Jose Angel Araguz's Blog, page 7

Rotura released + virtual event info

The book cover of Rotura.

First off, I’m excited to share that my new poetry collection, Rotura, is officially out from Black Lawrence Press. Copies can be ordered here.

I want to thank everyone who has supported me throughout the years, either by pre-ordering this latest book or has simply read a poem of mine and held space for it. This poetry thing is amazing and I’m grateful to be able to share it with so many communities and individuals. Abrazos to each of you!

I also want to thank Diane Goettel for believing in this book and for the wonderful phone call last May. We were in the middle of being forced to move (long story, oof), and hearing that the manuscript had resonated with her meant a lot amid the chaos. Thank you as well to everyone at BLP who continues to be wonderful to work with!

Flyer for the Pandora’s Box Creative Showcase event.

I’m also excited to share that I have a few virtual events in the works in support of Rotura. The first of these events is this Sunday as part of Pandora’s Box Creative Showcase. Here are the full details:

DATE/TIME: Sunday, March 20th, 5-7pm
MODALITY: virtual, on Zoom
HOW TO REGISTER: send me a brief message for registration link: thefridayinfluence@gmail.com

There will be an open mic after the features. Sign up for slots will begin at the event.

Hope to see you there!

José 

some updates

The cycle of being exhausted and exploited continues, but here are some updates:

A copy of Rotura at my desk.Starting off with the image above–happy to report that I received my author copies of my new book, Rotura (Black Lawrence Press), which is due out officially this Friday, March 18th. There’s still time to pre-order a copy.Also, I will be doing an Instagram Account Takeover for Bear Review starting tomorrow. I’ll be posting and doing stories all week, so be sure to stop by their account and say hi Also also, I am happy to share that my poem, “Mexican,” is included in the latest issue of THRUSH Poetry Journal. THRUSH has been a dream journal for over a decade, so excited to be a part of this issue including work by Deborah Allbritain, Carla Carlson, James Diaz, Tennessee Hill, Chisom Okafor, Doug Ramspeck, and Meg Thompson.Lastly, I’m excited to share that the latest issue of Salamander is out in the world (after some printer delays)! This issue features stellar work by Anindita Sengupta, Lauren K. Carlson, Sara Elkamel, Seth Leeper, Katie Marya, Sarah Cedeño, and this moving lyric sequence by Glen Stowell. Stay tuned for details of a virtual event to celebrate this latest issue!

I’ve got a few more things in the works related to Rotura, but for now, thank you to everyone who has pre-ordered and/or who is reading this right now. I hope you are finding ways to find peace and compassion for yourselves and others.

José

Latinx Poetry: opportunity and some thoughts

As the title suggests, I have two things on my mind to share this week:

First, I want to spread the word of the upcoming deadline for the Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize, a no-entry fee competition which “supports the publication of a first full-length book of poems by a Latinx poet residing in the United States.” Find out more information here.

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Second, the “thoughts” bit. This week in teaching my Latinx Literature class and discussing Rhina P. Espaillat’s poem, “Bilingual/Bilingüe,” I found myself musing briefly on how this poem is a microcosm of some of the controversies surrounding Latinx poetry and the different practices in publishing work in both English and Spanish.

Specifically, I have learned and seen over the years within the Latinx community arguments for and against italicizing Spanish words in a text; arguments for and against including definitions and/or translations with a bilingual text; arguments for and against even mixing the two languages. These arguments hold a nuanced weight and the conclusions are different for each writer because they strike at the core of one’s identity and agency.

In terms of identity, there is much to be said about representation, how having un poco de Spanish can make one feel seen, a little less alone among a sea of English. A decision to include or not include Spanish is often one that factors in audience. Who is this work for? Who has access to it?

In terms of agency, being able to represent one’s full authentic self on the page is essential. More importantly, having the power to make that decision is key to feeling respected as a writer. Often the decision to italicize Spanish used in a text is the choice of an editor or publisher; when this happens, a writer feels othered, made to feel different and exoticized. One need only look at the unquestioned, unothered use of Latin and French phrases in texts to see how these feelings naturally arise.

In Espaillat’s poem, there is a purposeful intent in the handling of Spanish words (something which she shares insights on in this lovely interview). This poem shares a narrative of a daughter being told not to speak Spanish at home while at the same time being encouraged to find a place in the world of English words. The Spanish early in the poem is intentionally kept in parentheses, a move that parallels the daughter’s need to separate her languages in order to obey her father’s wishes.

It is only at the ending couplet that both father and daughter–as well as English and Spanish–come together:

he stood outside mis versos, half in fear
of words he loved but wanted not to hear.

This travel of Spanish down the poem from parentheses to taking up its own space proper had me going off a bit. I hope it made sense to my students. I hope it makes sense to y’all.

Abrazos,

José

writer feature: Kathleen Aguero

Kathleen Aguero

The Rider/The Horse

Fear saddled me, trained me,
stabled me, named me,
braided my hair.
Carrot and stick,
taught me to dance,
taught me to rear,
shod me and hobbled me,
bred me and pastured me,
cantered me, galloped me,
spurred me and drove me
out of the meadow
into the thicket,
out of the thicket
into the woods.
Fear held the bridle,
tightened the bit.
Fear was the master
brutal and quick,

but was I the horse?
Was I the rider?

*

The above poem from Kathleen Aguero’s World Happiness Index (Tiger Bark Press) moves me in the way it interrogates Fear the concept through visceral means. This viscerality is evoked through the use of short phrasing and enjambment. Phrases are broken up, each line pulling the reader in one direction, only to shift to another direction in the next. The speaker describes the ride Fear takes them on, and we are there with them.

One of the more impactful moments is the jolt brought on by the rhyme toward the end of the last stanza. The way “bit” and “quick” play off each other sonically create an echo and imply an attempt at order after so many lines of chaos. This implied order is then upended by the final lines and their closing questions. These questions leave us wondering alongside the speaker, only we wonder and wander back to our lives to reflect, directly and indirectly, on the role of Fear in our lives.

Which is one way to work in that I’ve been living with fear myself these days. Not a new state, but one that keeps changing as folks become comfortable trying to convince themselves and others that we are moving on from the pandemic. This isn’t, of course, the case.

And yet, myself and others who are at risk, who are caregivers, who are disabled and on immunosuppressant medications, who are parents worried about their kids-jobs-sanity, who are at the mercy of a paycheck and are forced to place themselves at risk, we are having to navigate two realities: the one we know and the one being forced.

Hell, I just learned the phrase “endemic delusion,” which is a thing here and abroad.

Which brings me back to Aguero’s poem. How it underscores the ways in which fear can teach us things. And that it’s not fear that teaches but our surviving it, doing our own interrogation and work.

The jolts keep coming. If you’re reading this, I hope poems like this one and others steady you on your path.

*

Copies of Kathleen Aguero’s World Happiness Index can be purchased from Tiger Bark Press.

community feature: RWW Annual Writers’ Retreat

Just a quick post to share about the RWW Annual Writers’ Retreat.

The logo for RWW inc.

RWW (which stands for “Roots. Wounds. Words.”) is: “a sacred space wherein BIPOC stories are celebrated, and BIPOC storytellers immersed in liberation. At the Writers’ Retreat, Storytellers receive literary arts instruction offered by award-winning BIPOC writers in the fields of nonfiction, fiction, poetry, and speculative fiction.”

This opportunity just came on my radar and I am excited to share it because of how necessary such spaces are for marginalized writers. In both my teaching and writing career I feel like I’m witnessing a necessary shift from mere critique of the canon and literary traditions to more and more spaces where marginalized folks can be present with each other and, through presence, embody what it means to be part of the literary community.

On a more geeky note: I’m excited that this opportunity allows folks to work with Nisi Shawl, a dynamic essayist and writer of speculative fiction. She is just one of a group of stellar faculty who will participate at this retreat. If you are able to apply, check them out.

Deadline to apply is February 6th.

community feature: Solstice MFA!!!

Just a quick post to share some of the virtual events open to the general public going on at this year’s Solstice MFA Winter Residency! Super excited to be given a chance to work with these graduate students, building with them and guiding them on their respective writing paths, as well as to engage with the vibrant Solstice community.

With Solstice events, you can expect a multi-genre experience, reflecting our range of concentrations and expertise. Events below include readings of poetry, creative nonfiction, fiction, young adult and children’s literature, graphic novel.

If you’re interested in attending these virtual events, be sure to register at the links provided below. I myself will be personally involved in the Faculty reading on Tuesday, FYI

Here are the events:

Sunday, Jan. 9, 7:30 p.m. EST: Guest Faculty & Writer-in-Residence Reading

Hear a sampling of three-minute readings from our winter 2022 guest faculty and writers-in-residence, including Devi Lockwood, Shelley Linso, and Terrance Hayes (register here).

Monday, Jan. 10, 7:30 p.m. EST: Graduating Student Reading

This residency, four Solstice students will earn their MFA degrees. Hear them read from the work they crafted during their time in the program (register here).

Tuesday, Jan. 11, 7 p.m. EST: Solstice Faculty and Staff Reading

This one will offer a sampling of work from faculty mentors and staff at Solstice. Each reading will last three minutes. Readers include Meg Kearney, Kathleen Aguero, Venise Berry, David Yoo, Laura Williams McCaffrey, and mine own self (register here).

To find out more about these events, go here.

Happy new year, y’all!!!

Flyer for the faculty reading next Tuesday.

microreview: Villainy by Andrea Abi-Karam

review by José Angel Araguz

Book cover for Villainy by Andrea Abi-Karam.

“Bodies fray at their limits. At their limits, they become indistinguishable.”

Tiqqun

This quote from Tiqqun “a French-Italian ultra-left anarchist philosophical journal or zine, produced in two issues from 1999 to 2001” is one of four quotes that open Andrea Abi-Karam‘s Villainy (Nightboat Books) and also the most telling one. Telling because–as this collection was written in the wake of the 2016 Ghost Ship warehouse fire and the 2017 Muslim ban–this book is about navigating grief as much as about being present in a marginalized existence. The bulk of this collection is comprised of lyric sequences that critique capitalism, fascism, colonialism, and racism with a vulnerability and awareness that is palpable.

Palpable: what else to call poems with lines such as “I RUB MESSAGES INTO THE WALL B/C I KNOW / SOMEDAY I WILL BE DELETED.” The urgency implied in the typographical choice to use all caps (here and consistently throughout the collection) brings with it the implication of presence. Words in all caps are emphasized, given more presence before the eye. Such emphasis and presence are more often associated with brand slogans, protest signs, even text messages–a set of seemingly incongruent examples that yet are totally in line with the world interrogated by Abi-Karam. Only that these are poems, and the poetic space is flexible enough to hold a human pulse despite these implications, and resilient enough push back, to voice and be a voice.

This voice persists despite the mortality and the risk of “indistinguishability” implied in the Tiqqun quote (its words as much as the Tiqqun name, as the writings published in the journal were written by a number of different people but all published under the anonymous moniker of Tiqqun). This idea of the collective, the crowd, is engaged with throughout Villainy. Crowds are here in the tragic fire being elegized; in the riots and street protests that are described; and in the spaces of queer community and building.

Reading this collection, one senses the need to risk becoming indistinguishable because of the fraying that happens at the body’s limits. The oppressive forces that push bodies to these limits are a kind of death, so, in pushing back on those forces one is pushing back on death as well. The power inherent in this thinking can be seen in these lines from “Small / Medium / Lust”:

the problem is
when u get arrested
with an X on yr id card
where do they put u?
actually
the problem is prisons
what if instead of collecting separate lonely individualities
we set them free 2 sink back into the collective

Here, the first four lines depict a dehumanizing scenario that nonbinary individuals have to face, that of standing out from the binary system in which people are processed and imprisoned. The following four lines continue on the theme of dehumanization by placing it as a problem inherent in prisons themselves. By reframing prisons as places populated by “separate lonely individualities” a little more humanity is imbued on these individualities. The last line’s use of the word “collective” further humanizes them, reframing the word in the process. This nod to prison abolition is in keeping with the politics of the collection and also underscores the ways in which Abi-Karam would have us thinking about the collective in society.

I used the word “risk” above more in a conceptual way, as the lived experience is different from what is implied. Within a marginalized existence, one doesn’t have the privilege to take risks; it can’t be called a risk if there is no other choice available to one. While I speak in the conceptual here, those who exist in the margins read the real world implications of what I am stating here. That it is not a choice to go homeless when capitalism shows your labor (and, consequently, your life) as being “expendable.” When a queer individual is attacked merely for existing in public, they have not made a choice and assumed a risk–they are just existing, and, in the mind of the oppressor, have been deemed not an individual but a signifier for something they hate. In these hurtful ways, society abuses the idea of the collective by using it to take away an individual’s humanity.

Reimagining political poetry in the 21st century is long overdue. Long overdue is the communal act of redefining what it means beyond the old arguments: on one side, the privilege of those who can make a distinction (or at least think they can make a distinction) to not write politically, and, on the other side, the very real circumstances of the marginalized communities who cannot do anything but be political (again, no choice).

It could be that in the 21st century the political poem is something that does not need to be defined because it is the standard. As the world devolves under a global pandemic framed by the persistent oppression and ecological destruction inherent in racist, capitalist structures, political poetry is evolving. Collections like Claudia Rankine’s Citizen, Cyrée Jarelle Johnson’s Slingshot, and now Villainy show us the ways in which the lyric can interrogate and speak to our collective mortality while honoring our individual imaginations and existences.

*

Copies of Villainy can be purchased from Nightboat Books.

new craft feature

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Just a quick post to share that I have been featured in Cultural Daily’s column, “Poets on Craft.”

In this short bit of prose, I share about my journey with a poem, from start to finish, discussing some of the ethos behind my process and practice.

Check out my feature here as well as the illuminating words of friend and fellow poet John Sibley Williams also featured here.

Special thanks to Bunkong Tuon for the invite!

ROTURA talk recording

Just a quick post to share that the recording from my talk last Saturday on my forthcoming book, Rotura, is available on YouTube (see below)!

Thank you to everyone who made the event! I had a great time answering questions and sharing new work.

Should you be interested in pre-ordering a copy from Black Lawrence Press, go here.

So excited to have y’all read this one!

Be well

virtual event: December 4th

Just a quick note to share about an upcoming virtual event next weekend!

Please join me as I share insights about the making of my forthcoming poetry book, Rotura (Black Lawrence Press), as part of the Suffolk University English Dept.’s Faculty Lecture series.

This talk will take place on Saturday, Dec. 4th, at 6:00-7:00PM EST via Zoom. ASL interpretation will be part of this event. The Zoom link for registration is accessible below.

Registration Link: https://suffolk.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJYpdu-srj8tH9Mm63oX5e01lyvwvFy8QhR_ 

And here’s the link to pre-order Rotura: https://blacklawrencepress.com/books/rotura/ 

I look forward to seeing y’all there

José