Please tell us about the making of “Pareces Blanca.”
I grew up in Phoenix and moved to San Diego before leaving the West for Boston. There I found my daily interactions in Spanish dwindling to the daily phone calls I’d make to my family (yes, daily). When encountering other Spanish-speakers in New England, it was a small joy to use the language, but in the particular interaction from which this poem was born, I found myself having to defend my Latina-ness. I’ve been told (many times over) that I don’t “look Mexican/Latina/Hispanic/etc.,” and I’ve never really understood what that means or why people find the need to call attention to it. Shortly thereafter, the Juan Luis Guerra “La Bilirrubina” lyric used in the poem came to mind: Ay, cuando te miro y no me miras. Oh, when I look at you and you do not look at/see me.
Which three words do you overuse in poems?
In the full-length I recently completed: of, say, mother.
In the boxing poems I’m currently working on: man, fight, Bobby.
Do you have poems in mind that you would like to write, but you know they are not ready to be written yet?
Too many to list… but I did do an oral history with my mother recently on a drive to Mexico. We were alone and she told me many things I didn’t know about her, about love, about her childhood, about our family. There are many poems to be written, but now isn’t the time.
Has serving as editor of The Shallow Ends changed the way you view your own work?
It hasn’t changed my writing as much as it’s changed the way I submit my work to other publications: being thoughtful about the specific work I’m sending and how it fits into that journal’s aesthetic; if they’ve published poets I admire; if I trust the editors to take good care of the work. That last one’s the most important to me now.
What does a typical writing session look like for you?
Texting myself lines as I think of them. Sitting down to write using said lines, sometimes at work if things are slow (shhhh) and sometimes at night or on weekends. There’s a lot of structure in my day-to-day work/personal life, but very little structure in my writing life these days, which makes me a little anxious, but I think some anxiety and spontaneity is good for my writing.
I grew up in Phoenix and moved to San Diego before leaving the West for Boston. There I found my daily interactions in Spanish dwindling to the daily phone calls I’d make to my family (yes, daily). When encountering other Spanish-speakers in New England, it was a small joy to use the language, but in the particular interaction from which this poem was born, I found myself having to defend my Latina-ness. I’ve been told (many times over) that I don’t “look Mexican/Latina/Hispanic/etc.,” and I’ve never really understood what that means or why people find the need to call attention to it. Shortly thereafter, the Juan Luis Guerra “La Bilirrubina” lyric used in the poem came to mind: Ay, cuando te miro y no me miras. Oh, when I look at you and you do not look at/see me.
Which three words do you overuse in poems?
In the full-length I recently completed: of, say, mother.
In the boxing poems I’m currently working on: man, fight, Bobby.
Do you have poems in mind that you would like to write, but you know they are not ready to be written yet?
Too many to list… but I did do an oral history with my mother recently on a drive to Mexico. We were alone and she told me many things I didn’t know about her, about love, about her childhood, about our family. There are many poems to be written, but now isn’t the time.
Has serving as editor of The Shallow Ends changed the way you view your own work?
It hasn’t changed my writing as much as it’s changed the way I submit my work to other publications: being thoughtful about the specific work I’m sending and how it fits into that journal’s aesthetic; if they’ve published poets I admire; if I trust the editors to take good care of the work. That last one’s the most important to me now.
What does a typical writing session look like for you?
Texting myself lines as I think of them. Sitting down to write using said lines, sometimes at work if things are slow (shhhh) and sometimes at night or on weekends. There’s a lot of structure in my day-to-day work/personal life, but very little structure in my writing life these days, which makes me a little anxious, but I think some anxiety and spontaneity is good for my writing.