WEBVTT

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OK, we're going to be beginning,
so if you are standing

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please take a seat please.

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Hi, everyone.

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I'm Diana Delgado.

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I'm the literary director
here at the Poetry Center.

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Yay!

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[APPLAUSE]

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And I'm really, really
excited to stand here

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after summer passed
so quickly, and we've

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been through so many things.

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And we had Anthony Cody
here and Mai Der Vang,

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but I'm really excited to
have Lorna Dee Cervantes here

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tonight to start our
fall reading series.

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So let's give a hand
to Lorna for coming out

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to launch her book.

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I'm going to read a
brief introduction

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that I wrote for
Lorna, but before I

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do I want to just sort of share
of three things with you, four

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things, actually.

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The first is that we
worked really hard.

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We always work really hard
here at the Poetry Center,

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but as a team, we
really have been

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more thoughtful with making
sure that the poets that are

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visiting and reading, that
we give them an opportunity

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to work in the
community with you

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all in the form of a
class or a workshop.

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So I just want to
just remind everyone

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that next week we have
a class, Political

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Lyric with Aria Aber,
The Poetics of the Future

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with Shayla Lawz.

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After that, in October, we have
generative poetry workshop--

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Let's Play! with Victoria Chang.

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And I think we may
have one more spot--

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we have a few more spots in
November with Sandra Cisneros

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and Liliana Valenzuela on The
Useful Joys of Translation

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for Poets and Translators.

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And we have one class in
October, going back to October,

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Matt Bell's Rewriting and
Revision at Every Stage.

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So I just want to remind
everyone about those classes.

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We're hoping to get those filled
up so that we can encourage

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other poets who are visiting
to say, oh my God, people

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are so excited to
take a class with you.

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Please teach a class with us.

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So just keep that in mind.

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Also, want to remind you that
next week-- next Thursday--

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we have Aria Aber and Shayla
Lawz, who will be reading.

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After that, in October,
Victoria Chang.

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October 13th, Rita
Dove will be coming.

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So stop there-- it's dramatic.

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And stop there.

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And we normally think
about a paper calendar

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that we put out way,
way ahead of time.

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And we all work
feverishly to get it done

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and to bug the poets.

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And our whole team works
on a paper calendar

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that we love to get
out to you very early

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so that you can
register for classes

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and also make time to
come to our readings.

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But unfortunately, that
calendar is not here,

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and so we just want to
apologize to everybody for that.

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There have just
been a whole bunch

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of things that have sort of
prevented us from getting that

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to you on time,
but in the future

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we're hoping to get that
to you at an earlier time.

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But if you're really interested
in the paper calendar,

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they are coming.

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They're just delayed.

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OK.

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Remember, after Lorna's reading,
we're going to sell books.

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She has her newest book,
April on Olympia, there.

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And now I'm going to launch
in to introducing Lorna Dee

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Cervantes.

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It is impossible to
introduce Lorna Dee Cervantes

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without briefly taking a
moment to contextualize

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her more than 40 years of impact
on the development of Chicano,

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Chicana, Chicanx
poetry, which began

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in 1981 with the publication
of her watershed book

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Emplumada, which won
an American Book Award.

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Since that publication, she
has published five more books,

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the most recent April on
Olympia, and her body of work

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has redefined working
class narratives

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by centering the experiences of
women and that of historically

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oppressed communities
including, my friends,

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one of our most marginalized
ecosystems, the earth.

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Operating from
American and Indigenous

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poetics and in addition
to branches of philosophy,

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science, and linguistics,
Cervantes's poems

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are vivid and
realistic portrayals

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of the oppressive conditions
that Brown people endure

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in their day to day life
and at the same time

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possess the notable
hallmarks of the surrealists

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Neruda and Lorca, symbolists
known for their ability

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to leap from image
to image and produce

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an effect that Cervantes
herself has called

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the unexpected inevitable.

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In a 2003 interview
with Cervantes

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titled "Memphis Minnie,
Genocide, and Identity

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Politics,"
interviewer Alex Stein

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said this about
Lorna Dee Cervantes:

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"She talked until I ran out of
audiotape, some four or five

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hours.

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I got the feeling she
was just warming up.

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She's an enchanting monologist,
full of feints and thrusts,

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half-stops and mad dashes.

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For every sentence
she finishes, she

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leaves five sentences dangling.

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At times listening
to her, I felt

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that I was being engulfed in
a whirlwind in which caught

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up and swirling
around my head were

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the bucking, tumbling pages
of 1,000 half-tamed poems."

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Agreed.

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Agreed.

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One often walks
away from the poems

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of Lorna Dee Cervantes
feeling that one

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has encountered a master.

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Yet this master
defies categorization

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in that the voice, her voice,
has traveled a long way

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to be here with us, perhaps
ascending from the pit of earth

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to share.

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"I come from a long line
of eloquent illiterates

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whose history reveals
what words don't say."

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Or as the essayist
David Shields has

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said on what one must accomplish
to be considered a master,

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"One must dissolve a
genre or invent one."

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I met Lorna Dee Cervantes
more than 20 years ago.

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On the page through
her poem "The Poet

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is Served Her Papers"
while enrolled

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in literature of
the Mexican-American

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at a community college that was
filled with first generation

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southern Californian Chicanos.

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And I read her poem "The
Poet is Served Her Papers,"

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and it began, "So tell
me about fever dreams,

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about the bad checks we
scrawl with our mouths,

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about destiny missing
last bus to oblivion."

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And that poem not only took my
head off but split me in two

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to show me a place
and an art form that

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had previously only
been shown to me

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through the lens of whiteness.

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In short, she created a bridge
between the two cultures

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I was living in,
that of the dominant

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and that of my world, Latinidad.

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And now here we have
Lorna Dee Cervantes here

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to read from April
on Olympia, which

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is politically driven
and reflective, again,

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of Cervantes's dedication
to the self and the earth.

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"You gave me springtime in
the haunting thrushes cry,"

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she writes.

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And later, "Show me a map where
the countries aren't women."

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The poems in this
collection are for the dead

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but also for us that continue
to live on and choose

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to heal in our short but
always significant life.

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Thank you for helping me
welcome la maestra, Lorena Dee

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Cervantes.

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[APPLAUSE]

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