Letras Latinas, Part 18: A Conversation with Natalia Treviño

Episode Topic: A Conversation with Natalia Treviño

How does a childhood chalkboard blossom into a lifelong love of the poetry of words? Listen in to an oral history interview with Natalia Treviño, who explores how a bicultural childhood and deep family devotion to the Virgin Mary forged her powerful artistic voice. In this moving conversation with Therese Konopelski ’20, discover Treviño’s profound connections between personal history, faith, and the writer’s journey, revealing how grief can unlock incredible creativity and spiritual understanding.

Featured Speakers:

• Therese Konopelski ’20
• Natalia Treviño, Northwest Vista College 

Read this episode's recap over on the University of Notre Dame's open online learning community platform, ThinkND: https://go.nd.edu/01c226.

This podcast is a part of the ThinkND Series titled Letras Latinas.

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Transcript

Introduction and Interview Setup

1 0:06

My name is TR Kki. I'll be the interviewer, and today is the 29th of October, 2018. We're located in the Julian Samra Library on the campus of the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana. I'll be interviewing Natalia Trevino, author of the Poetry Collections, LDA Ledge LA and Virgin X. She has won several awards for her writing, including the San Antonio Artist Literary Award, the Dorothy Sergeant Rosenberg Poetry Prize, and the Alfredo Cisneros, the Morale Award. She's a professor at Northwest Vista College and has published in various journals, including the Western Humanities Review and South Southwestern American Literature. Um, thank you Natalia for being here and being part of our oral history project here at the University of Notre Dame. Yeah, so happy to be here with you. Thank you so much.

Speaker 3 0:54

It's an honor to be here and to, uh, hear your questions and share the, the stories so that other people. I identify with a path in letters and a path in literature and, and believe that they too can, write and tell their stories. It's very important.

1 1:17

I agree. so for the purposes of documentation, can you state your full name, date of birth, place of birth, and place of living today?

Speaker 3 1:24

Sure. My name is Natalia or Vin, and I was born Natalia, VIN, or I switched my two last names when I became an American citizen because I was gonna lose Vin as my last name if I kept my grandfather's name.

Speaker 4 1:42

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 3 1:42

Attached. I live in Helo, Texas. I was born in Mexico City and my family, most of my family is actually from the northern region of Mexico. Monte.

1 1:58

Uh, thank you very much. And, uh, so I really enjoyed Virgin X and its portrayal of, um, devotional culture. And so, uh, I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit about your childhood growing up and maybe your connection to that, heritage.

Speaker 3 2:12

Okay. My childhood, uh, was by, by National Bicultural. And by that I mean that I was always going back and forth between the US and Mexico as a child. we moved to the US when I was three years old and my parents did not think it was a permanent move. They always wanted to go back and told us that when we graduated from high school that we, they would go back. And then it became, when we go back, when we, when you graduate from college, we'll go back. And as Mexico's socioeconomic problems became worse and worse. My parents became more rooted in the us. They stopped talking about going back. There was a time when I was about 11 when my parents were thinking about moving us all back. And that was the most exciting thing I could think of when I was that, that age because I felt so happy when I was in Mexico, was surrounded by family, surrounded by love, surrounded by parties. Everything gets celebrated. There's these giant gatherings. it was just, just social loving environment. Whereas in the US we were very isolated. We had, we lived on a little, uh, suburban street in Leon Valley, which is a sub, uh, uh, a little town adjacent to the city of San Antonio. And no one leaves their houses. you know, at night or during the day. Everyone's inside. The neighbors do not talk to each other. doors are closed. Halloween night is just, it's, there's, it's just darkness. we're very isolated, so I had to make friends, um, and let my friends become my family. And of course, that's gonna be hard to negotiate when you're, when you're little and you're, not like them. And so my childhood was also, being, you know, out in the street with whatever friends I could find, being called, wetback all the time because I was from Mexico. And I recently, I recovered a memory of when I first learned what the word wet back meant. I was in the, my garage, which is where my family usually was on, on the weekends. My dad just liked to be watching the neighborhood and do tinkering around with his, his wares in the garage. Just being outside, just loved, he just loved to be outside. So I was about to go play and I was young enough that my mother was still bathing me and, and drying me off because before I went out to play, I, I remembered, oh, I could tell my dad to fix this problem I'm having. And I just remember that feeling of, oh, this time I won't forget to say something. So I said, dad, will you tell mom to dry my back off better after, after my shower? So I was not in charge of drying my back. I was still that young, so probably kindergarten. And he said, what? Why? And I said, well, because it's always wet. And I really believed that my back was always wet for probably months. Right. But I just remembered that day that I wanted to tell him because I could fix it, because I didn't know why it was a problem for my back to be wet.

Speaker 4 5:29

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 3 5:29

But I knew that it was bad and that it was dirty, and that it was a reason for like derision among, you know, the kids and the block. And, uh, he, he was horrified, and he said, what do, why, why do you say that? And I said, well, the kids always call me wet back. And he said, oh my God. And his face turned into ash and, anger. and then he explained to me why, why they, what, what that word meant.

Speaker 4 5:56

Right.

Speaker 3 5:56

so it's hard to be accepted into other homes when the, obviously families are saying things like that because kids don't learn that word from each other. They learn that from elders. Right. So, uh, a bit isolated in the US and full of love in Mexico. Mm-hmm. And always, not really fitting into either culture because over in Mexico, I'm, I don't speak Spanish correctly. I don't have the words to play the Barbies as well as the other kids do. And in the US of course, whatcha doing going go home. you know, you don't belong here. So, a little hard.

1 6:37

I think you actually, you spoke that memory in one of your poems in X mm-hmm. Back always being, do you remember?

Speaker 5 6:47

See if I can find it.

Speaker 3 7:02

I, I. I go into in these poems, I definitely go into histories and memories of mm-hmm.

Speaker 4 7:14

Of

Speaker 3 7:14

being a child. And, trying to explore the importance of those moments now as an adult now in the context of spirituality, in the context of our social connections.

Speaker 4 7:29

Mm-hmm.

Discovering Creative Writing

Speaker 3 7:29

And, and to say, yeah, it's, it wasn't, um, it's not so easy. It wasn't easy for me, but I don't think it's easy for, for anyone really. and I can't remember what page that's on, so I'm sorry.

1 7:40

Yeah, it's fine. It's fine. I remember just reading it, but, so I'm sorry about it. Um, no,

Speaker 3 7:44

that's okay.

1 7:44

Yeah. Um, so, so in this, bicultural childhood, when do you remember first connecting with poetry or creative writing, or when did that interest, how was that interest sparked? Yeah,

Speaker 3 7:57

I think I was connecting to creative writing.

1 7:59

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 3 8:00

as early as first grade. When we had, my dad had bought a house that had a hole in the garage, like a, in the wall.

Speaker 4 8:09

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 3 8:10

And he came across a very large chalkboard and he put the chalkboard there to cover the hole. And I think he got it from one of the offices where he were, I don't know where he got it from. And so the chalkboard became my main place to play. And it was to play, to draw. And it was at my height. So it was this big, it was bigger than me. Yeah. And it was where I, where I, I had the chalkboard in, in the, in the neighborhood. So when I did have a friend over and we would play, we played school, we played this and that. And I remember, creating, learning to write, learning to write first and second grade, and creating words. And, I was trying to write the word to me. I was trying to be like my teachers and, and write these perfect letters. And I wrote to me, and I had put the words two close together. Um, so, you know, the teachers teach you to put a little space between the words so that you learn how to write. Mm-hmm.

Speaker 4 9:06

Right? Yeah.

Speaker 3 9:07

So I had put not enough space, and I, and I read the word and it said, I read to, when I read the word tome, it literally just went through my body. The sound of the word was new. I had never heard that word. I didn't know that it was a real word. As I, I, I didn't know. I just remember this incredible moment of hearing the word tome as if it were a tome. I mean, a tome is just a giant body of literature. It's a giant important body of literature. And that moment was so powerful for me, and it just woke me up to language, to seeing language on the, on, on the page, so to speak, a chalkboard that, you know, it's ephemeral. You barely see it, you erase it 10 seconds later. But it also, hearing it, and the sound of it just made so, it just made such an impression, like my whole body felt it and hurt it. Then what I, I started to do, which was an unconscious habit of every word. As, as I heard words, as I was hearing words in English, words in Spanish, I was writing them in the air to sound them out to, to, to interact with the words. So if somebody would say the word, I would, I would be writing HERD in the air. And I would the word love, and I would, maybe, I was learning to spell, maybe I was enjoying the word, maybe I was hearing it, but I was writing the words I was hearing from a really early age, but I didn't have paper and I didn't know I could be a writer. First time I was given the opportunity to write was in third grade. a teacher gave us a little prompt. It had a little picture on it.

Speaker 4 10:43

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 3 10:43

And she said, write a story. And I just didn't even know that I could, that you, you could write a story that I could write a story. And, she left me alone for hours. And because I couldn't stop writing and I made the story and I, and I just kept writing and kept writing and kept writing. I ended up writing an eight page story, which for an 8-year-old right, is kind of a big deal. She couldn't believe it. And I, she didn't, I didn't know I was missing all the other lessons. I was missing the math, I was missing the, whatever the lessons were for the day because you know, they move you on. They give you 20 minutes, write a story, the kids get bored, turn it in, they go do something else. These kids have a short attention span. I just stayed there and then I kind of woke up from my dream right before lunch and she was so excited and so impressed with my story and she was showing it off to all of her colleagues and telling everyone how great it was that I had written this story. But unfortunately, she never gave it back to me.

Speaker 4 11:42

Oh. And she never

Speaker 3 11:42

gave it to my parents. She never gave me a grade on it. And we were living temporarily. This is in Corpus Christi, which is interesting considering what the word Corpus Christi means, you know, the body of Christ. this is in Corpus Christi and she. we left a few months later. We, my dad was training, he was in computers and, uh, was always training to new technologies. Hardware. He was a hardware repairman and so we were living in Corpus for a few months, like a semester. And when we left, she didn't send it back and she knew I was leaving. She knew I was a temporary student. I dunno, somehow not ever having read that story and knowing that good feeling, it had really, taught me that writing and I are together. And the next big moment was being a teenager, really into my favorite, pop music, mtv. I was all turned on to the new Wave Music, Duran Duran, Adam, bow. Wow. Wow. I just loved all of that alternative music and, Luckily was able to own an album or two. And I started looking, you know, studying their lyrics, the lyrics, the lyrics. And then I started to copy the lyrics down and make new poems outta their lyrics because they were words I'd never heard before. my English was stilted because of the fact that English was not in my family and used in my home, and my Spanish was still too, because of the same reason I wasn't practicing it and I wasn't living in Mexico. But, so these words that these artists had, words that had nuance and flavor, I just couldn't get enough of them. So I would create poems outta their words. I guess those are called found poems, in high school. And would read them to my friends and, and pretend that they were not mine to see if they made any sense. And my friends would say,

Speaker 4 13:33

wow, that's really

High School Writing Experiences

Speaker 3 13:34

cool. And I would say, yeah, that's Duran Duran, you know, thinking, because I didn't know if they made sense, but I thought, wow, words just unlock the world. And that's, and that's how it happened for me. Yeah. That's

1 13:48

amazing. Yeah. so in high school, did you write anything that accelerated your choice to, pursue writing as a career?

Speaker 3 13:55

I was, you know, excited to get an opportunity to write in the English classes, the one and a half opportunities I had to write. I did not, I was not a diary writer or a journal writer. but I did, I, so maybe I was a lazy, a lazy writer that was always in my head writing and, and definitely wrote about, I guess I did write when I had sad emotional experiences. And what I did write a lot in high school were the illegal notes that we would pass to each other, to my friends. Yeah. It was very, you know, teacher, y'all said, not today. Everyone's texting and doing social messaging. Well, we were just literally passing notes in the hallway and if teacher saw you pass a note, you'd get in trouble. And, if you were reading a note, you'd get in trouble. So I had, we had this whole underground note writing, group that I was, that I was in, and that's where life was really happening, was in the notes. but so it was more social and I remember a friend saying, oh, I love reading your notes because you always have great questions. And, um, I don't know, I was just living on the page even then. And then, high school created writing class. An opportunity came to take that my senior year, and that's when I started diving into poetry and some fiction writing. And I felt like I was touching God when I was writing my, my poetry and fiction when I, when I was in that, class. and my teacher was, seemed to be excited about poetry and yet she was not really excited about teaching the class. She had us grading other classes, papers all the time. So it was kind of limited there, but I was exposing, I was tapping into images and, and, um, and some fiction for which I ended up winning a, a little high school prize, which I thought was the pinnacle of my entire life, that I could never write a story that good again. it was called The Dollar. And, it's about a little a a girl gonna Mexico and gonna an amusement park and seeing the, the very, kind of difficult ride, which had some electronics associated with it. I don't really remember what they were, uh, being run by a child, a, a little 6-year-old boy and seeing him work and work while she was a teenager. And so it was, it was a story about an experience I had and just really. Because of the fact that it was this little boy. So I created the story from his point of view, had him talking to his family and going work. And, and then the day that I wrote about is the day, which is what happened. I didn't know what to do except to give money because that's, you know, Mexico, the children are always begging and, their, their moms are with them begging and they're asking for money. And I happened to have a dollar in my purse, and so I just gave him my dollar and I did, I just didn't wanna see his face when I gave it to him, because I didn't know if he would say, oh, great, what am I gonna do with this? I, am I gonna go to the bank and change it and, or am I gonna be happy? I didn't, I just couldn't imagine his reaction. I just wanted him to have like, what I had and just to say, I, I wish you didn't have to work. you know, as a child, because. I lived in the US where children didn't work. but every, you know, summer, every Christmas I was in Mexico where the children were working and he just, he just was just so sweet and so intentional about his work. Like he knew what he was doing with his operation. And so,

1 17:41

yeah. As you back, uh, at these early writing experiences, do you feel that you were better able to express yourself in poetry or prose?

Speaker 3 17:51

Um, I, I think probably more directly expressing myself in prose.

Speaker 4 17:57

Mm-hmm.

Influence of Pat Mora and Cultural Identity

Speaker 3 17:58

Um, because my idea of poetry was limited by the poets I had read. So, you know, we're reading, ed Growling Poe and John Keats and William Wordsworth, and they're writing about flowers and they're writing about urns and they're writing about dead people. And I just didn't feel like I could follow a form at all. So in poetry, I was, I, I liked the idea of the condensed language and, and, and tapping something really rooted in, in my unconscious and just, and seeing what could come out, because it was like a flower that would be born out of a seed that I didn't even know was there. but in prose, I, I felt like I could create a character and really just, just elaborate on my, you know, syn is without that filter of that structure, which is what I felt poetry was doing. But when I started reading Pat Mora, her poetry in the book called Chance, published by Art de Press, thank god my professor introduced me to that book because these poems were these tiny little gems, these tiny little diamonds. They were about a bicultural, binational experience. They were about being a Chicana. They were about living between two worlds. So she was the first person to put words, poetic words about something I knew about a life that I knew, especially her poem in Lena, which when I read again, was a moment, an enormous moment for me. It was electric electrifying because it was, I was reading a poem about a woman like my mom, and to read literature. I, I had thought literature was way out there. It's, it's medieval literature. It's, it's renaissance literature. It's, it's, it's so far away. It's not anything I, I'm ever gonna really be able to create, even though I hoped to and wanted to and felt attracted to creating. I didn't know if I could, I didn't feel worthy. And so. Because what was happening is that the content that I had, that I owned of being a woman, of being, this, having this, this bilingual mind and and bicultural experience was completely shut down by the, by the Anglo focused literature that I was reading. And so I didn't know about fields, you know, and I didn't know about, urns, and I didn't know about, about, these, these worlds mos you know, what, what are wars? What, you know, I don't go to Scotland. I dunno what the mors are. Mm-hmm. So, reading Pat Mora told me I could write about my life. And that's where when I first wrote the poem, blancos, which is the first poem in la Dirty Laundry, it's a very, very old poem.

Speaker 4 20:58

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 3 20:58

Uh, it's, it's written as an undergrad student. When I first exposed to Pat, because I knew that she gave me permission to write about a woman that I know deeply, my grandmother and my grandmother, uh, and to take something very small a moment and to let it unfold into something that's form.

1 21:22

Do you mind reading that poem? Oh, I would love to.

Speaker 3 21:25

Yeah, sure. I love honoring my, my who, uh, gave me just such incredible unconditional love, um, and who gave me a space to ask her hard questions and, who, who liked sharing with me, what is it about White that made my grandmother tell me? Is it the way White is clean? New the way it looked on T-shirts she washed for my grandfather, leached crisp, fresh by her young hands. Or is it the way white satin felt draping over her princess figure rounding over her linen smooth arms, her wedding day summer 1932. Dwight shoes remind her of the day her mother made her rub her white until they sparkled, until each small finger red at the fight. Aita, do you feel suspended on these memories when you walk on white shoes? Is it that white came first? Aita before your marriage promise, before his t-shirts soiled before an egg

Speaker 5 22:51

was cracked?

Grandmother's Devotions and Spirituality

1 22:55

Beautiful. Thank you. Uh, thank you. Yeah. I, I love these poems about your grandmother and that connection to your, you know, that line of female heritage. so I was wondering, you talk about her devotions to mm-hmm. What, how did her devotional, devotions a affect you in your relationship to, the Virgin?

Speaker 3 23:22

Well, I'm so glad that, I'm so happy to be talking about this. So, her, her devotions, when I was witnessing her devotions, I was in my early thirties and I was going through a divorce. I actually ran away to my grandmother's house when I was needing to get a divorce from my ex-husband. And I was, financially dependent on him. I didn't have anywhere to go except to visit my grandmother who had this eternal space for me. And this is my other grandmother, my, uh, my, my ro who's my mom's mom, who, this book is dedicated to her and her lineage. Not that I don't think so much about my, who is, uh, a few times in this book, this, but this, but who was more, who was more into, Jesus was more into the, the, the spirit of Jesus. But, but Myro named after the Virgin, her sister was named after the Virgin. Her mother was named after the Virgin Maria. So Maria, the, the Maria and Maria, I mean, all of them named for these different Mary. So when I was observing her devotions, I was not aware so much of how I would need them later. When she died, I was already used to living away from her. I was already used to having a life in the US and a life with her in Mexico when I would be interviewing her and asking her questions and, and receiving her affirmations. And, uh, really just, receiving her wisdom and her love and her life experience, which she was very, very open with me, uh, since I was probably 15. Did she start really sharing her life with me, her personal life. and then when I was in my thirties, I saw her devotions. I didn't, I didn't take them that seriously actually. I, I was curious about them, but I didn't take them that seriously. I thought they were sweet when she died. I compartmentalized her death in, uh, I didn't understand how to grieve because she was dying slowly of Parkinson's for four years. I became gradually frozen and, uh, stopped having the use of her voice, stopped. She stopped having the use of her legs. She stopped having the use of her arms. She could not feed herself. but she did not give up on life. She did not want to go. She really wanted to be here and with the people that she knew and, was, was suffering in her own way because she lost her son to leukemia. And she had her other sons and her daughter, my mom, and she just didn't wanna leave, leave us for the longest time. So when she did die, I came back to, it was a very quick trip for me to go, to be at her funeral, to come back and sort of pack that grief in. But it had been this slow, grief over time where she was being slowly taken away from me because I couldn't interview her anymore. I couldn't ask her questions. All I could do. Tell her my stories in the end of her life. And I would do that. I would, my aunts would say, why are you talking, you know, why are you talking to her? She's not talking anymore. And I was like, are you crazy? She's right here. I gotta talk to her and tell her my life, because I was, she was like my best friend. so when I saw this image, the image that's actually on the cover of the book, I, it was, it was again, another amazing bolt of lightning, a flash of, of emotion that broke me because suddenly I saw my grandmother crocheting on the bed praying to the virgin. And in this image she had, she was like the virgin. She was, she had become like the virgin, her little feet. wearing the little tennis shoes, the little single twin bed, the, the, the love of crocheting. It was a huge part of my childhood, seeing my grandmother always working and working and making. I tablecloths and I mean, enormous things and tiny things. Mm-hmm. so I, I wanted to know why this image had such power over me. and that's when this process started, which was about four years ago when I saw this image. I mean, I, I might even be able to document the date because this image just came in my Facebook scroll.

Speaker 4 27:55

Wow.

Speaker 3 27:55

No, really. A friend of mine, named by Linda Olta posted it, and I, and I just was looking on a Sunday afternoon, because that's usually when I could spend a little bit of time on Facebook, and I saw it, and I just, it blew me away. It, I hate to use that word, but that's exactly what happened. I, I sobbed, I couldn't, I couldn't understand. I was suddenly grieving my grandmother. I was loving her again, grieving her, missing her, and I didn't understand why. So I decided to just read about the Virgin and access her in order to get to know my grandmother and to get to know her. And by, by learning more about the Virgin, I did learn more about my grandmother's spirituality, so I feel closer to her now mm-hmm. Than when she was, on her frozen little bed with her Parkinson's when I mm-hmm. Could talk to her. And I knew she could hear me, because she would occasionally have a one sentence answer, but, but it was so sporadic and, and in between that, you know, I just didn't know. And I just, I dunno. I just, Kate thought of losing her and that's what spirituality I think has really done for me. This, this entrance into it through the Virgin is, allowing me to see that there are more than, there are many, there are many rooms, John 14, where Jesus says, in my father's house, there are many rooms. And what I think he means is that there's this room, the room where you and I are, we can see each other, we can look at each other, we can, we can touch each other. And there's the room, you know, there's the rooms. This earth is a room, and then there are many other rooms. And that to me makes scientific sense. How could there not be more than one world? Mm-hmm.

Speaker 4 29:39

Um,

Exploring Virgin X and Latinx Identity

Speaker 3 29:39

quantum physics proves it. My brother's a physicist. He explained this to me. Quantum physics proves that there are other dimensions. Mm-hmm. And to know that my grandmother really is in another room. And now my father, it's, really cures the, the, the loss, the grief, the loneliness. It happens when you're broken apart from a loved one through death.

1 30:01

Yeah. I, for me, Virgin X really gave me a strong, impression of the many ways you can reinterpret, the Virgin Mary into your spirituality. Just like how there are many iterations of what it means to be. Um, so yeah, I love that connection. I was wondering if you could speak more about, Virgin X, Latinx and maybe, this first poem that talks about your relationship to Latinx.

Speaker 3 30:26

Yeah, I love that. so Virgin, Virgin X, when I was exposed to what the letter X came from to the history of the letter X mm-hmm. Through a workshop I did with Natalie Diaz, who's a wonderful poet and a wonderful teacher. she had us looking at the origin of some letters, um, looking at the, this book called The Mysteries of the Alphabet. And I was attracted to the letter X and the history of it. And when I found out that its history is that it actually was a symbol of a, of an ancient ladder or a fishbone across basically, I, I became really intrigued by what that means. Because it was connected once to a, a force of life and is also a, an object that we need in order to build. I mean, it's just incredible that the, the X comes from these two, these two ancient tools, right? Mm-hmm. The fish that we eat and we left with this, the fish and the, and the vertebrae and the ribs, and also this, this latter. So when I meditated on that, on the meaning of the X and thought about how the X is, is so many things now, it, it's what? Xes something out, right? It does symbolize erasure. It's also X marks the spot. It symbolizes the treasure where the treasure is. It's, it's the two points that converge, right? That crossover where you have a moment of energy, a spark in that, in that cross, that crossing. It is also the absence of an answer in, in, in mathematical equations, X equals gene, right? Mm-hmm. X equals this, X equals that. It's how we learned algebra. The X is also what we send, when we form a kiss, right? And, and I regret that that's not in the poem yet, but I wanna, I wanna revise the poem and get the X as the symbol of kiss as well. With two lips, meat, it forms an X. how does it relate to Latinx? Latinx is, a wonderful concept that says, I embrace all of me, not just the a of me or the o of me, the gender of me, but I'm the human being of me. So X is also the multiplication of all of these identities. it's a, it's a question or a blank, but it's also an answer. so to think about, Latinx in this broader sense. It even more inclusive. And I do not wanna, in any way, uh, erase what's happened with Latinx and how it's needed for someone who doesn't, who, who is, non-gender conforming, non-binary conforming. That's a very important identity that needs to be captured through Latinx. But Latinx is also someone who, who doesn't necessarily wanna identify only as their gender as in that, in terms of their, their being human. So the Virgin X is, that is an echo and honoring of that saying, you know what, the Virgin also has many identities.

Speaker 4 33:29

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 3 33:29

She the virgin of the, of the gold medal mm-hmm. That you have, that you're wearing. She's the Virgin of Guadalupe that I'm wearing. She's a virgin of San Los Lagos. She's the virgin of, of, so many names. I have married mother of the word, where I try to identify just some of her names. She has over 20,000 names in the world. And here I, I, I don't, I haven't counted how many are in this poem, maybe, maybe 30 or so. And I cut a, I cut a lot out because it just read like a, like a litany. But I, I wanted to find the music in her name and her many, many names, and I wanted to, give her all of those identities to show that X is all the virgins that are out there now and virgins that are to come because a virgin, what I found this common strand in a lot of the stories is that when she performs a miracle, the community that witnessed a miracle would name her after that location. So Loretto is a place, Guadalupe is a place, Notre Dame. is, is, is, well, our Lady of the Lake is a place. she, oh, I, I love this one. Of the rocks of the pillar. That's a very specific miracle. The of the 33 who freed Uruguay, that's a very specific moment in history where the 33 men who prayed to her on the night before their battle, when they were not destined to win, they prayed to her and because they won, they feel that she appeared to them and that she's the reason that they won. They have the Virgin of the 33 Y and that's her whole name, and I wanted to honor that. She's also a great lady, so many, so many names. And then the end of that poem, I connect her to where I saw there were millions and billions of, of identities and exes in the very oum that any girl in the very specific oum mm-hmm.

Speaker 4 35:34

That

The Rhythm and Form of Poetry

Speaker 3 35:34

every single girl is born with. The, the thousands and thousands of eggs that are inside of her that all of these possibilities, all of these identities inside of her, because I feel like that is, and, and the, the essence of the is and can be. She's, she's mul, she's multiplied in, in, in these tiny little, eggs all over that aren't born yet and that have been born already.

1 36:06

Yeah. I, I thought this poem especially had such great rhythm. The litany, you know, it just has that kind of, it can bring on this trans like state this meditation. I always love that aspect about it. so I was wondering if, if you could read it for us. You hear that beautiful?

Speaker 3 36:21

Oh, I would, I would love to read it.

1 36:23

Yeah.

Speaker 3 36:23

Mary, mother of the word, Mary mother of sorrows, Mary mother of mercy, queen of heaven. Of our joy, our Lady of Peace, our Lady of the Lake, Notre Dame of Lebanon, Loretto Nazar of the miraculous metaled at her request. Our lady canonized and crowned of perpetual help of solitude, of snows of confidence. Our Lady of Fatima Lucious, lady who made the sun dance. Our Lady of charity, gate of dawn, immaculate conception, grace. Good counsel. Good help. And good help of the rocks of the pillar of the of the 33. Who Freed Our lady. Great lady, queen of Mexico. Your appearances. Too many over 20,000 names I heard. Beyond counting, you're non count noun, salt, not granules. Diluted miracles. The Maria, both the cure to the living wound. Morning star, the nexus of your names. Self pollinates, mystical rose. Refuge of sinners like dandelion seed, swaddled, balmy currents. How they land with feathery precision of giving life, giving Spring. Our lady, they contain the whole and the fraction of you, the factors, the multiples of you across the nations. By millions multiplied by the unnamed, by those caught in the mystery of sta in the of Semens who wait in white.

1 38:37

So I know you said when you, were reading a lot of lyrical poetry, like words, you said you didn't really wanna be restricted so much by form. You do play a lot with, I think rhythm here and then in general in Virgin X, should we say shape on the page? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So I was wondering, um, how you feel about, form in general and how you write, um, how you structure it when you compose. Yeah,

Speaker 3 39:04

I'd love to talk about that. Um, well, as I said, I. You were asking earlier about how, which one, where you could express yourself more. And so form I originally, I thought Li would limit me. Mm-hmm. Um, but then when I read Pat Mora, I realized that form can also expand the poem mm-hmm. And make it, a higher work of art. So I became very interested in how Stan work and how sound works, especially being a student of, of literature.

Speaker 4 39:38

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 3 39:38

Um, writing essays and essays about mm-hmm. Ic, you know, powers and I'm, and all the, all the sounds that, um, that poets manipulate in order to create an effect. so I, I now like to, I like to use form, but I also like to be inventive about it. And so my poetry is definitely free verse. I, I do want there to be music and movement in it, and I do pay attention to rhythm. I, I need to pay attention to rhythm. And when I get the rhythm wrong, it just, just creates a really nasty kind of bong in my head that I don't enjoy. So, now, when I first thought about writing, I knew that this, this, uh, pencil drawing was, was gonna allow me to write poetry again, or I, the only way I could capture the amount of emotion I felt every time I saw this image mm-hmm. Was, uh, gonna be through writing a poem. Because poems do allow me to get that real deep emotion to come out in a way that may not necessarily make, literal sense, but non-literal sense so that it feels authentic. I thought, what's the highest form of poetry that I could write for the virgin? What, what is this? What can I do? I thought, oh, I'll write sonnets. I'll write a series of sonnet. To her various names, and what a wonderful thing, what a wonderful way to learn about her and to honor her. And then I realized, sonnet, it's a male form. It a, it's a male form. It's, created by men, by men. It's, there's nothing wrong with it. It's a beautiful, beautiful form.

Speaker 5 41:24

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 3 41:25

But I, I almost feel, felt like she told me, I don't, I don't wanna be in sonnets, I wanna be in wings. And so I started to, write the poems to her in the shape of, of the wings, the wings that I imagine that she's wearing in her, with her beautiful drapery, and especially living in the San Juan Los Lagos, who looks like a rocket ship who has these two wings on the either side of her. I'm in my, in my, the way I see her. so she. because I saw the wings as being essential, an important part of her couture, part of her, her clothing and, and the way we dress her. And because I wanted to honor that, that feminine shape, I, I started to change the form and go into, literally creating wings on the page. Then that became also too, static and predictable. Great. And I, and I thought, I, that's, it's too artificial. It needs to be a little bit more natural. And so the, I shifted, especially in, in the, in the long, in the long, uh, segment, queen of Heaven and Earth where the poem, the lines are all over the page, but kind of, jagged and hopefully fluid. The element of wings. Like there's, there's a little, a little soft one there, and then it comes out again. So even though the lines are long, I did try to create this, this sense of her, her fabric. Whether that works or not, I don't know, but I definitely, needed that to be my way of honoring her because that honors the way other artisans have dressed her.

Speaker 4 43:05

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 3 43:06

And I feel like these, these poems are not, not only addressing her, but are part of the, the, the beautiful couture that she is, that she embolizes, that she's a part of.

Speaker 4 43:21

You know,

Speaker 3 43:21

because, you know, as I've studied lots and lots and lots of images of her, the, the way we humans. Dress her, it dress, it just fascinates me. The way we dress the queen of, of, of heaven, the way we dress, the mother of God, we give her a, the, our greatest clothing, right? Our greatest pink color. The lap, the most expensive color there is, right? The gold. We, we, the, the layering when we discovered, and I say we, which I didn't write, but when, um, the painters discovered luminescent paint and translucent could create translucent like lace and, and just see through fabric on, in, in a painting, that was a new technique they discovered. And they were like, oh, well, let's put it on the virgin. Let's make it part of her mantle. Let's make it part of her halo. Let's make it part of the drapery on her hair to give her like the greatest look that we have, right? The greatest fashion that we can achieve. We give it to her. And so I needed to fashion. Poem, poem, poem to do that too, with shape and and texture. So that's why there are different shapes in the book. There's some couples, and there's the prose poem, and then there's the mix of prose.

Speaker 4 44:43

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 3 44:43

Uh, and, and couples in, uh, Latinx as well, even though that poem is not directly about her. Mm-hmm. It's about the significance of X, which is about survival.

1 44:57

so did you choose, did you, um, use couplets mostly because they allow you to play more with shape, I think just linearly or, was there something else to add?

Speaker 3 45:07

There's, there's that, but there's also, spacing in the sound.

Speaker 4 45:11

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 3 45:12

And because the, images are, there's a lot in them. There's a lot of language in them. A chance to see the images, because I think sometimes when you crush them together in a, in a bigger

Speaker 4 45:26

mm-hmm.

Speaker 3 45:27

they're, they're not as vivid on the page. And I, and I, I guess I, I like for them to be seen because there's a lot of work that goes into them. rearranging, rearranging sound. rearranging word deepening. My, my vocabulary. Oh, I, I, I think for a reader they need give you a little rest, so you kind of take them as you wanna.

Travel and Inspiration

1 45:53

Definitely. Um, yeah. And about, uh, decorating the version with the most expensive materials, like the, uh, dome here is just, it has that, um, gold leaf all over it. really expensive. They have to replace it, uh, every few years or so. Oh. You know. Wow. And so, um, you actually talk about visiting this campus in mm-hmm. Um, transit station. So the Santa Maria. Mm-hmm. I was wondering if you could read. That specific section because I enjoyed it. Oh, I'm, I enjoyed that as a reader. I connected to it because I, you know, I've been here for three years now and

Speaker 3 46:27

it's my, I love, I mean, coming to this, this visit

Speaker 4 46:31

mm-hmm.

Speaker 3 46:31

page, are we, I think it's eight. Oh, thank you. Yes. I was looking later in the book.

Speaker 4 46:36

Yeah.

Speaker 3 46:36

Uh, transit stations of the Santa Maria novella, when I started writing about the Virgin.

Speaker 4 46:42

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 3 46:44

I didn't know that it was gonna lead to travel. It was only to meditate on my grandmother and her faith. Mm-hmm. And to get to know my grandmother. but, and, and I was, it was a time in my life when I was being, I was feeling sorry for myself about travel because I, I loved to travel ever since. I think because I was always traveling as a kid to Mexico and to. Fascinated by everything I saw way there and the way back especially, they were always road trips. So I love road trips, I love trips, bus trips. I was feeling sorry for myself because I, my, my husband who's Australian, he has to use all his travel to go to Australia to see his family and for us to go together is not possible all the time or very, it's very rare that we can both go. It's so expensive and he needs to go for a great length of time to see his family, which I, we knew that would be the case when he moved here. So I realized that, you know, my dream of being, dream of taking vacations with my, with my partner were kind of not gonna happen. So right around that time, and I was letting go of that thinking, I guess I'm gonna have to, you know, when I travel, I gotta go by myself. well. Right. When I was making that decision and or realizing that I, I got invited on road trips. I got invited to take a trip from San Antonio to Chicago, uh, with a friend of mine Hernandez to take car to Chicago and drop it off for her brother. And so I thought, oh, I'll get to see the middle of the country. I'll ne I've never seen the middle of the country before. I've, I've, well, since I was a child, we used to drive to Minneapolis whenever my dad had training, but I was really little when we were doing those trips, so I, I wanted to see more of a of America. And then that happened that summer. That summer, the same summer, a friend of mine invited me to travel from Canada where she had been living in Newfoundland for a year to Omaha, Nebraska. And I thought. I would love to take that trip. And she was like, are you sure it's comfy? You know, hard and we don't have any time to see anything, but we're, I just be four days I think it day. But I also wanna see, just see. I'm just to see Canada. I'm just to see the, especially that part of the US which I'd never seen before, which was, the Northeast and going all the way through to Omaha, through passing through South Bend.

Speaker 4 49:17

Yeah.

Speaker 3 49:18

So that's how that happened. And it's, it's almost as if, and then there were two giant miracles that happened on that trip. One was our stay in Montreal, which we found out just as we were pulling up to Montreal, that the city of Montreal was named for the Virgin originally. Literally it was named after her. And two, there's a giant basil ba Basilica Notre Dame in Montreal, which world famous. Most important in the world, and, and I thought, oh, we're probably not gonna get to see it because we don't have any time and I can't be dragging my French from one church to the other. I'd never even been inside a basilica before. Sure enough was we circled to find our hotel and we couldn't find it, and we couldn't find it. We couldn't find it. We discovered that her hotel was next door to the Basilica next door. I mean, it was incredible the luck, because we weren't gonna have time to visit. Of course. Now I gotta see the, the Virgins couture, you know? Mm-hmm. The full like, like the giant enormous devotion to her. Then second miracle on that trip was, I guess it's in the pool. I should just read. Yeah, right. Definitely. I should just read, so lemme, lemme go. I'll start at the beginning and read until we get there. Okay. Okay. So Trent and the Santa Maria novella is a church in, Florence, which tells the story Novella of the Virgin Mary, and it's got incredible, chapel dedicated to her life. Story painted by Gerland, who was Michelangelo's teacher and Michelangelo probably painted in there too when he was learning. Practicing the bright colors we met in a taxi when I was a child visiting Mexico, you an ornament in the rear view mirror strung, swaying, and stamped to a silent glass candle your face and ensconced in relief on gold pendants draped over the hearts of women in white plaster your silhouette against my Juanita wallpaper. Unlike any mother I knew you or a girl point of your nose and curve of your lip matched those on my ceramic dolls, fragile faces shelved out of my reach. I imagined your hands in prayer under your thick robes. Your eyes looking low, seeing the dirt under my feet. I cannot name the intersections you've created between us here. What route led me to this hot train station Inza near this striped marble basilica in your name. What accident or plan took me a year before when all those letters you to you began to land for a night in old Montreal, a city named for you? We discovered at the only dog friendly hotel my friend Jen could find planted. We discovered when circling and lost by a great, I'm sorry, by a great chance or geier on the same block as not dame inside. I could hardly lift my eyes. Gold vaulted ocean of you to the intricate shimmering devotions to you. My tearful, miraculous first meeting with you and three days later, same road trip. I can barely stand to tell you this or pray it because who believes in miracles Now who? But Jen chose, and we were not deliberately on a Holy Mary pilgrimage in the America's tour, but Jen chose. She told me this after Jen chose South Bend, Indiana for a one night stop on our 20 hour road trip from Philadelphia to her house in Omaha. Picked it by finding the midpoint with her finger on a map. Before we knew she'd gimme this free ride from Quebec because I asked her if I could see America with her on her way home. See the heartland and such not 30 miles outside of South Bend after singing for hours New York with Alicia Keys. After driving the blur of a hangover, maybe that was all of Pennsylvania. After the rolling green miles sandwiching, the dozens of mini mall rest stops after hugging the lip. Or was it the tongue of Lake Erie? After traveling through endless ethanol crop, deceptive sea of emeralds, wild lip cornstalks in this clearly un country, this saturated symmetrical gem of a garden, this blinding created single hued horizon. These for the I sing to you hills. This for the I cry, I cry. I cry For You. America, for your hidden people. Shoved through your Isla mill, your people, not visible under God. Your people packing the meat, building the houses, eating walls of sand. All of this land I'd hungered to see. So beautiful. The leaves waving, but a living grave, not a fruited plane. As we grieved, Jen said, I think Notre Dame is in South Bend, or maybe her face spooked. I do a frantic, this is not possible. Search on my phone and Google confirms. Notre Dame is there. The basilica of Sacred of the Sacred Heart. Here at the midpoint of our journey, our dog friendly hotel once more directly across from a one minute drive from another Basilica Miracle.

1 55:06

Beautiful. Thank you. Mm-hmm. Thank you. Yeah. I love hearing, I love hearing that story, that personal encounter with Notre Dame, and I feel like I had a similar experience when I visited here the first time. You did? Yeah. Oh, I wanna hear about it. I wanna hear. I mean, it was, it was just at the grotto and looking at the silica, I just felt that I was meant to be here.

Speaker 3 55:26

Yeah. Oh, mm-hmm. It's such a special, it's, it really. And you know what, one of the things that I wanna echo about how special it is, is that the, the people uniting there mm-hmm. Makes it special. It, it's a grotto. It is a, it is a, a replica, right? Mm-hmm. Of the, but it's the people who built it to make it that special. Mm-hmm. Know I think about those artisans a lot. When I look at the work with the, I think about the artisan behind the craft. The ones who cut out the little stars on her dress, the ones who sew her dresses and dress her up in San Juan Lagos, the ones who carve the, the stones, because they're doing what I'm doing, which is making a place to look at the virgin.

1 56:17

Yeah. Yeah. so maybe second to last question, um, how did you decide to organize or, the general poem within that in,

The Virgin's Influence on Mexican Unity

Speaker 3 56:33

how did I decide to organize that poem? Within that, within that series? Yes.

1 56:37

Or I guess why, why did you choose to make this a series?

Speaker 3 56:41

Yeah. So one of the most fascinating things about the, about the Virgin for Mexicans especially is, how the, how the virgin. Really helped unite Mexico. And it, it happened through the story of, of the Virgin, the Guadalupe. but she united Mexico. She, she united Mexico because of what she did for the indigenous people. When she appeared to Juan Diego on, on that hill in Deak and created roses outta snow and put her, her own image on his, on his mantle, on his clothing, she spoke to the indigenous people. That's where the big uniting came because the indigenous people were, obviously being oppressed and were, worshiping different deities and different gods. And when they saw her and what she echoed in their own goddess to unseen, they accepted the virgin as their goddess. So in there, I think meaning is made in the mind of the, of, of the viewer. And when she meant that to them and the Virgin Mary combined into a single, a single entity, and I think a virgin became a part of a larger tradition of, of female divinity than what was happening even before her, her, her presence in, in Judeo-Christian life. So now we're tracking her back to earlier, earlier centuries, being the creator goddess. the mother of the stars, the mother of the moon, the mother of the sun is the, she's the life force that's that's connected to the earth and also the protector of mothers. So I really wanted to find, this is why it's called transit stations. I really wanted to find where my meetings with GU are with this great mother goddess that is the mother of God. If, if Mary is the mother of God, then she's the mother of God. She's always been the mother of God, even before she was born as a human being. Does that make sense?

Speaker 4 59:12

Yeah. It,

Speaker 3 59:13

I mean, it, it's, it's, it's really a, an enormous concept mm-hmm. To, to tackle. But only a poem can do it, I think because you have to make these leaps, these, and, uh, these leaps of leaps of language, leaps of understanding. So I had to start in the, in with my story, and I am in transit. I'm in a car, I in a taxi, I'm in a car, I'm a road trip. This trip is larger than. It's the, it's the journey of, of, uh, life and, not just mortal life, but a spiritual life that I, uh, connected to. And, idea that our souls precede us, is, is something that is espoused by people in different religions and, that our souls might even be coming back again. That exists in a lot of religions and I like to see the because, because because it's aggregate data.

Speaker 4 1:00:17

Yeah.

Concluding Thoughts and Gratitude

Speaker 3 1:00:18

Honestly. Yeah. You know, it's, it's data that's collected through aggregate means. It's like, what, what are the similarities in these religions? Because I feel like that's where mm-hmm. A, a true, a truer sense of, of the, uh, the other dimensions might lie.

1 1:00:32

Yeah. Well, I think we're outta time, but thank you so much, for being here. I love talking this conversation and a big thank you also to the Institute of Latino Studies. Yeah. Thank you so

Speaker 3 1:00:46

much. It's just been wonderful, wonderful, Trey. Yeah.