[R. S. Gwynn]

I must admit my ignorance of his work, but I do like this ars poetica:

Let Me Tell You What a Poem Brings
for Charles Fishman

Before you go further,
let me tell you what a poem brings,
first, you must know the secret, there is no poem
to speak of, it is a way to attain a life without boundaries,
yes, it is that easy, a poem, imagine me telling you this,
instead of going day by day against the razors, well,
the judgments, all the tick-tock bronze, a leather jacket
sizing you up, the fashion mall, for example, from
the outside you think you are being entertained,
when you enter, things change, you get caught by surprise,
your mouth goes sour, you get thirsty, your legs grow cold
standing still in the middle of a storm, a poem, of course,
is always open for business too, except, as you can see,
it isn't exactly business that pulls your spirit into
the alarming waters, there you can bathe, you can play,
you can even join in on the gossip—the mist, that is,
the mist becomes central to your existence.

Nice rhyming in the closure.

[Julie Steiner]

Okay, I'll say it.

I admire his energy and his evangelistic fervor. I'm glad to see a kid from San Diego make good, and he has certainly done a lot to promote the Latino arts community, as evidenced by things he's said in interviews, including a recent one in Rattle (excerpted here). He's very, very savvy at garnering publicity, and seems eager to share the spotlight with others.

But I can't stand his poetry.

It seems prone to g/i/m/m/i/c/k/r/y and self-importance and scoring cheap brownie points for edgy buzzwords.

A small sample here:
http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/juan-felipe-herrera

Much of it seems to be performance poetry that suffers badly when taken out of performance. So here it is in performance:

http://www.latimes.com/books/jacketc...htmlstory.html

Yes, the guy is very entertaining and likable and energetic...but if you listen to the actual words he's delivering with such panache, nothing exciting or memorable is going on. The emperor has no clothes. But oh, what a parade!

[Rick Mullin]

Thank you, Julie.

RM

[Catherine Chandler]

What Julie said. But there have been worse.

[E. Shaun Russell]

I think I say this every time the position is re-upped, but I honestly believe that making it a termed appointment reduces its import. There have been some great poets in the position, no doubt, but it's a far cry from the English laureates of yesteryear, who generally (Cibber notwithstanding) had the reputation and the chops to make it an enviable honor.

It strikes me that the selection of U.S. laureates might as well be greeted with a shrug and a yawn, if any response at all.

[RCL]

Julie, I wholly agree! Since first reading your post, I've had two lines repeating and repeating in my head and wondered where I read the poem and finally realized it was your last two sentences. If they aren't the end of a poem, they should be!

[Pedro Poitevin]

I really liked him on NPR. He seemed like an unpretentious guy. As I hinted at in this article in Partisan Magazine, I wish that the curators of the canon would pick up other exemplary Latino poets who are not writing overwhelmingly about identity matters. Herrera doesn't quite get us there, but my slight disappointment is more along the lines of my article and less along the lines of Julie's strong distaste.

[Don Jones]

Thank you, Pedro, for your interesting article.

Several thoughts come to mind. Most poetry journals in the U.S. lean left of center. Do I have statistical proof? No. But my anecdotal experience in reading U.S. poetry journals, leaving aside, for example, such obvious outliers as “Trinacria” or “The New Criterion,” are that many if not most lean left.

These left-leaning journals are happy to air grievances of being an outsider and to share exoticisms from non-white poets. As you know, many white liberals are condescending in their view of non-whites. You can call it soft bigotry or some such. They mean well but pretty much cordon off non-whites as a special group in need of help. Identity politics plays a big role in seeing non-white poets as victims, who don’t have a chance to get their word across except through enlightened journals, art films, or post-modern performances.

This arrangement also flatters the egos of white editors who are “doing justice” on behalf of the silenced, or at least muted, voices of Latinos and other non-white poets. It could be that these “enlightened” white editors are practicing “white guilt” in doing their best to compensate for American culture’s general distaste and abysmal ignorance of Latino culture (e.g. “Taco Bell” is Mexican?).

But this is a two-way street. If white editors publish the poems by Latino poets that reinforce their marginalization, then it is also true that Latino poets are writing such poems. Is this not an industry of supply and demand? Could it be that Latino poets know they will make it in the American poetry scene if they self-reference their marginalization in their poetry? Knowing that the reading audiences of poetry journals in English are largely liberal white Americans (again, no statistics but not an unreasonable assumption!), do they not write for that audience either to enlighten or chastise? Is there an unspoken pact of mutual interest that is ultimately to the detriment of Latino poets, who are thereby limited in their publication of subjects and themes outside that contract?

I’m sensitive to the fact, Pedro, that Latino writing that confronts “white lies” and enforces the expression of the excluded is not something that you oppose per se. You make that clear in your article. Neither do I. My point is that this type of writing is encouraged not only through the white powers that be.

Things won’t change until Latinos have greater control over their own lives and expression by releasing themselves from the yoke of white patronage, no matter how well-intentioned.

My prediction is that the US will be a bilingual nation before the end of the century. Again, I have no statistics. I am crystal-balling! But I do know that the Latino population in the US is growing to the horror of the American right. The day will come when all of this you touch upon will be history and Latinos will have their full say in poetry and elsewhere in American life.

I for one embrace and welcome that future. It is my hope that when you become an “abuelo” your grandchildren will know a different world.

Respectfully,

Don

Addendum: On the other hand you do write:

I’m not arguing that Latino poets ought to write less about identity and more about anything else in particular. What I find problematic are not the subjective choices Latino poets make but the biased selections editors make—even if only unconsciously. I know Latino poets write poems about a wide variety of topics. But I can’t help but suspect they aren’t read as carefully when they choose not to write “what they know.” If editors in positions of cultural power have a real commitment to showcasing the remarkable diversity of the contemporary landscape of American poetry, then this phenomenon of unconscious selection bias should be part of the conversation.

So it's not so much a pact but the negligence of non-Latino editors (I realize the term "white" is extremely problematic as well!).

[Wintaka]

In my experience, the office holder's merits as a poet and as a Laureate tend to form an inverse relationship.

I think Mr. Herrera will do well.

-o-

[W.F. Lantry]

Originally Posted by Pedro Poitevin

my slight disappointment is more along the lines of my article ...

And a fine article it is. "...the biased selections editors make—even if only unconsciously..." Nice line. We still see this in other contexts. I suspect we'll be having this discussion for a long time to come..

Now, maybe I'm biased, because I'm from San Diego. But I see this as a win for the home team. We didn't go to the same high school, and he was quite a few years ahead of me, but he's part of that mixed up poetic culture we all grew up in, differently, just a few miles north of the border. Those were the days of celebrating identity, not of trying to trying to move towards identity-free poetry. I'm not even sure what such a goal would look like.

This is the kind of thing I'm used to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-tkXxeqIYGI It only lasts 4 minutes. For those who haven't heard him, it's worth a listen.

Hearing it again, I really don't see what everyone's criticizing. He's a true poet. He deserves this honor.

Best,

Bill