Interview |

A Conversation with Juan Felipe Herrera

Juan Felipe Herrera’s decades of poetry and prose have focused on telling stories from the margins of society, the borders between belonging and unbelonging. Much of that has dealt with a literal border, as he explores the lives of Latinx and Chicanx individuals in this country both documented and undocumented. His writing refuses to turn away from pain and oppression, but refuses also to surrender hope in the face of them. He served as U.S. Poet Laureate from 2015 to 2017, and his 2008 collection Half the World in Light was awarded the National Book Critics Circle Award in poetry. His new poetry collection from City Lights Publishers is Every Day We Get More Illegal.

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David Nilsen: In comparison to your last few books, Every Day We Get More Illegal feels more personally intimate and urgent. Do you think that’s accurate?

Juan Felipe Herrera: Yeah, it’s true. That’s accurate. I changed my whole approach. I wanted to be more personal. I wanted to relate. I wanted to create a closer contact with the readers. I felt that people were really going through a lot. If I could show some concern, that was my internal goal. The rest of the writing. You can have an idea or a goal, but the writing will do its own thing.

With Notes on the Assemblage, that was kind of literally an assemblage of pieces. Some were just art pieces in a way, rather than a letter to the reader. There were memorials to groups who had been just massacred and destroyed. Then there were meditations. That’s what that seemed to be. This one seemed to come directly from me. I started with a book that was addressed directly to America. But it went through so many changes. And then when I finally presented the manuscript to Elaine Katzenberger at City Lights, she took around 40 pages out. Elaine really trimmed it and gave it that tight, cohesive feeling. There was a lot of debris.  It wasn’t going to work, but it’s hard to let go of your work. You want to keep it all. But it is personal, and I wanted it personal.

David: There is a sort of sparse, almost skeletal structure here. There’s a more weary tone to this. Looking at previous collections, even when you’re looking at very bleak topics, there is around that a sense of joy of life, or at least hope. And here there is a weariness. Like things are just piling on your shoulders.

Juan: I hadn’t considered that. But I think you’re right. I’m going to have to meditate on this … I got so overrun and overwhelmed by the horrific attacks on migrants. That’s what got me weary. I had to carry this quite a bit, keeping clips from newspapers. There was an article — I was in Spain when I saw it, but I can’t remember who published it — with a father who brings his little girl on his back across the border, and she’s hanging on. The mother stayed behind on the other side of the Rio Grande. He swims across, and the water just overtakes them. They make it to the shore, and the little girl still has her arm around his back and her hand on the earth. But they’re both dead. They didn’t make it. I’ve been dragging that image around. The weariness. I hadn’t thought of it. I didn’t want to write with weariness, but it comes out. For a close reader like yourself, you sensed it. I wasn’t aware of it, but you’re right. I was carrying this monumental karma. And I had to then experience the effects of it. I made a choice. It was unbearable. Even the cover drawing is a weary figure.

David: What is the origin of that cover?

Juan: I do a lot of drawing. I use a lot of found cardboard that I’ll soak with a garden hose in the backyard, and then I’ll let it soften and crunch. And then I put India ink on it and let it run. It turns into a soft sculpture. Then I’ll tear at it. That’s what you see as the washed-out backgrounds to the Address Books as you go through Every Day We Get More Illegal. The screen is 10-15% on those pages, so you don’t see the detail. What you see on the cover is a panel of cardboard. It’s not twisted or soaked or sun-dried. It’s an 8×10 cardboard panel and all I did was very lightly let my hand just drag across it with the ink. I had an idea of a face, but I wasn’t looking for it. I just let my hand drag. It got an unexpected result. When I looked at it, I said Oh, there is a face here. Then I thought of it for the cover. All this is what I’ve been feeling and seeing. It wasn’t just that I wanted to do art.

David: It makes me think of asemic writing, the way it’s in dialogue with your written words.

Juan: That’s kind of like what I like to do. It has an improvisational flow and you have to let the union of forms appear. You can either write on it or let it become part of the writing.

David: You mentioned that this started out as a letter to America, and I did have the sense reading this that you were in an ongoing dialogue with America, a very uneasy dialogue. It’s your country, you claim it, but there’s a very uneasy relationship there … I was looking specifically at the poem “Enuf.” [Scroll down to the end of the interview to read “Enuf.”]

Juan: That’s a poem that I still have my questions about. I asked Elaine, “Are you sure about this? I don’t know if I want this in the collection.” And she said, “No, it does what it needs to do.” What were you going to say about it?

David: I was thinking of the journey we go through throughout this poem. At the beginning, you say, “I used to think I was not American enuf, / I used to think I would never be American enuf,” and then later on, “this is not a poor boy’s story / this is not a pioneer story / this is your story,” and then you conclude with “Used to think I was not American enuf / now it is the other way around.” As you’ve taken this journey across three pages, you’ve reversed from that feeling of wondering if this is where you belong, to then wondering by the end if America has attained to you, to your story.

Juan: Yes, it works that way. It goes back to your notion of immediate, non-writing writing. I just keep on going. I start with the first line and then I just keep on going. I don’t really have an idea what’s coming up next. And then when I finally got to the end, it was a natural move, a deep move, to turn it around. And then I thought, Okay, but is that saying anything? It is, but that’s not really my style. That’s not my way of seeing things to say blacks, whites, Mexicans. That feels too easy. It’s too hyperpolitical for me. I never use the word white. I never do color poetry when writing about racism. That’s too easy. But this came out, even though it was a questionable part for me. I prefer a more holistic, all-inclusive, one-people vision. There I put the old-fashioned political stamp on it, and I’m still not too happy about it. It’s an easy thing to write. In terms of the vision you’re proposing, it’s stale and it’s old, and that’s something I don’t really promote. But being part of the whole piece, I figured it would melt into the whole poem and it would work out.

David: Structurally, it does feel different from what you’re doing elsewhere. Even just the way it reads on the page. In so many of your poems, there’s this unannounced transition back and forth between more conventional, melodic lyrics and then stream of consciousness that can be disconnected or fragmented, and you lilt back and forth between the two.

Juan: That’s more my style.

David: When you’re sitting down to write, what leads to going back and forth between those modes of expression?

Juan: It’s first line to last line. It’s like [the paintings of Mark] Rothko: one color, and then another color comes in and then more color and the next color. One breath, the first word, and then I follow it. I do have a sense of what it is. That’s all it is, a sense. A first line, an image, a landscape. In that landscape there might be forms, so I’ll take the first form, and the first line, and then everything appears and I write it. I would say 90% of these poems are first takes with very few polishes. But the last poem took a while to figure out what I was going to do with it. Pretty much everything else is a one-shot deal. Like “Interview with the Border Machine”, that’s just a first draft. Maybe I changed a word or two.

I was in Iowa City, and I happened to be at the university there, at the Writers Workshop, reading and writing. I used to attend there from ‘88-’90. They have an old art library by the river. I used to love to stroll around that library because it was all art books, one of my favorite things. I would look at books of Italian sculpture and be extremely inspired and start writing. This last time, the river had flooded some years ago, and it had dampened every book that was in that old library. They dried the books as best as they could and built a new library. I found some early 20th century sculpture books, but not using stone, it was in other mediums. So I opened them up, and once again, I was electrified. That’s where the poem “Color Tense” came from.

I do a lot of that, but it’s immediate, and it’s one stroke. You’re going on a very fast train, and you can’t stop and correct. You just gotta go go go. Then you hit the end, and sit back, and say, “Did it survive?” And if it survived, it’s done. If I was going to change it, I’d have to make it more readable, but you don’t want to do that with your poem. If it’s readable, it’s readable. If it’s not accessible, as long as someone’s light is coming through, and the poem is breathing, then you leave it alone … I really wanted to talk and have a conversation, and that’s the main goal. But you got me on the weariness. You’re totally correct. I’m more weary now than I was when I finished the last piece.

David: That last piece — the 20-page “Come with Me” — is the note of hope the book finishes on. It even ends with the word “hope”. There’s a bit of escapism or wishfulness of what this positive future will be.

Juan: You’re right again. It wasn’t a forced last line, but part of it was encouraged. I wanted this to be the last poem, and if there was a last poem, it was going to end with the word “hope”. I thought, “That’s about the best I can do here.” The poem itself is kind of an embracing poem. I see it in a dark tent. For me, it takes place in a big, dark tent with incense. The landscape I had was on a sand dune somewhere. And you’re right, weariness had set in.

David: I know you mentioned you don’t like to get too political. So much of this collection though is essentially political. What does it mean to be releasing this right now, two months before the U.S. presidential election?

Juan: I think it’s a good thing. I like the fact that it can connect with what’s going on. I do like that. I don’t like to address Trump directly either though. That’s not what I’m after. Especially stuff that’s going on, even though he’s part of what’s going on, a major piece. I enjoy pieces that will address the moment, like those that address the Parkland massacre, or the Tree of Life synagogue massacre. I’ve been doing so much of that. That’s where the weariness comes in.

I see people describe Notes on the Assemblage occasionally as a book of massacres and assassinations. And I have to admit that’s right. That’s correct. It sounds gruesome, and I didn’t want to write a gruesome book. But I believe in compassion, and I believe in kindness and not looking away. I’d like to write about my grandmother. But I’ve always been focused on the social scene, on justice and peace and power and culture. So what’s it all made out of? It’s made out of this: oppression, violence, and exploitation. Of course there’s beautiful things, and beautiful things are great, but what about all these others things that people don’t want to look at? I look at them, and I write about them. But you’re right, it’s running over me.

I’m glad this book is timely. But you know, with migrants, a story comes up one day, and then the next day, it’s gone. And we don’t really see migrant faces on the screen, which is odd. Where are the migrant faces in stories? Some personal conversations? Not just the border. It’s full of suffering, exploitation, pain, separations, detentions, history, arrests. It’s just full of that. But people themselves are resilient. I don’t want to make people out to be victims all the time. Because they cross and they get up and they find ways and become very ingenious and creative. They cross into southern Arizona, which is another horrific scene, and burn through the 120° desert, and some of them make it, and some of them don’t. People are strong.

The children of migrants in Tucson have formed a group called Owl & Panther. It’s a group of youths who survived the crossing, but maybe have parents or siblings who didn’t. They write poems about their experiences. There’s resilience there. Sometimes I tend to focus on the pain and suffering, because I think people don’t want to look at it. But it’s there, and when people read it, they realize they can relate.

I remember one student in Jackson Hole, who said, “I’m always thinking about and feeling the other half of me that is still there in Mexico.” He was able to say that. I encourage people to respond, to express themselves, to write those funky poems that nobody understands.

David: You mentioned there are stories that don’t get told enough, and there are those migrant faces we don’t see enough. You address that a little in the poem “You Just Don’t Talk About It.” It’s two pages of all this ugliness and then at the end you say, “And you – you just don’t talk about it.” It feels like a direct indictment.

Juan: Yes. That’s another poem that I was thinking twice about. It’s just relentless. I wanted it to be more like the poem before it — “Basho & Mandela” — which was romantic and had melody and interesting textures and items. I just left it in, and it is a set of indictments. That’s what’s fueling this poem on and on. I served a call. I took care of the call. It is grueling and it is relentless. It got me weary, like you said.

David: There are a couple poems — you mentioned the one about the border crossing machine, and then “I Am Not a Paid Protestor” — that are both looking at situations that are so ridiculous, that you employ a surrealism or absurdity in your dialogue, because it’s the only way to expose how ridiculous the situations are.

Juan: Yes, it is. I like the interview formats. I’ve really gotten into that, because it’s so direct. These are interviews, interrogations, conducted in a way that clears out the political ornaments, and all you have are the questions and responses. I like that drama, like theater and poetry coming together. It’s Fellini-esque. As I was going through “I Am Not a Paid Protestor,” it was going along pretty good and I realized I had to break that flow and introduce something different. That’s when the protestor said, “I have a meditation frog.” And the other voice says, “You’re out of your mind.” I had a lot of fun with that, where all of the sudden you have the Fellini performance. I love that stuff. It’s like a weird comedy, and it’s real, but it’s also way out there in la la land, because things are out there in la la land. Maybe that’ll be the next project, a Fellini-like collection.

David: Do you feel you have a choice what you write about, or are you captive to what you need to write?

Juan: There is a sense of captivity. This thing about the migrant at the border, it’s such an old story, such an old apparatus. When I was a child, I had to deal with the border patrol. We’d get in and out of the Greyhound bus, and it was nothing new. I was living in San Diego, right by Tijuana, going back and forth. The border stories are part of my family’s story. One of the first songs I learned was “Contraband de El Paso.” It’s about being picked up by border patrol and taken to Leavenworth. I used to sing that when I was a child. It’s a deep story, a funny story, a real story. It’s been transformed into positive things. It’s part of our life.

These are all payback poems. I enjoyed getting back at that thing. I decided to have an interview with a border machine. A chat with the border itself. Instead of coming up with some elaborate poem about getting around it that has all these spirals and lines that are attempting to present the experience, I’m just going to have an interview.

It occurred to me to give the interviewee a Nahuatl name. I remember in the early 1970s we were all into this, the Chicano and Mexicano students. We began to pull at our ancestral histories, and Tzompantli was an attractive figure for me. It’s a skull rack. Human sacrifices were offered on it. I remember the word from back in high school. Xochitl is a popular word for someone who wants to be called flower. That’s the name of the interviewee — Xochitl Tzampantli, or Skull Rack Flower. A lot of Latinx students now have Nahuatl names … I wanted to go right at it, and go at its various means. It’s not just this distant object. It’s interlaced with a larger system of power, and we’re all a part of it. I enjoyed writing that as an interview.

David: What are you writing now?

Juan: I’ve moved on to something new. I’ve been writing and drawing on newsprint with the Prismatic pens I was telling you about. It has to do with Covid. I let go of the actual project a bit. I start with a circle, that I divide into quadrants and triangles, and then I write on those quadrants and triangles. Most of the time I just write a few words. It’s very sparse. The earlier tablets have more on them. The last one I did with India ink. They’re meditations, like daily reports. Meditative documentaries. I started months ago, and I’ve been doing two or three every day. You can’t put too much on them, or you have a word pizza. It’s more like an extended haiku in a circular format. I have close to 400 sheets.

I’ve moved on from some of the weary projects. It just hurts to see people killed. But I feel like it’s some of my mission to respond and honor those people.

 

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Juan Felipe Herrera’s Every Day We Get More Illegal was published on September 22, 2020. You can acquire a copy from City Lights by clicking here.

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Enuf

 

used to think I was not American enuf

used to think I would never be American enuf

i never thought of it

was in it & out                             again

 

used to think How could I ever dress that way

did you ever meet Sadie Hawkins or Tennessee Ernie Ford

used to think Where am I Who am I — a bit too much

used to live on the outside of where you lived

used to throw stones at your window on the way to catechism

used to think I was always on borrowed time

used to knock on your door every day but no one answered

on Halloween I walked with thousands with an empty bag

& when I rolled back to apartment #2 at 2044 Mission Street I delighted

in my hobo torn-pants get-up with my Shinola sideburns

my motion was always angled in the opposite direction

was a green-yellow-brown Mexican in a Greyhound bus

you ever noticed green-yellow-brown Mexicans at the depot

was every color & tone & texture except White or Brown

was Indian somewhere in Central Mexico on the outside

of Tepito the deepest barrio in Mexico City where no one asked questions

was an expert at signing my mother’s Alien Registration Card

was an unlicensed professional window shopper

can you identify the contours and chromatics of a Bulova

a Hamilton a Wittenhauer an Elgin a Longines

my hobbies included watching people go places

lose myself on Indio Street in San Diego

used to think suits were impossible — still do

clip-ties were doable used clothes most appropriate

i found ecstasy in listening to mountain wolves

outside our trailer on the outskirts of the other side of the tracks

on the other mesa of the road few passed

the wolves sounded as if water was near or

as if they were spiraling out from the moon

used to think I was not American enuf

not even in the welfare offices where I employed

superb translation skills for my mother

was a city wonderer a believer in magic a kid who

pierced his left eye throwing scissors at nothing

noticed a colt being born tearing through the life-curtain

my mother wrote notes about my daily progress

into a tiny address book the color of lipstick

the size of three postage stamps

this is not a poor-boy story

this is a pioneer story

this is your story

America are you listening

my father walked to the ocean waters with a jar

in his hand bowed down & filled it & said

“This will heal you”

i did not know how to melt how to fall into another body

spoke a language you could not hear

listened to stories you never told

sang songs you did not sing

had my own way of tracking the sun

used to think I was not American enuf

was filled with dreamy maps of my grandmother Juanita ambling

to Júarez during the Mexican Revolution & my uncles Roberto

Chente & Jeno lacing up their Army leggings at Fort Bliss in 1919

my mother twangin’ a guitar without a stage or land to sing

 

used to think I was not American enuf

now it is the other way around

 

[“Enuf” is reprinted from Juan Felipe Herrera’s Every Day We Get More Illegal with permission from City Lights.]

 

Contributor
David Nilsen

David Nilsen is a National Book Critics Circle member living in Ohio, and his literary reviews and interviews have appeared in The Rumpus, Gulf Coast, The Millions, The Georgia Review, Rain Taxi, and numerous other publications.

Posted in Featured, Interviews

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