
I first heard Xánath Caraza read her work last year in Milwaukee at "Cantos Latinos! A Mosaic of Latino Poetry," a poetry and panel of quite diverse Latino poets assembled at the city's library. Xánath sort of blew me away with her reading. I recall her dark hair and a red shawl that, on her, resembled a queenly sort of cape, but what I remember most was the forceful passion she put into the poems she read, the wake-up punch of each word, how, the longer she read, the less her Spanish sounded like language and more like raw sound. I kept thinking of Shangó, the Yoruba deity (or orisha) of lightning and thunder and one whose presence is often associated with music, specifically the percussive power of drums. Her voice had that kind of command to it. I could not imagine a better title for her collection Conjuro, which is the Spanish word for a spell or incantation. She recently spoke to me from her home in Kansas City, and I learned as much about her consideration of culture and history in her work as I did about the sway color holds over it. "Poetry is a feeling of orange," she writes in "Linguistic Filigree." I wanted to know more.
ET: I saw you hold a crowd rapt when you read
in Milwaukee last year, particular with "Yanga," which felt like one of
the central poems of this book, both in its homage to how Africa has helped shape
Latin American history *and* because oral tradition has a powerful claim in your
work. Let's talk about Yanga first. Tell us who he
was.
XC: I fell in love with Yanga early in my childhood; we
studied him in grammar school. It captured me that he was a real person. He was, while a slave, a community organizer and was able to create the first free zone in the Americas in 1630. In a way, these slaves were unconquerable. The original name of the zone was
San Lorenzo de los Negros, but now this town is known as Yanga. I was always fascinated
with language, and I pay attention to idioms. We have all these words we know
come from Africa, and there are towns in Veracruz,, Mexico, that are named
after African voices. So Yanga speaks to the history of Veracruz, and I wanted
to put together Yanga's language and the Spanish versions of these words into a poem.
Louis Reyes Rivera, an African Puerto Rican scholar and performance poet, had a deep impact on me when I saw him in Kansas City. He was such a nice person when I met him, very
calm, down to earth, and then when he stood up to read, he turned into a drum,
like a conga, pounding right in front of you. I put all of that together to
create "Yanga."
Yanga
(para Louis Reyes Rivera)
Yanga, Yanga, Yanga
Yanga, Yanga, Yanga,
Hoy, tu espiritu invoco
Aqui, en este lugar.
Este, este es mi poema para Yanga,
Mandinga, malanga, bamba.
Rumba, mambo, samba,
Palabras llegadas de África.
Esta, esta es mi respuesta para Yanga,
Candomble, mocambo, mambo,
Candomble, mocambo, mambo,
Hombre libre veracruzano...
ET: Let's talk about the presence of oral tradition in these poems. As I read Conjuro , I kept feeling I was reading a songbook, a gathering of melodies that relies heavily on image and does so through a
prose-like style, which might attribute to why your book was a
finalist for multicultural fiction in the International Book Awards as well as for poetry in the International Latino Book Awards. Above all, I felt as if sound is king in these pages, with
consonants percussively clinking up against one another and a skillful
repetition demanding attention. I'd love for you to discuss the role of sound in
this book and in your creative life.
XC: I'm always thinking about rhythm; that is true. I
don't want to fall into stererotype, but I love music. I am Latina and whenever I
hear a song I like, I start humming and dancing. I grew up like that. I don't
feel like I should be sitting down when I hear music, and I think that is reflective in
my writing. I know that the way we remember a poem is through its rhythm. A a certain kind of beat can captivate us. "Yanga" is like
that.
When I read it to children, they also respond to that
rhythm without even knowing what I might be saying. It's very deliberate.
The trick for poets is to make it as simple as possible but with technique
behind it. We have to work our poems.
ET: I also thought the syntax and phrasing of
these poems felt as if they originated first in Spanish and then were translated from
head to hand through the act of writing. Did you experience this process, or
something like it, while drafting the poems for this
book?
XC: That's exactly how it happens. Creatively, I always
write in Spanish. And once I think it's ready, I begin translating into
English. If I have to write an academic paper or column, I can do it first in English.
But creatively, I prefer Spanish. I reached that conclusion a few years ago. I
kept editing myself while trying to write poems; I was hyperaware and I realized
that this was not going to work. Especially for the short stories; I was so
concerned to say it correctly in English. And then I thought, 'Let it go; write
in Spanish, and later worry about the translation.'
ET: During a recent interview over at La Bloga, you
mentioned that why you don't speak Nahuatl, you grew
up listening to it and recall its sounds, mostly rhythms that you describe as
"green
sounds, from the open spaces of my grandmother’s indigenous community." This presence of green, and of color in general, is
a vital part of this collection. Can you comment on your use of color and why it appears so
forcefully in these poems?
XC: I do not do it consciously, but I'm a very visual
person, and it is reflected in my language. Colors come to me, in one way or
another. Green is what I remember from my grandmother's house because she used
to live in an indigenous community in the northern part of Veracruz. Back then,
we had to travel nine hours from Xalapa, the capital of the state of Veracruz, and
all the way down to her house. The fields along the way were green. Where we lived in Xalapa,
it's a cloud forest, but by her it's very hot, very humid and jungle like.
Green, green, green. Una cupola de verde. And very thick air. I
remember thinking, 'I'm inhaling all that green.'
ET: We've talked about how Conjuro includes indigenous, African, and Mexican influences. But I've also heard you say
that the Midwest has its imprint on these pages as well, an unexpected
ingredient when considering an Indo-Afro-Latino blend of cultures. Can you tell
us how the Midwest has permeated these poems and
why?
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