“I write while I’m walking, on little scraps of paper,”

June 10, 2015 11:24 AM

Juan Felipe Herrera, From Farm Fields to Poet Laureate [New York Times]

The Library of Congress announced on Wednesday that Juan Felipe Herrera, a son of migrant farmworkers whose writing fuses wide-ranging experimentalism with reflections on Mexican-American identity, will be the next poet laureate. The appointment of Mr. Herrera, who will succeed Charles Wright, comes as the country is debating immigration, a recurring subject of his work, which has been collected in books like “Border-Crosser With a Lamborghini Dream” and “187 Reasons Mexicanos Can’t Cross the Border.”

Related:

- Selected Poems by Juan Felipe Herrera [New York Times]
- Selected Poems by Juan Felipe Herrera [Poetry Foundation]
- Everyday We Get More Illegal Juan Felipe Herrera, 1948 [Poets.org]
- Daniel Olivas interviews Juan Felipe Herrera: Three Questions for Juan Felipe Herrera Regarding His New Book, “Portraits of Hispanic American Heroes” [Los Angeles Review of Books]
- Teaching Poetry Means ‘Make It Human’: Q&A with Juan Felipe Herrera by Maggie Millner [Zyzzyva.org]

posted by Fizz (6 comments total)

FIVE DIRECTIONS TO MY HOUSE

1. Go back to the grain yellow hills where the broken speak of elegance
2. Walk up to the canvas door, the short bed stretched against the clouds
3. Beneath the earth, an ant writes with the grace of a governor
4. Blow, blow Red Tail Hawk, your hidden sleeve—your desert secrets
5. You are there, almost, without a name, without a body, go now
6. I said five, said five like a guitar says six.

posted by Fizz at 11:41 AM on June 10, 2015 [6 favorites]

People who don't even read poetry will be the ones with the worst opinions on this.
posted by cjorgensen at 12:45 PM on June 10, 2015

Boston Review put out five of his poems in April and tweeted them in celebration today. Good stuff.
posted by GrapeApiary at 12:55 PM on June 10, 2015 [2 favorites]

I'm pretty excited about this Poet Laureateship. Even though I took a poetry graduate degree, Herrera's work is new to me (there are always more writers we haven't read than have). That said, what work of his I've read today seems fresh & accessible & timely. I'm curious to see how the topics he tackles in his poetry might chime even more than they currently do with topics on the front page. I think Herrera's elevation to this office is good stuff for poetry in general, but even better for those people whose voices we get to hear in his poems.
posted by foodbedgospel at 1:01 PM on June 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

"People who don't even read poetry will be the ones with the worst opinions on this."

:)
posted by clavdivs at 1:47 PM on June 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

Just heard him on NPR; seems brilliant as well as gracious. Hooray for good news.
posted by allthinky at 1:56 PM on June 10, 2015 [2 favorites]