Every Day We Get More Illegal by Juan
Felipe Herrera
Reviewed by
Greg Gilbert for Cholla Needles
The cover offers a clue, suggestive
of a high resolution photograph, the dark areas assembling into a partially
obscured face, half in repose, half vigilant, perhaps an indigenous visage, a
countenance for the reader to assemble. The art is titled “Detention X,” and is
by the author, markers on found cardboard. The dedication begins “for all the
migrants, immigrants and refugees suffering from the border installations
within the United Sates, at the border crossing and throughout Latin America.”
The dedication is “for a borderless society and world, made of relentless unity
and giving.” Is it likely that refugees suffering at border crossings are the
intended audience? If not, then whom?
Herrera’s book is as much a
study of text as of white space. Pages that are haiku brief, “Your
consciousness / is ever expanding / onto infinity.
Other pages give us short prose
poetry paragraphs, journal entries, one titled “America We Talk About It.” “ .
. . First I had to learn. Over decades – to take care of myself. Are you
listening.” The entry describes the “pebble by pebble” discovery of his “true
inner self.” In 120 words, he pushes away his heritage only to learn “too late
there was no way I could bring them back I could not rewind the clock.” It
concludes with a quiet finality, “Now we – are here.” This is a book about
discovery, passages that appeal to our better natures, our affluence, our
complicity, and our common humanity. The poem “Basho & Mandela” sets out
two paths that converge on a single destination: “freedom.” [See the poem, and hear Hererra read this poem by clicking here - source: The New Yorker]
As we follow Herrera’s journey,
his love of poetry and language is a given, and an appeal to pay attention. Some
readers may take offense and feel unfairly indicted by his words at times. A 480
word prose poem, “You Just Don’t Talk About It” employs the “You” that can only
be the reader, perhaps those who would purchase a book from City Lights, and
offers a litany of sorrows. The poem begins “Lissen: you just don’t,” and sets
out the horrors and vanities that frame our lives, “. . . you prefer the
holiday merchandise the rational vacuum you just don’t care about the pushed
out the stopped out the forced out the starved out the fenced out the shot down
the cut back the asphalted out on the other side of the track the suicide the
hanged w/ a bedsheet . . ..” And then in direct address, “I know you heard this
all before you have the smart language your lawyers lawyers for your lawyers
you have your corporate privacy but you do not notice you do not walk you do
not enter you do not get near you stay there where you are at this moment you
do not care about the coldshot murder in the car at the tip of your open mouth
gun you do not care . . ..” Indeed, one may read blame, and/or one may read a
voice crying in the wilderness.
In “Don’t Push the Button,” Herrera
equates the button to “wall of Patrols,” to a “30 billion dollar aircraft
carrier,” and references an “off-kilter” that is “beyond Milton and Sappho / it
is beyond Pas and Ko Un it is beyond all the African / drummers . . ..” Following this are pages where the importance
of isolated lines are framed by expanses of white space. “underneath the code
of the wall things are always / in motion / while we wait to
cross.” And several pages later, the poem “Ko Un Says,” concludes, “there is a
line of quail leading to the meadows / outside the city the persimmons are
exactly / the color they should be.”
This is the point where the
poet, having made his “pebble by pebble” discoveries and given voice to the
twin forces of inhumanity and economic division and the color of the perfect
persimmon, shifts his focus to labor, “Touch the Earth (once again).” Here he
invokes the “we.” “This is what we do:” Here
are the cotton truck drivers, tobacco leaf rollers, washer women, cucumber,
spinach, beet, and poultry workers, the services too numerous to list, “the
winery workers & the lettuce & broccoli / & peach & apricot
& squash & apple & / that almost-magical watermelon / & . . ..”
And “notice: / how they touch the earth – for you.” At last, you & we find common ground.
Now the poet speaks of his
journey, his family in “Enuf.” He describes how he used to think that he “was
not American enuf.” He describes his “hobo torn-pants get-up with my Shinola
sideburns.” He tells how he was “an expert at signing my mother’s Alien
Registration Card.” He writes, “this is not a poor-boy story / this is a
pioneer story / this is your story / America are you listening.” After an
introductory four line stanza, a main body of 57 lines, the poem concludes with
one couplet: “used to think I was not American enuf / now it is the other way
around.”
Address Book for the Firefly on the Road / North #3
when
we reach
the
family shrine
made
of twigs bitten cloth
shrubs
& dirt
we
bow
“Interview w/a Border Machine”
describes a guard’s questioning of an Indian woman, Xochitl Tzompantli, and
demonstrates the gulf between the keeper of the border and a woman whose name
translates to Skull Rack Flower. This is the poem that says everything that
matters. It is the reason to purchase this book. The next poem is in many ways
what follows the border crossing, “Color Tense,” which describes the loss of
color, the loss of bronze, sienna ochre, and then the faces, noses, scarves,
stories, the long abiding dreams of a culture. “I am not a paid protestor”
invokes a call and response approach to poetry that with comic overtones sets
out the absurdity of an interrogation. In other poems, friends leave to avoid
capture. In another, tears are shed for “there is a girl up ahead / made of sparkles is she me or / is she / dead / / On the custody
floor /
105.7 degrees.”
And then the book dreams of
tomorrows. The “we” is employed, “after we unfold and lay upon the carpets
after the waters / wash away our wounds and scald our scars / we will speak of
our mother and fathers who . . ..” From here the book frames dreams of a
cultural heaven surrounded again by vast avenues of white space.
we will chant our many births
about the abyss and the aurora
about the sacred dizziness as we broke
through all the cries of wars and redemptions of being
— this blurred
world
The politics of the present
epoch and the personal views of “you,” the reader may interfere with the
reading of these poems, but the voice of “we” is an appeal to reach beyond the
walls that encircle and glimpse the hearts of those seeking redress from war,
famine, and despair by fleeing to America. This is a work that moves through
phases to a longed for Promised Land. The postscript offers a final hope: “We
must develop a sense of oneness of 7 billion human beings” – Dalai Lama.
Every Day We Get More Illegal is not about a people breaking more
laws with each passing day, but of a people who see their dream of America
withering. While they, their children, their grandmothers and grandfathers,
their families become more illegal, the poet Juan Felipe Herrera uses his
considerable poetic talent to reach out to “us.” This is a beautifully
expressed call to our common humanity.
One additional comment: Nearly 20 years ago, I read Loteria Cards and Fortune Poems: A Book of Lives by Juan Felipe Herrera with linocuts by Artemio Rodriguez. The poetry was wonderful, and the woodcuts equally wonderful. Juan Felipe Herrera was appointed U.S. Poet Laureate for 2015-16, the first Latino to receive this honor. I recommend both books. - Greg Gilbert
Half of the World In Light
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.