A Conversation with Lorna Dee Cervantes

Abstract

INTERVIEW .: . . .. .... zl i4. k . ... ..... fj? WO k-Aj, 1-w i%. - . . - . . I -fie 2r A Conversation with Lorna Dee Cervantes Jeanetta Colhoun Mish Lorna Dee Cervantes is an award-winning Chicana and Native American poet who has been described by Alurista as "one of the major Chicana poets of the past forty years." Her published works include three books of poetry Emplumada (1981), which won the American Book Award, From the Cables of Genocide: Poems on Love and Hunger (1991), and Drive (2006). She has been the recipient of two NEA Fellowships for Poetry. Cervantes's poetry is known for its empha sis on social justice and for its compelling imagery. Jeanetta Calhoun Mish: Because you've given inter views over the years that have covered your early work, I'm going to concentrate in this interview on what you're doing and writing currently. So, first, let's talk about your most recent book, Drive, which was published by Wings Press in 2006. It's actually five books in one, containing new poems from 1980 to 2005. Why did you choose to publish a large collection like this rather than a series of individual books? Lorna Dee Cervantes: Yes, Drive is five books in one, one of which is a book-length poem. I have always been more interested in the book and concepts of the book of poetry, rather than seeing a collection of poetry just as "here is everything I've written and I'll put it in some kind of order, all the bird poems or all the love poems, or what ever," right? Instead, I've always been struck by individual books like Pablo Neruda's The Heights ofMacchu Picchu, how that is a whole conception, or Howl or Sylvia Plath's Ariel, and certainly Eliot's books of poetry. One of the first poets I really got a sense of the book from is Walt Whitman, who worked on the same book all his life. I first dis covered Whitman when I was eight or nine years old. So the idea of the book of poetry, of creating the book of poetry, is why it took so long for me to finish Emplumada, which many people were interested in publishing, but it just wasn't ready; it took me about seven years. One of the things I started working on right after I finished Emplumada was this book, which I thought at that point was four books in one but which later become five. I think of it as a literary pentych, like in visual art. For instance, think of the triptychs of Hieronymus Bosch: you have three different canvasses and each of them cre ate their own composition, then you put them together and you notice, oh, this shadow here isn't a mountain, it's the edge of this castle, and you wouldn't see it unless you hang them together. I envision this book as a literary pentych so that each individual book stands on its own. It's not a pentalogy, but instead I see them as having five different literary strategies with interwoven, inter changeable imagery. JCM: I'd like to talk to you about poetry as activ ism. You are involved in many forms of what I call poetry activism. For instance, you have written and sold poems on demand to help a San Fran cisco schoolteacher get a new place to live after his apartment burned down. Would you share a few more examples of how you put your poetry and your public presence to work in the world? LDC: First of all, thank you for recognizing that. When I first went to Mexico in 1974 and was involved in Chicano teatro?Mexican American guerilla theater?I realized that my politics and my poetry could merge; suddenly it wasn't just for me. Before then, I didn't share this poetry; I kept it in notebooks. My friends only knew I wrote poetry because we took a three-day train ride to Mexico, and I was always constantly writing. "What are Jeanetta Caihoun Mish is a poet and editor of Mongrel Empire Press. Her most recent book...