project, and for these different voices.

1

it's just very important work, because yeah, Latinos are very diverse and there's certain stereotypes, you Or literature, the art produced by this community. So it's, I think it's a very important contribution. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. could you tell us a little bit about how you see your poetry has progressed or developed, over the years, thinking of your First poems and where you are, what you're working on now, for instance, can you talk about that development?

2

whenever I start to write a poem, I have no idea what it's going to be. I don't know, what it's going to look like. A lot of it's very mysterious to me. when I was writing the poems for my first book, I was heavily influenced by my professors and they were amazing. They taught me so much and I'm really grateful. I was writing a lot of narrative poems in traditional forms. I love traditional form. I love narrative. it was a real pleasure to write those poems. I wrote a lot about the themes were, about exile, about Puerto Rico and, sexual identity. I finished that book and I felt done. I felt like I had said what I had to say on that matter in that way, then I just kept writing until the poems started to sound different. It was at that time that my, partner and I decided we wanted to be parents. I was writing about these very confusing feelings that I was having. I was in my mid thirties, I'd never even considered being a parent. And all of a sudden, that's a pretty shocking feeling, right? It was like an annunciation, it sounds blasphemous to say it, but it was like this. Realization, that yeah, this is what I want to do, what I want in my life. The poems felt different. They were coming from a different place. They were on a different subject matter and demanded a different form and style. there was much, more, juxtaposition of images. More leaps, less narrative, a buried narrative underpinning because the book, which was the adoption of my first son and the kind of how my partner, I wrestled with these, this new identity as parents, how that challenged us in ways we couldn't have imagined. Also my partner's father passed away soon after my son was born. That made things very challenging as well. There was a lot of confusion, a lot of, we felt very disoriented and, the poems needed to reflect that kind of anxiety, they required a different form. the book, The Foundling Will, the narrative is this, the whole book is the narrative. this couple wants to have a child They struggle to have a child and they struggle when they have the child and that's the narrative. So within the individual poems, I felt freer to make them a little bit more challenging to grasp on a narrative level. And there were more kind of lyric outbursts. so I worked in, more experimental forms for me, longer lines prose poems and, other kinds of, using other devices that were a little bit more jarring, I think, than the first book,

4

which

2

I felt like I led the reader more gently, through the poems. And now that book is done. I don't want to write about that anymore. these new poems are completely different. I don't know where they're coming from, but I feel excited to be moving into new territory the poems are more about, we recently moved to Southern California and they're more about being, in a new place and being in this strange land it's funny because considering what we just talked about Puerto Rico feeling exiled from Puerto Rico, but I feel at home there and in L. A., it's bizarre. You feel

1

at home in L. A.?

2

I've been living in Tennessee for 10 years and we just moved to Los Angeles and within a week I felt like this feels like home.

1

That's amazing.

2

I don't really know how to explain it. It might be the large Latino culture, even the landscape reminds me of Southern Puerto Rico. It's dry, desert like mountains, which is what I see every day. the palm trees, the music, the language, it's, enough, but different enough too. I feel, welcome there. I feel It's home, but it's very new too. it's a very strange experience. the poems are emerging from this, return.

1

that's amazing. So is fatherhood still, a topic that you are addressing?

2

Oh yeah. Because they change every day. just when you think you've got it,

1

how old are they?

2

my older son just turned five.

1

Okay.

2

his nickname is Rain after Rain Arroyo, and the younger one is going to be two next month. So they're very young. Yes. and they just keep changing it up, making it challenging in the most wonderful way. now I feel a lot less anxiety about it. I think it's normal for new parents. now I'm just enjoying every moment I can.

1

Yeah.

2

I figured out how writing fits in. Yes. my partner, Joseph and I have figured out the mechanics of it, and I'm in a place that feels right. I still write about them, but now it's like my son who's talking and we have these bizarre conversations those things start to come into the poems.

3

yeah,

2

I think I'm also trying to move beyond our own experience and think about larger issues, not just our own family.

1

Yes.

2

I think I do here too, but

1

I do

2

it more explicitly now.

1

Okay.

2

Yeah.

1

All right. I'm thinking also about the mother figure in your poetry. your mother is a, has been a presence throughout, whether it's The mother, your mother, or a mother figure in general. Can you talk about her influence in your poetry?

2

on a very simple level, my mother and my grandmother have had the most impact on me as a writer. one thing. I remember vividly is being at home and listening to my parents talk. My mother spoke Spanish and English, and my father only spoke English. oftentimes my mother would say something in Spanish and my father didn't understand. Maybe she wasn't speaking to him, he didn't need to understand, but I would always be aware of that, like he was separated, not in part of the conversation, but I was really aware of the music of Spanish and how it was very different from the music of English. I remember thinking that was very interesting to me. sometimes my father would say what she said, what was that? I remember at a very early age realizing that translation was tricky. You had to capture the meaning, but also the tone. even, there might be a joke sarcasm or a dig, right? and then there was this question like, okay, how do you translate that? it was this play with language that I found really fascinating. I thought about that a lot. then there's a question like, do you really want to translate? maybe I'll leave that tone out or maybe I'll You know what I mean? And so I started to see the richness, in language. my mother had a very big influence as well. she and I really, love each other very much. She did a lot for me, and continues to do a lot for me. but also she's grew up in that environment that I described earlier, very homophobic environment. And so we've wrestled with a lot of issues. And that has come out in the poetry. in the first book, there's this kind of search for her in Puerto Rico. in the second book she comes up somewhat, but not as much. now I find her coming back again in the poems.

1

And

2

There's a real engagement with everything. I think everything's coming together. An idea like engaging with these issues of identity and also motherhood or parenthood and an attempt to move past some of these, obstacles, so yeah, I feel like it's a new way of approaching the subject matter. And I hope that when you read those poems, you feel that way too, because it does feel like there's this kind of, coming to terms with these issues finally.

1

I think parenthood. Can do that. Absolutely. It puts everything into perspective and You start realizing what they have gone through.

2

Yeah.

1

Absolutely. it creates different dynamics there.

2

you can have compassion. Yeah. exactly. More compassion and understanding.

1

Yeah.

2

And then you hope your children have the same

1

complexity, right?

2

understand you hope.

1

so you mentioned translating. have you ever written anything in Spanish?

2

I've never written anything in Spanish. That's an easy one to answer. my mother often spoke to me in Spanish I just hear it and know it but I would always respond in English. I was self conscious about it. my sister, who's the oldest, speaks great Spanish. the middle child, my brother, speaks nothing, not a word. It's very strange. I understood it. I would also run around with my cousins and, they spoke English, but they would all speak in Spanish. So it was this kind of, I got into this bad habit of responding in English. As an adult, I've made friends with people who speak Spanish and several who only speak Spanish.

4

Okay.

2

And, it's wonderful, the words are just coming out, I'm not thinking about grammar, and a lot of it's there. it's a complicated answer, but I didn't feel confident speaking when I was younger. I feel more confident speaking now. it's not like I'm learning Spanish. I'll be talking to somebody and this, the word, as I'm saying something, I know I'm going to have to say this word, like I'll have the image of let's say a mermaid in my head and I'll have it in my head. I know it's coming. And then all of a sudden it's there.

1

Wow.

2

I have no idea where it came from.

1

I

2

was worried as I was approaching the word and then it was there. And then I'll be like, Oh, I remember my grandmother telling me that story about La Sirena and how, and I'd be like, Oh yeah. And then, I didn't think about that when I was. Telling the story, but, so it's a exciting, time for that as well in terms of language.

1

Yes. So I assume you didn't take it up in college. I didn't. Like formally. No,

3

I studied Italian, which I loved too. It was a great language, but I wanted to go to Italy. So I study abroad in Italy. So I studied Italian. yeah.

1

we don't have a lot of time left right now, but I'm wondering, can you tell us something about your experience as a teacher, what role?

2

Yeah.

1

Has teaching had?

2

It's been an important role. and a complicated role. I have been in the position where I have taken on too much teaching It's bad for everything. It's bad for me as a parent. It's bad for me as a teacher. It's bad for me as a writer. and one of the reasons we moved to LA was because I was trying to, Juggle too much. Writing, teaching, and parenthood. I've reduced my numbers. Now I teach one class at USC and in the low residency MFA program. And I was explaining to Joseph the other night, I said, when I talk to my students, I feel like I'm doing exactly what I'm supposed to be doing with my life. And he said, what do you mean? And I said, we're having these great conversations about poetry. And how it relates to our own lives and what we aim to do. we talk about craft for hours. it just feels like the perfect fit. It just feels right. with that energy. I go to the page and write my own work with this. deep appreciation for what we're all doing. I find it very inspiring. I'm in a role as a mentor, but I have a great deal of affection for my students. I'm harsh when I need to be push them when I need to push them.

1

Yeah.

2

but I also feel a great deal of compassion. I see what they're struggling with and see them learning and, I really appreciate them in my life. And I couldn't always say that because I was doing too much. Yes. Yes. when you have. I have, right now, I have the luxury of being able to be, spend most of my time with my children and then also teach part time. When I had 150 students, it was more challenging to, appreciate each student. But now, I have a manageable load and I am teaching the classes I'm supposed to be teaching. and I find it, deeply rewarding and,

1

yeah,

2

and inspiring.

1

that's great. So maybe, one last question. Do you have a favorite poem, one that you're perhaps more proud of than any other, or is that asking you, do you love one child?

2

the truth is that. I do love, some of my poems more than others. Is that what you mean? Yeah, of your own. Yeah, I do. Of course I do. But then there are some of those I don't like as much, but then I'll go back and look at them like, oh, you can appreciate things more when you look back at them. but it changes all the time because then you write the new poem and you love that one the most so it's a combination of a poem doing everything you wanted it to do, that miracle that happens. but also it has to do with when you wrote it. if you wrote it 10 years ago, then, it's yeah, it did exactly what I wanted it to do 10 years ago. And I articulated what that feeling was but it was 10 years ago, you lose your love for it a little bit, it diminishes a bit. the newer poems become the ones you love. There's probably one poem right now that I keep going back to, thinking, What did I do there? What was that? it's still with me. Intrigued. Yeah, exactly. It did it, it did what I wanted it to do. It didn't know I could do that. And, oh, okay.

1

Can I ask which poem

2

it's a new poem. in this book, one of the most, lighter, the poem, lighter, which is the penultimate poem in the book. is a definition poem. It's a poem trying to find the right word. It's what's the word that I'm looking for to describe this moment? the poem finds the word then explains why the word is the right word. maybe it's because within the poem you see the speaker, working to articulate. That feeling.

1

Yeah.

2

and then try using all these devices, definition, metaphor, and so maybe that's why it felt so right. It's that's what every poem is trying to do. Every poem is trying to, put into language something as perfectly as possible, but that poem is trying to do that, but it's also revealing. The process of trying to do that, So that one I think is one of the, in this book, the one I come back to again and again in readings.

1

thank you so much. was great.

2

Thank you so much.