2022-09-20 LIVE from NYPL Latinx Voices in Poetry Featuring: Rio Cortez, author of Golden Ax and The ABCs of Black History Darrel Alejandro Holnes, author of Stepmotherland & Migrant Psalms Gabriel Ojeda-SaguŽ, author of Madness and Losing Miami Melissa Lozada-Oliva, author of Dreaming of You and Peluda >> Paloma Celis Carbajal: Okay. Good evening, everyone. I'm Paloma Celis Carbajal, the curator for the Latin American, Iberian and Latino Research Collections at the New York Public Library. I am so pleased to introduce a group of writers who have all recently published spectacular books of poetry. They are here tonight to talk about their new books and will treat us to a reading from each one. The authors are Darrel Alejandro Holnes -- sorry -- Holnes, Gabriel Ojeda-Sagué and Melissa Lozada-Oliva. Due to unforeseen circumstances, Rio Cortez couldn't make it here tonight. You can find their full bios in your printed programs or on the event listing on the website. Tonight we're celebrating National Hispanic and Latinx Heritage Month at the New York Public Library. From September 15th to October 15th and all year round, choose from free events and programs honoring the cultures and contributions of people with ancestors from countries in Latin America and the Iberian Peninsula. Visit nypl.org/hispaniclatinx heritagemonth for book recommendations, events, multilingual storytimes for children and much more. Before continuing, I would like to take a moment to acknowledge the hundreds of thousands of people in the Caribbean, especially in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic, who are currently suffering the effects of Hurricane Fiona. As you know, the largest Latino populations in New York City trace their ancestry to Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. I encourage you to pay attention to the situation and to look for different ways you could offer assistance. And now continuing with our program with regards to our Latinx, Latin American and Hispanic holdings, the New York Public Library has a wide array of resources in English, Spanish, Portuguese and several other Western languages and indigenous languages. These resources range from the earliest books printed in the Americas in the 1500s, maps, prints and photographs, to contemporary literature, history, comic books, zines as well as scholarly studies by thousands of Latina, Hispanic and Latin American authors worldwide. If I pique your curiosity, I invite you to attend our collection's open house, the Caloris, Latinx and Hispanic Presence in Library Collections. It will take place in this building, in this same building, on Friday, October 14th, from noon to 2pm at the James Lennox and John Jacob Astor room. You'll have a large display of the many types of materials in our collections. For those in the audience who have a New York Public Library card, you can check out the books by tonight's authors at our Stavros Niarchos Foundation library right across the street at Fifth Avenue and 40th street. You can also consult them on site here at the Stephen A. Schwarzman building. And if you don't have a card, my colleagues at the Stavros Niarchos Foundation library or in this library can help with that too. Additionally, the books by the poets in this reading are available for purchase both for those of you in this room and through our online shop for those of you attending virtually. Whichever way you purchase, the proceeds will benefit The New York Public Library. In a moment, I'll turn it over to Melissa, who will kick off tonight's readings. And she will later lead a conversation with these wonderful panelists followed by a Q&A session. Tonight's speakers will be glad to take your questions at the end of the program. If you're here with us in the room, look for those note cards and pencils left for you on your seats. Please write your questions at any time. And some of our incredible library staff will be coming by periodically to pick them up. If you're watching online, you can ask your question in the chat or by emailing publicprograms@nypl.org. Wherever you are, we'd love to hear from you. I want to say a quick thanks to Maria Farah and our partner Latinx and Publishing, who helped us dream up this event. Latinx and Publishing is a network of book professionals committed to supporting and increasing the number of Latino, Latina, Latine, Latinx in the publishing industry, as well as promoting literature by for and about Latinx people. Live From NYPL is made possible by the continuing generosity of Celestes Bartos, Manassas Bahani Bartos and Adam Bartos. And of course, by all of you, our wonderful supporters and friends near and far. Thank you for that support. And thanks again for being here. And with that, let's please welcome our first reader, Melissa Lozada-Oliva. [ Applause ] >> Melissa Lozada-Oliva: Hello. Thank you so much for having me. My name is Melissa. I'm going to be reading from a book, Dreaming of You, out in paperback. It is about a poet who brings Selena Quintanilla back to life through a seance and the disastrous consequences that follow. This first poem is called The Future is Lodged Inside of the Female. It's kind of when the poet at the center of this book, who is also named Melissa -- autofiction -- is kind of losing her mind. The future is lodged inside of the female. The female is me, ripping off the skin and trying to make the perfect empanada. Passive tense because who did the lodging, or was it self-inflicted lodging? Victim is suffering. Victim pronounced dead on arrival, lodge big, lodge for the forgotten ones, lodge like it's 1995. Would be nice to advance an upgrade, but I'm just not feeling it today. Also then I can't claim to be marginalized. So whatever. In the future, I'm not Spanish or Latina or Latinx. Instead, I am Hispaniced. ED because past tense because colonialism, as in my identity is something that happened to me. Panic to acknowledge my crippling anxiety. LOL. Here's a haiku. Somewhere in the world, there is a cishet white man apologizing. That is a haiku, and I will get the attention I deserve for writing it. I want to turn the meat sack I live in into something more efficient, something that pops up toasted bread and tells you what's trending today. How many ways can I pull off my brand? I have tweezers, sharp keys, an exacto knife. It's okay -- I'm okay with living with a gaping wound and then the scar tissue and the story to have prepared when people point and say what happened there. My work is all puns stapled together into the shape of a woman who was really listening to you and laughing at all the right times. I'm sorry, this isn't about my mom's accent enough, or the way my father dilutes it. I'm sorry this isn't about the 10 occurrences of microaggressions I can think of off the top of my head. Are you with him or the cleaning service? I'm just as dark as you in the summertime, so people think I'm also Colombian. You're smarter than the other Latinos in this class. Okay. So maybe like three? Another haiku. Somewhere in the world, Lena Dunham is naked apologizing. My bad, you asked me to make this more political and aggressive, so I'm turning the phrase "it's up to you, I'm down for whatever" into a machete and hacking at an ATM until I can pay the train fare it took to get me here. Thanks. Realizing that all my life I've been trying to look like Selena. Is Selena the hole that's been carved out for me? I can jam my body through it, but it'll probably fall to the other side. Is my body Selena adjacent? The female is 23 Hispaniced with a bullet wound to the back. The female is 45 Hispaniced, crying in her car with a gun. The female cannot fight have a lover if she is busy finding herself. The female killed her best friend because only one woman can exist at a time. Whoops. Honestly, so sad that she was dead, but, like, what if she lived long enough to like a tweet from a prolife organization? I am deep inside now with my fists, no gloves on. I am doing everybody a favor. The future is right past my reach and the size of a walnut. The future is an illusion. And I'm stuck picking our fingernails in the present. The future is telling me to hold my identity still. So I'm going to dig back into the past where it just started shaking. The future snores in my neck and loves me back. No, that is too much to ask of the future. Yes, the future thinks about other people. You can't stop that. The future is in my hands now and won't stop making noise. Can someone help me turn it off, please? My last haiku, I promise. Somewhere in a room, I am making a bad choice for no good reason. This next poem is called Resurrecting Selena. It is after a poem called Instructions for a Seance with Vladimir's by Terrence Hayes. Just like to say that. And it is where she resurrect Selena via a Wi-Fi séance. My reasoning, because it is not enough to be seen, because I need to see, because I miss her even though I've never met her. Because it had to be me. Because if it wasn't, then it would have been somebody else. The medium. I'm tired of feedback, and I'm addicted to the internet. If someone else gets involved, it would just be too messy. I need flowers. I need a moonlight dance. I need a song to sway to and access to Wi-Fi. I do some research. I go down YouTube holes. I come up with my own method. How I bring Selena back. One, grow out my hair. Purchase chunky gold hoops. Buy some bright red lipstick that will stain. This is mainly for effect, but it can't hurt. I sing backward. Oh, sorry. That was supposed to be one. Okay. This one is two. Two, I sing backward into a recording device and play the recording device backward. Three, I can't tell my friends anything about this because they would think I'm nuts. Four, so I get rid of my friends. Five, I take out a loan and turn my bedroom into a lab. I take a USB drive full of Selena's images, songs and interviews and put it into a pot of my period blood. After three weeks, roots begin to grow at its ends. I set up a table. I draw a figure on the table using lipstick. Six, I sing backward into a recording device and then play the recording device backwards. Seven, there's more to do. I wake you up and I ask you to quickly think of the name of the girl in elementary school with the prettiest handwriting. Eight, I walk into the kitchen, tie a red string around my finger, say this girl's name five times will spring Fabuloso into the air. You walk in on me and are all, "what are you doing?" Nine, I spray on the face because I'm a reactive person. Ten, I run away because I am a reactive person. Eleven, I come back because I thought about what I've done. Twelve, days go by. Finally it is midnight and storming. I take the USB out of the pot of period blood, and I put it in some soil. I add fertilizer. I've never been good at waiting. Thirteen, there is a cracking in the air. The walls are vibrating, and I'm holding the whole room together. I'm on the ceiling and underneath the basement floor. There's a rapid knocking on the sliding screen door, a scream coming from the pot. My cat hisses. The lights turn on and off. I'm in the closet spying and outside of the closet feeling like I'm being watched. Now it is midnight. I open a girl-shaped door. The knob holds my hand. A cloud of pink is in front of me, rising from the table, the kind of stuff that leaks from addicts. I put my hand in and scream. Thirteen A, now I'm in a white dress running among the trees. You are behind me holding up a jukebox and is playing something with drums. Thirteen B, you lose me among the trees. I hear you calling my name. I want you to keep chasing me, and I don't want you to know how far I would go to find out the truth of something. Just scratch an itch that will tear the whole universe open. I'm sorry about this, but I'm not sorry about this. I'm already lighting the candles. I'm drawing a circle and the dirt with salt. I'm taking off my shoes. I'm already feeling the dirt beneath my feet dance. Okay. I'm going to read two more poems. Okay. So Selena comes back. This one is called I'm Not Sure What To Do With Her, Exactly. She is sitting in my living room, legs crossed, then legs uncrossed. I'm pacing. You are calling and I'm ignoring. She doesn't smell weird. There isn't any dirt on her pantsuit or any worms crawling out of her ears. The only spooky or weird thing is that she looks kind of busy. Does it make sense when I say busy, like a video I took on my phone and then upload it to my computer? But it wasn't during prime daylight, so there's this fuzzy quality to it. Like, there's a billion tiny little bugs making up the colors on my screen. I asked her if she wants some water. I start to cry. I can't believe she's touching my stuff. Everything I've refused to throw away because I'm too sentimental. Selena and my trash. Selena and my discounted tampons. Selena and my poems. I write poems, I tell her. It's nothing. I want to show her everything. I'm trying to be a good host. I say this out loud. She laughs big and loud, like saying that just now was the most astute, the most real, the most human thing. Like, she never thought about it like that before. I ask her what she missed the most about, like, being alive. She stops and looks down at her fingers. They remind me of my sister's -- thin and long, a billion tiny little bugs. She opens her mouth. Okay. This last flex because they're hard to write. A contrapuntal is one poem -- is two poems that can read as a third poem. So one side of the poem is Yolanda Saldivar, who killed Selena, talking. And the other side is Selena. And the other thing is this messy entity of them together. So here it is. It's called Yolanda and Selena Don't Talk Anymore. Yolanda said, I stopped you just in time. Now you'll be remembered. They'll never hear me sing. Most of the time, I'm a villain or a lesbian. Jealousy reveals a Polaroid of the woman I am not. When I called you bitch and shot you, what I meant was love. I just didn't want you to go. In another life, I am someone I can be proud of, the face you see in the moon. You want to love me. We are going -- we're on the road going 85, playing a tape with only two songs. My arm is around your shoulders, and we are wasting time like water. You're breathing in my ear. Now this is Selena's side. To dream about love for all eternity, that's why death isn't so bad. I like to think I've been pretty lucky for all of my life. I'm a saint to love too hard, trusted to deeply, a prayer whispered violently, a letter stained with fear. I heard fans cheering. Their hands came together because they loved me. My heart was once the shape of a pink fist before it turns blue. I was brain dead before I was a headline. In this dream, I am a wife and a mother, a woman who says yes. I'm marinating steak. And when you want to bite, I let you. Somewhere far away, I'm on a loop and I can't stop smiling. I am still alive, and everyone is watching, an entire country singing in my ear. And this is them together. I stopped you just in time to dream about love. Now you'll be remembered for all eternity. That's why they'll never hear me sing. Death isn't so bad. I like to think I've been pretty most of the time, lucky for all of my life. I'm a villain. I'm a saint or lesbian who loved to hard, trusted to deeply. Jealousy reveals a prayer whispered violently, a Polaroid of the woman I am not, a letter stained with fear. When I called you bitch, I heard fans cheering. Their hands came together and shot you because they loved me. What I meant was my heart was once the shape of love, a pink fist before it turns blue. I just didn't want you to go. I was brain dead before I was a headline. In another life, in this dream, I am someone I can be proud of. I am a wife and a mother, the face you see in the moon, a woman who says yes. In another life, I'm marinating steak. And when you want a bite, you want to love me. I let you. We are on the road going 85, somewhere far away. I am playing a tape with only two songs on a loop. And my arm is around your shoulders, and I can't stop smiling. We are wasting time like water. I am still alive, and everyone is watching. You're breathing an entire country, singing in my ear. Thank you. [ Applause ] >> Gabriel Ojeda-Sagué: I have many bad memoirs -- I mean memories of times. I had the undivided attention of my peers when I faked textures and enchantments when I polished a little sea urchin when I predicted my own humiliation. I've seen many complicated movies, well, photographs, really, or sometimes stories. I've written many bad photographs over recent years. My father Junior says, "What good does it do to stand so close?" Well, Junior, static energy. When my reflection and I meet without a mirror. I have had much heartbreak -- I mean, heartburn. I'm known in most circles for poor digestion and leisurely eating. When I sought out Corsica, I put it on a sorry little broadside so I would not be led to Corsica. I wrote a terror on my terror, which led me to a successful autobiography, in which I tell you all how I got here, my father drowned in a lake, the most divine chocolate cake. Hi. I'm Gabriel Ojeda- Sagué . It's really nice to be here at NYPL. That was a poem called Tell All, which doesn't live in a book. But it sort of was my madness. The book I'm mostly reading from tonight is a fictional biography. It's a fictional selected poem for a fictional poet. And so after I was writing sort of through somebody else, I was like, oh, let me write an autobiographical poem. That's that. Well, it's very nice to be here. And since we're doing a thing about Latino poetry, I felt like I wanted to address my relationship to bilingualism and poetry. And my last book, Losing Miami, is kind of a lot about that. And so I was like let me just get a piece of that in the room. So apparently, here's my relationship to bilingualism and poetry. This is a poem called [foreign language] Sea to Sunburn. Something like I means sunburn, or I want to -- I, in quotes, wants to say sunburn. Something like that. [ Foreign Language ] There's a sort of Lorcaism at the end of that poem, if you know the poem whose title is escaping me by Lorca that ends with a sort of like [foreign language] moment. Okay. So I'm going to now read from Madness, which is my most recent book -- came out in March of this year with Night Boat, who is a cool New York Press. Do, do, do. I live in Chicago, but I, you know, have a New York Press, so I have to come here. So I was on a plane yesterday, and I'll be on a plane tomorrow. I'm going to read from this book. It's about a man named Luis Montez Torres, who lives from 1976 to 2035. He is a [foreign language], and he is very mentally ill. And he's an okay poet. So his book is arranged by sections that detail biography written by editors and then selections from books that he wrote. And the selections are poems, which I did write out of quotes. This first one is called All the Love Bush, which comes from a section of love poems. All the Love Bush. I pretend your Galaxy mine. But we found the backside of homemaking, made a trail and followed it. We said weave this pink antibiotic air into a bush. Float there on me. Inside, there's a play we watch. Women singing songs. There's an eagle in my eye. There's someone to talk to. There is a place where your hand draws weather. It's simple. You said a cloud. You got one. I'm not fearing light today. I'm covered in it. And the book I dreamed of I wrote, my gathering of fruits sending songs enough to follow a plot. This evening, Mercury nursery will send me a poem I won't hide, take over from here, send me down under our squeaking ceiling fan. If you hear guitar notes, wave the actually away from both of us. And this is another love poem called When I'm Afraid with You. Converting a cactus into a spray when I'm afraid with you. Convincing yarn to be kind to our animals when I'm afraid with you. I stopped biting on blue lights when I'm afraid with you. Immense myth when I'm afraid with you. Covered in comfort, alone and together when I'm afraid with you. Careening and pearlescent, a moth, someone getting sick when I'm afraid with you. I'd laugh, too, rubber wonder, as lenient as I can be when I'm afraid with you. Phone never answered, shakes and spirits on concrete when I'm afraid with you. I don't know. Easy to admit. Thin air touching your stomach when I'm afraid with you. We staged the opera where I am Rodolfo and you the delicate profile unmoored, thrashing and when I turn to you as I must, I sing line. Line Here's a poem from the end of the book called Method of Loci, which is a fancy word for the memory palace trick. This is, like, a thing that people who are interested in memory do where if they have to remember a thing, they'll imagine the things that they have to remember, the information in a mental map of a house. So, like, you imagine yourself walking into a house and to the right of you in the kitchen is potatoes. And you're like, oh, I have to get potatoes at the grocery store. That's called the method of loci. It's also called a memory palace. You're going to find that information incredibly useful for understanding this poem. It's just everything is going to be so clear. Method of Loci. How do I remember your name when the noise of the land is a scrambled half prayer sounding loud and high? I put it in a house in my mind, though palpating the air in the dark for a sign, some noise, a ligature, everything is clear. Every year is drawn together like the bends in a paper fan. I touch my pinky to the soil. I almost think to sleep. A child is wishing on a pond for a girl's attention. There's no reason to take notes. No one has ever lied. An oil painting of a field with a detail of me, forgetting all my life. And this is the last thing that I'll read. And it's also the longest. It's called Hold Me to It, or it might be called From Hold Me to It. The from is optional in that it's an excerpt from a book that doesn't exist. Okay. Hold Me to It. It's vaguely about climate change. Infrastructure has little capacity for promise making, as we have all now learned, though steadiness is its first and only appeal. The idea is freckling on second consideration, a bad reflection as it always really was, of the logical results of what we set out to do. Do not fantasize about Atlantis buried treasure when you were so baldly lied to about what you could set your mind to and disperse. A better version of a lily pad is encoded in the current version of the lily pad. Return of the ice, fingers shaped into a gun, the autumn of a philosopher is stuck. Be sure to watch the species on the other screen where colors are brighter and harder to track. I go where I go. You rob me of my balance. In a feature of August, the temptation is to fear the heat that leads a melody. But in no way is this behavior truly saying you cannot sleep with your head against the Soros when the promise made was against variation and the name of something dressed as innovation, which we now see as dishonest. Faulty patterning. In laying out where an object began and another object ended, the promise reduced each object to its lifespan. It circulated the bad news. It's said to be eager with your mind and its silhouette. It said pleasure as exhaustion ricochet. It planted plants. You hear that like I do, mosquitoes passing by your ear. You hear that like I do, a third color made in reference to two others set up just behind the stage. Everything about the golf course. The end of all these minor acts within the diamond, if that's how you'd like to think of it. But these are the returns -- the return to death, the conversation of all animals and this new form of intimacy with our thoughts. Of course water returns and re-shells. I'm handing out microscopic fires, something you could silence with the pinch of two fingers. An island taken from its context, skin peeled from a snake, is a thin thing pulled apart by storms. Nothing could keep that word. Son, if it korins, permit me to desire. Who is watching you as you run through the woods, dirt scraping your thighs as they rush and sweat, the taste of coco remaining just between your molars? You invent a half lion half girl to rid you of this flu, which is in every case a futile effort. A dream from the head of St. Eustis. The promise absolved you of your genuine paranoia, pretended that it was a system of roads. You finally let the firefly out of your hand. You watch as a friend makes a deep burn in his arm, a promise that I still love you. A world where the lily pad does not exist is programmed into the current version of the lily pad. There is so much discussion around the behavior of the lie. This time there is no thought of each other or there's only thought of each other, our holding here a honeybee as a forest burns or the frightening moments when we think the same thing. The promise is that all your senses are harvesters. The milder anxieties will do you little good now, though they are unrelenting in their small constant need as we are chest deep in purchased horror. I think singing to myself will guarantee me a next thought, though it barely does. You speak as if to fill this room would sound. You bear barely fit into your clothes. Two mulch pieces rub together will not start a fire. A lithograph of a clover. Here and then, I borrow your loneliness as we watch the earth bite its lip and die. This is what it can make of itself. It bears its limit to you. In sweetness pulled from a thorn, the difference between belong and belong in its least optimistic capacity. Every steady and silver hand holding an incomplete remark on a bad bet, except in loving you, I stupidly hope, or except in taking a ruler to the ground. When the stove is lit, when I promise you anything, hold me to it. Thank you. [ Applause ] >> Darrel Alejandro Holnes: Hello. Hello. How's everybody doing? >> Good. >> I'm Darryl Alejandro Holnes. And I will be reading today from my book, Step Motherland. And I just want to say it's an honor to read with the two writers there. And we're missing you Rio, if you're watching us at home. [inaudible]. The difference between poetry and rhetoric is being ready to kill yourself instead of your children, wrote Audrey Lord. I say this now to the mothers who sent their children north, risking their baby's lives for a better living than chasing paper or running from drug dealers on the streets. The difference between art and design means being ready to die for what you desire others to achieve through your work. Hours of your life gone forever, making a little, shiny, fragile thing. I write to the mothers who send their children north, never knowing if they'll make it, but hoping that even if they don't, their creations might mean more than just the flesh and bone with which they're made, because they moved, because they desired. So many are quick to dismiss desire as too general a word or this language as too simple to power the constant thrust towards betterment we call life. But poetry is sometimes made of such things, words used so often, we take them for granted and forget their power is in how they unite existence through a common tongue. In Spanish, the word for power is the same as the word for I can, [Spanish]. One simple word banging the drum rhythm made by children's soles, thumping against the Earth. [Spanish] [Spanish] [Spanish]. The power of doing in each disyllabic step of metric feet, moving us farther and farther away from the word being just rhetoric into the structure of its design, where we find the power to turn suicide into sacrifice, the power to turn beasts into man and man into martyr or miracle. This is what makes miracles a desire path, stretching 1700 miles through an armed border wall, through electric barbed wire fences, a surge surmounting all odds to rise beyond the stratosphere. Knowing this too is poetry. When I was about 12 years old and my mother would drag me to church, I would just want to stay home some Sundays and listen to Shakira. If you would have asked me at that age, Shakira was definitely my patron saint. This poem is set much later in my life as a young adult. But I've sort of held a candle for Shakira for -- since then, since those early days. And this is a poem about falling in love. So I dedicate it to anyone who is in love right now, as I am, or who has been in love ever before. So [inaudible]. In the music video, it looks like Shakira is dying. I want to die for you, although we've just met. Give you my bones to help you stand taller and my feet for you to walk on when yours are worn. This is what she sings, love worth dying for. Seven years ago, I loved her video and now hear its song wailing in my head as I struggle to hear what you're saying. A good omen at Cafe Adobe, the setting of our first date. Make love to me on this table for two. I don't need my flesh if I have you. So devour my body as you need, breaking into the garden, past the wall that keeps our home countries, my Panama, your Rwanda, out on the other side. Your sins washed in my old blood and complexion. Sing out. Listen to the unusual yodel in my throat, a ballad as I nail my limbs to this restaurant table. [ Singing ] But for this feast to nourish your body, we must first pray or at least say we believe in something. I don't believe in this nation but can in your naked grace. Come. Make me a man of faith. Leave your body, too, if you'd like. In my country, I dreamed of leaving my body all the time. The scar below my right eye, its flesh broken by soldiers, trying to scare my mother into telling them my father's whereabouts. My sun-kissed undertone torn open reveals and ancestor's sinless shame. [foreign language]. But I don't want to be whiter -- just free, sweetly delivered into your dark matter and its boundlessness, reborn into love, risen in translation. [ Applause ] My father recently retired as a captain in the Panama Canal. And on the occasion of his retirement, I wrote him this poem called Ode to My Father the Captain. Praise be to my father, glory be to his never blinking eyes, wide open in solidarity with the unstoppable water flow between oceans and the endlessly swift air streams in the sky. Ever alert, armed only with his compass and memorized map of the stars. He pilots the ship through locks in the Panama Canal to turn tides on a dime in the dance of trade and unlock the Earth's many ancient water routes. Honor be to my father for keeping us worldly with rubber cargo from Indonesia for our sneaker soles and tantalizing tantalite cargo from Brazil for our iPhones, in a world where people are defined by their crazy love of foreign things. Praise be to the Captain's pepper tongue speaking orders in an island infused English to the ship's home squad while also speaking a smooth sailing Spanish to his canal crew of goodtime guy pan up master pilots. For navigating the planet sea of tongues with style and the graceful tonetics of an articulate diplomat, as any Black man who was among the first captains of his kind would have to do. Praise to the giants on whose shoulders my father stands, to the shackled gallant, packed top to bottom and shipped in galleons from Badagry or Cape Coast Castle to West Indian plantations and then to our isthmus to build and labor our canal. To the ancestors who guide my father when his motors break with their celestial steering with the gentle push from their hands of sky, just as he guides me to steer my Black man body, past us having once been considered cargo, past his now commanding a foreign cargo ship, to me one day becoming the wind sifting through all sails, to my one day becoming the water through which all ships must navigate, to my one day becoming the dark matter from which the stars hang at night, illuminating the way home for all who have strayed or been stolen. And now, kind Captain, go home to rest. The last boost of coffee has rained down from your thermos flask and washed through your blood to mine. You who cruise the moon around the world so tight, rest sweetly as you sail home tonight. [ Applause ] I'm going to read one last poem of mine. And then I'm going to read a poem by Rio Cortez, who obviously was not able to be here tonight. This last poem of mine is called Rihanna and Child. As you can tell, I love divas. This poem, I dedicated to my mother. And those of you who are Anne Sexton fans will hear echoes of Anne Sexton in the poem. Rihanna and child. The rude girl is with child in the Instagram pic. It's not her baby. She wears a costume that conservatives may describe as exotic and revealing. I call her [foreign language] and [foreign language], the baby pull sequence of her bustier, but she's not afraid she won't shine. I was raised by her kind. She shows us how to celebrate carnival as a hashtag bad girl goddess, tantalizingly hashtag wifey material, playing a benevolent stepmother with hashtag MILF appeal, taking a break from dancing to hush a child in her aunties laundry room. Over half a million followers like this portrait of Rihanna as the Black Madonna. In it, her voluminous hair is a halo, her shiny head dressed as a crown. A beaded curtain frames her as a domestic deity with a washing machine for a throne. Her breasts sit ready to be clutched for comfort by the balling majesty in her arms. Over half a million followers hail woman for nestling babe against her bejeweled bustier. Millions more were raised by her kind. Millions more once nestled on the chest of a mother's uniform or in the costume of an auntie close enough to be a stepmom, taking care of others on break from dancing [foreign language] in the parade. I was raised by her kind, dazzling and Amazonian. Running so fast through the hairspray that her wig almost burst into flames. She who fills beach dunes with matches, feathers, rhythms and milk bottles. Her nude arms waving at parade people walking by, her ribs cracking where the DJ drops the beat. She is not afraid to die. Yes, I was raised by women like that. I was raised by her kind. [ Applause ] Although I haven't seen Rio in many years, I've known her for many years. And I was really looking forward to seeing her again at our reading today. And congrats to her for being long listed for the National Book Award, which is pretty great. So congrats to Rio. I'm reading from her book this poem called Covered Wagon as Spaceship. I see a lot of people, like, reading along. It's on Page 4, if you are reading along, you know. Covered Wagon as Spaceship. Standing unseen in the little blue stern. Excuse me. Covered Wagon as Spaceship. Standing unseen in the little bluestem, curious and not quite used to living. I consider whether it's aliens that brought black folks to the canyons, valley. Standing in the great evaporation of a lake. Holy dandelion for eyes. Full and white and searching the landscape for understanding. How do you come to be where there are no others except science fiction? I am a child feeling extraterrestrial, whose story untold is not enough. Anyway, it begins with abduction. Thank you. [ Applause ] >> Melissa Lozada-Oliva: Another round of applause for my fellow poets. [ Applause ] That was so beautiful. I'm really -- I feel very inspired by both of you. Okay. Let's get this discussion started. Something I'm curious about in writing poetry that pushes against the form. I want to know, like, what sort of obstacles you came across writing this poem. Actually, more specifically, is there a poem that you feel that you had to fight hard to keep in your book? And which one was it? And if there wasn't, which was the hardest poem to write? >> Gabriel Ojeda-Sagué: I have an immediate answer. So -- okay. One of the weird things about this book is that I'm pretending to be somebody who has a full-length career to the point that they die. And so one of the things I'm pretending to do, sort of simulating, is the arc of a career, thinking about what is somebody's early work like? What is their late work like? What concerns move as they move in the world? And I'm sort of faking it, right? So the first book in the book, out of quotes, the first book in the book is -- it has to have a certain kind of juvenileness to it, just in the sense that first books often reflect really differently when you look at the rest of the body of work. And a first book can often just signal something really different. I mean, if, you know, you go to any poet's kind of body of work, and often the first book just feels really different. And so I was like, okay, but I don't want to have a section of this book that's bad. Okay. So here's -- there, you have a new problem, which is like, okay, I don't want to be like, oh, I'm writing bad poems because he's, like, young. That felt corny and also sort of like setting myself up for failure. So I was like, but it has to have aesthetic concerns that aren't yet fully developed. And so what would it mean for me to fully develop aesthetic concerns that are not fully developed? And then the other thing that happens in his life that's a bit weird is he writes a book that he doesn't really believe in. He writes a book that is very popular, but that is -- well, you know, popular in poetry terms. You know, our popular. And what that book is is very much in the tradition of a certain kind of diaspora poetics that I have an enormous amount of respect for and quite a bit of argument with. And so does Louise, the fictional character who dominates this book. And so he kind of writes a book that's not a parody of but it's attempting to kind of put the code on of what Twitter would rudely call, like, Mango poetry. You know what I mean? >> Darrel Alejandro Holnes: What's mango poetry? >> Gabriel Ojeda-Sagué: This is like a -- that's a joke term from Twitter that they use for a certain version of a kind of diaspora poem that is kind of like my abuela peels the mango in my house. You know, there's a certain kind of -- >> Darrel Alejandro Holnes: Oh, my gosh. That sounds really unfair. >> Gabriel Ojeda-Sagué: It is unfair. No, it totally is. >> Darrel Alejandro Holnes: I also love mangoes and abuelas. >> Gabriel Ojeda-Sagué: I do, too. No, it is unfair. And so this is like this is what is one of the concerns of this section is like writing into and against a certain kind of way of representing yourself and your identity aesthetically, which is the thing that for me gives me a lot of anxiety. Like, I'm very interested in writing about identity, but I do it in a way that is very sort of like prickly and often really quite interested in a large bit of alienation. And so one of the things that Luis is trying to figure out, which means that I'm trying to figure out, is how do you sort of step into those shoes in a way that's, like, respectful, but also a kind of critique from the inside of it? So it's a tough -- it's a tough section of the book. It's one I don't really read from because I think it doesn't work without a significant amount of the kind of fictional nesting that it has in the book and one that took a good amount of kind of conversation between me and Night Boat about, like, how exactly do we want this to land? I think where it is is where it needs to be. >> Darrel Alejandro Holnes: Well, I'm going to answer this question. And then I'm going to kick it to you, Melissa, because I read your book, and I think it's amazing. So I'm curious to know what your answer to this question is. For me, the poem -- the first poem that I read tonight, [foreign language], I wrote it, and I was like, no one is going to publish this poem because I wrote at a time where it felt like only migrants were following the migrant crisis. You know, I'm a Central American, obviously. And so it's of particular interest to me to see Central American migrants, especially kids and adolescents marching towards the border. And it just didn't seem like it was part of the conversation that was happening regarding politics and poetry at the time that I wrote it. And I had never really published anything that was that political. And so Monica Han, who was a great poet, who passed away a few years ago, she emailed me to solicit work for a journal that she was an editor of. And I sent her a bunch of poems that I thought were great, great, polished, very fancy poems. You know, like, I have an MFA, look at me alliterate, you know, kind of poems. And I also was like, hey, Monica, I also wrote this thing, I don't know what it is. I don't know what to do with it. Is it a poem? You don't have to consider it for publication. But, you know, let me know your thoughts. And she immediately took that poem and published it. And it gave me a lot of confidence to start reading the poem aloud in public at readings. And then it's now my most anthologized poem, you know. And so I am always forever grateful for her and for people who just believe in you when you don't believe in yourself and who support you taking risks because sometimes it does pay off. And I'm really grateful for that kind of encouragement. >> Melissa Lozada-Oliva: Yeah. I think I also -- well, with my book, it is a very strange concept. So I had -- and I was very -- I really didn't want to call it a novel in verse because I was like, it's not a novel in verse. It's a rock opera. And then everyone was like, okay, hear me out. What if you made your things less difficult for yourself? And so yeah, I wrote this in my MFA program. And I was very set on this idea. And it was very heartbreaking trying to get someone to bite. But then, like, finally, I met my amazing agent, Rachel Kim. And she was like, okay, let's work on this, and I will take care of you. So it is very special, like, I don't know, working through and against this industry and finding people who want to hold your hand and welcome you into a room. Yeah. Okay. I have some questions here. Okay. Do you remember your first poem that you ever wrote? >> Gabriel Ojeda-Sagué: Oh, that I wrote? Okay. Yeah. I mean, it's terrible, but yeah. I mean, I think like the -- I wrote a little bit in high school, and I never really committed to that. I was just kind of reading sort of, like, I don't know, Canon books. And I wrote a little bit. And I -- it was just messy stuff. But basically, I think I kind of came of age as a poet a little bit in Philly, which is where I lived for six years. And the poetry community there is just fabulous. And I was there around circa 2012. And I worked at the Kelly Writers House, which is like a live poetry venue. I was a sound guy. Shout out to the sound people. And basically, it just forced me to hear a lot of live poetry, which started for me a serious interest in tone of voice. I try in my readings to sort of like -- in life, my voice doesn't modulate that much. It just sort of stays around here. Or I go like, hi. But in the poetry, I try to kind of do like a [inaudible]. And I try to kind of sound a little bit like a voicemail. That's always my go-to image is I want to sound like, hello, this is your voicemail. And so I think for me, it was like I kind of didn't get what I was doing until I saw people doing it live and kind of having DIY poetry readings at pizza joints and bars and just kind of setting up. That kind of took something for me from this, you know, high school Canon books whatever to like, oh, yeah, this is a thing people do when they're alive. You know. >> Darrel Alejandro Holnes: I started writing poetry in middle school. And I started writing poetry because all of my friends were writing raps. And I just -- I wanted -- like, I was giving it a shot. And then I started writing lyrics because I love to sing. It's like a fun thing for me, not like a job, but like a fun thing. And I just became more interested in focusing on the words than necessarily the melody or exclusively the rhythm. And I wrote this -- I would show my English teacher because I'm such a nerd. I would like -- be like Mrs. So and So, can you read this thing that I wrote? Whatever. And get some feedback from the teacher for free, which now we know costs money, you all. Right? And when I was in ninth grade, I wrote a poem in response to what happened on 9/11. And I grew up in Panama, but I went to an international school. And so it was fascinating and confusing to me for me to see all the different reactions to 9/11 on the day, which were not as uniform as you might imagine. It's also a high school. So people are trying to perform politics that they think that they understand. So it was very complicated. So I wrote this poem, and I showed it to my English teacher, Mrs. Richards. And she liked it so much that when the school had an assembly to honor those who had died, you know, during 9/11, that she asked me to read the poem. And I was new to the high school. So no one really knew who I was. And after reading the poem that day, I became the poet. And so -- well, it's working out now, you know. So I forever I'm grateful to that English teacher for that kind of support and encouragement as well. And I recently read the poem, what I could remember of it, to a friend of mine. And she laughed. So it would -- I'm not going to do it for you now. But, you know, it was a great experience, and I'm glad that it started my journey. How about you? >> Melissa Lozada-Oliva: I'm going to -- so my first one was also about 9/11. >> Darrel Alejandro Holnes: Look at that. >> Melissa Lozada-Oliva: It was just really inspiring, I guess. Yeah, I don't know. I was like, what is this thing that finds us kneeling full of feeling? And then I was like, oh, God. And I was like, war is bad. And I was like, this is so good. Yeah, but it was -- I wonder how many millennial writers started? >> Darrel Alejandro Holnes: Yeah, how many bad 9/11 poems are there out there? Yeah, that's interesting. >> Gabriel Ojeda-Sagué: Can I ask a totally unrelated question, just to make something explicit that's been implicit? Can I ask you about your divas and writing about divas? I also like -- I didn't read anything about divas, but I also love divas, and I like writing about them. And so I'm always down to talk about those. >> Melissa Lozada-Oliva: Oh, my God. Yeah. Let's talk about divas. You want to go? >> Darrel Alejandro Holnes: No, no, no. Yeah, you go. >> Gabriel Ojeda-Sagué: You got a book organized on divas. >> Darrel Alejandro Holnes: Yeah. A whole book. >> Melissa Lozada-Oliva: My -- okay. Yeah. So diva -- Selena was the diva of my life for a long time, kind of the umbrella that I grew up under. She died when I was three years old. And so all of my, like, interactions with her music were posthumous. And I just -- I mean, I really -- I thought she was just, like, so beautiful. And I really wanted to look like her. And whenever I felt really pretty, it's because it was like some kind of mirror of Selena. And she just had -- was, like, so wrapped up in my family and my sisters. And I wanted to also, like, interrogate whatever obsession I had with her. I love celebrities, and I love being like a tiny person in a crowd, yelling lyrics as someone is performing. It's really -- it's like being in a church. I like feeling really small. And I think, like, I wanted to -- I wanted to interrogate that when I was reading this book. What's the need to, like, worship something or make someone bigger than they are? A diva I love right now is -- okay, I love Princess Diana, of course. Fallen diva. Let's see. I'm like, okay -- and I guess now I'm drawing a blank. But yeah, I can go on. >> Darrel Alejandro Holnes: Yeah. You know, I learned that disco music has gospel roots. There is this blend from, you know, the inspirational vibes and lyrics of gospel music that we then find at the club. So, you know, for me, it comes from the club and dancing and dancing as a spiritual experience. And so I kind of think of these -- the divas of my choosing as priestesses often because they are helping me have a transcendent experience on the dance floor. And I've recently been thinking a lot about two things. One is joyous resistance. And so what does it mean in a world where COVID and monkey pox and crazy politics are just around us? And what does it mean to despite all of that still dance? And so I'm thinking about divas in that way as sort of guiding me through this kind of resistance. And I also think a lot of about how recently I wrote a play called [foreign language] about a sort of Harriet Tubman like figure in Panama that liberated Africans that were enslaved. And I did all of this research and found that dance was one of the ways that the history was preserved of this community and continues to be shared and that the chance looks -- the dance looks really joyful because it's about liberation. And I think about, you know, what does it means to be like a black body also, you know, dancing and dancing in the way that my ancestors danced when they were liberated. And for me, divas are wrapped up into that. Like, I love the ones -- it's why I love Dua Lipa. You know Dua Lipa can jam, you all. Like, oh, my God. >> Melissa Lozada-Oliva: She can't dance. >> Darrel Alejandro Holnes: No, she can't dance. But -- >> Gabriel Ojeda-Sagué: But she can sing the song. She can sing the song. Kylie Minogue. >> Darrel Alejandro Holnes: Yeah. And I also grew up in a household that for whatever reason loved listening to Gloria Stefan as well. So, like, just all kinds of divas, you know. >> Melissa Lozada-Oliva: Do you have a diva? >> Darrel Alejandro Holnes: Oh, Evie Queen, too. Sorry. Evie Queen. Total diva. >> Gabriel Ojeda-Sagué: My second book is about Jazzercise. And that saw me sort of like getting into a deeply obsessive time of watching a lot of Jane Fonda, a lot of Richard Simmons, a diva in his own right, a lot of Judy Sheppard Missett who's the CEO of Jazzercise. >> Darrel Alejandro Holnes: Did you see Physical on Apple TV? >> Gabriel Ojeda-Sagué: I didn't. Should I have? >> Darrel Alejandro Holnes: It's all about, like, exercise videos. >> Gabriel Ojeda-Sagué: Oh, okay, good. I should watch that. I love that stuff. And I just -- I think in my early work, like, in my first two books, I was really interested in a kind of just jesterization of myself. Like, I kind of saw the way that I wanted to work with identity as kind of coming at this with a sort of disconcerting amount of foolishness. And I think I've grown slightly away from that principle. But I was really, really interested in people like Charo. I love Charo to this day. But there was a time when I had a Charo obsession. I just -- you know, she's just like a fabulous guitarist, very badly abused by her shitty composer husband. And she was whip smart and super funny. And she's part of this lineage of what I call a sort of like I'm going to say Hispanic because she's from Spain. But let's say Hispanic jesters of a kind of -- Ricky Ricardo, who there's a poem about in Losing Miami, Sophia Vergara, where it's a kind of like, you come to the US, and the thing you do is a sort of slapstick of your mouth, where it's like, look how funny they talk, look how funny they act. And Charo and Sofia Vergara are both also about their really kind of sexy looks. But really, I felt like Charo more than any of those other people, maybe Ricky as well was like -- Ricky Ricardo [inaudible], excuse me, is really in charge of it. So you watch these old variety shows that she would show up on and though she is, like, the butt of the joke in a lot of these, she really twists it in these ways that I thought was really fabulous. And so for me, like, part of the aesthetic difficulty of my work is an attempt at kind of doing that in my own terms. Like, I'm not a standup comedian, thank God, because I would be terrible at it, I mean. And part of my -- I think my interest in difficulty is kind of doing that same sort of twisting gesture that I saw somebody like Charo doing. >> Melissa Lozada-Oliva: Okay. These are some questions from the audience. Was writing poetry in your family anywhere? I like that question. Was any -- like anyone alive or dead a poet in your life in your ancestry? >> Darrel Alejandro Holnes: I come from a family of very oddly, like, politicians and government people who also play music. Yeah. So my dad is one of nine. And I have over 50 cousins. And all of them play an instrument. So we could have a family band. As a matter of fact, we've had family reunions where everybody grabs their instrument and starts playing. And so for me, because rap and pop music and all that inspired me to start writing poetry, I do think of the -- my contributions to poetry as stemming from music. And I come from a family that's just very musical. And my aunt, who's an English teacher, would not let me walk off the stage alive without also giving her a shout out because even though she's not a creative writer, you know, her and my mother are both great lovers of literature. So I grew up surrounded by books. >> Gabriel Ojeda-Sagué: I could almost say -- if you took out the politician thing, I could almost give you the same answer, which is, I mean, there -- I think there are some people who write poetry in the family. But I think we had mostly a lot of musicians and a lot of people who read. My father was a musician, and my uncle was a painter. And both have passed on now. And I'm sort of interested in both of their, like, bodies of work or sort of like leftover archives and sort of things like that. And I think a lot about music as it relates to poetry. But I grew up in a very sort of, like, novel friendly household, a very novel having household and a lot of novel reading household. And I think that was an important foundation for me. I don't think I have the right attention span to write a novel. Frankly, I don't think I could do it. Luckily, I feel like I can think about poetry for shorter amounts of time. But I feel like that was my primary education. Then it took kind of like moving away from home to kind of figure out that poetry made sense to my brain in some way. >> Melissa Lozada-Oliva: Yeah. That's so special. I'm so jealous. My family does not do any of those things. Yeah. Every time I try to give -- I will always give my family books for Christmas. And they're like, "Thanks. I'll definitely read this." And I think my grandfather was a poet, but everybody hated him. And he died drunk in the street. So I'm like, this is my legacy. [inaudible]. Whatever. Everyone hates him. So let's -- is there any writing of poetry in your family anywhere? That's where. Okay. So what is your daily writing routine? I actually really like this question. I know you probably get it a lot. But it's -- everyone's writing routine is really different. >> Gabriel Ojeda-Sagué: I think it's important that I don't have one. I think it's very freeing to me to not feel that I need to write at any point in time. Something that's been important to me is, like, I try to keep poetry as not my job. I think it's, like, amazing when people can pull that off. I don't think that I can. But it's important to me that I can, like, write when I feel I need to and have an idea for it. Unfortunately, the fact that I have four books means that I haven't felt that long that I don't have anything I want to say or do. But I just like -- there's an old writing advice that is very important, I think, especially for novelists but that sometimes just doesn't apply in poetry, which is the write every day thing. I think it can be incredibly useful if you do. Like, my God, kudos to you. I think if I start to think in that way, I will feel like I am living in a closet with the poem and I will -- >> Melissa Lozada-Oliva: It's the Stephen King industrial complex, too. >> Gabriel Ojeda-Sagué: Yeah. Right, right, right. And so I like to not have one. When I do write, it's sort of like I give myself space. And I think a lot of in terms of questions. I just think to myself, like, I have a question about a thing. So, like, Losing Miami is all just like -- it's all one long answer of the question or answer -- it's one long engagement with the question, how do you grieve a city before it's gone? And I just let that question take me somewhere. >> Darrel Alejandro Holnes: Cool. I want to also make sure we get through as many questions as possible. Do we want to -- I'll happily jump in on the next one if you want. Yeah. >> Melissa Lozada-Oliva: Oh, okay. In your writing, do you feel like you represent multiple cultures? If so, how do you balance them? And is there one you identify with the most? >> Darrel Alejandro Holnes: Oh, man. The hard question. I think for me, I used to think of myself as representing disparate cultures sometimes. But I've -- recently on my trips home to Panama, I realized that I come from a particular community that comes from the overlap of the United States and Panama. And many people in this community are also primarily of West Indian descent, as I am. And so instead of thinking that, oh, I represent, like, these five different communities, I think of myself as I come from a community that's at the intersection of all of these different geographies, right, of all of these different histories, of all these different experiences. And I've really loved being in New York City, especially because I have never felt more Caribbean in my life. You know, I mean, Panama is part of the Caribbean. The Caribbean Sea does touch the Isthmus. People have -- I say that because people have sometimes been like, "But it's not an island." And I'm like, "I don't care." You know, culturally, we are very Caribbean. But we're also very Central American. You know, we're part of the Greater Latin American sort of project or [foreign language], if you follow that indigenous perspective on the continent. And obviously, I'm of African descent. And so -- but instead of thinking about, you know, all of these communities being separate, I just think of myself as being born, you know, on a plot of land that was hit by many suns. And y'all know I'm a poet, right? So yeah. Yeah. >> Melissa Lozada-Oliva: Wow. Yeah. I love that. I think answering this question for myself, I feel like -- I feel like I am Colombian and Guatemalan but mostly, very much first generation American. And because of that, I think I'm speaking to a lot of, like, misplaced people where you're just like, oh, like, I feel anxious sometimes. And maybe it's because I'm not actually supposed to be here. And I think I'm speaking to that kind of culture. And also, like, in internet culture, very much raised by the internet and kind of trying to pay homage to the Guatemalan woman that raised me and the singsonginess of my Colombian part also. I clearly was like, I'm -- I identify much more as Guatemalan American than Colombian American. But I still try to -- I'm still finding my roots there. Yeah. >> Gabriel Ojeda-Sagué: Okay. Do you want to do another? >> Melissa Lozada-Oliva: I think this is our last question. >> Gabriel Ojeda-Sagué: Okay. All right. >> Melissa Lozada-Oliva: I was given the signal. >> Gabriel Ojeda-Sagué: I don't have anything I could add more to that except it's very important to me that I'm always writing from a gay perspective. Like I'm a PhD candidate, and I do -- like, I work on gay media cultures in the US. So I spend a lot of time thinking and reading gay. But I just -- I'm always, like, working with that context as a contour to all the other ones. And that just feels important to me. >> Melissa Lozada-Oliva: That's great. Cool. Well, thank you so much for talking with me. >> Darrel Alejandro Holnes: Thanks to the audience. >> Melissa Lozada-Oliva: Thank you to the audience. >> Darrel Alejandro Holnes: Thanks for coming, everyone. >> Melissa Lozada-Oliva: Thank you for these questions. [ Applause ]