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Ada Limón

Mystery & Birds: 5 Ways to Practice Poetry

Joshua Marie Wilkinson is putting together a group of micro-essay for teaching poetry to beginning writers. Though I’m not really a teacher, he asked me nonetheless. And since I have so many dear dear friends beginning their semesters this week, this goes out to them. Thanks JMW for inviting me to participate.
Mystery & Birds: 5 Ways to Practice Poetry
Because I work outside of the academic field, I don’t get the
opportunity to teach very often, but when I do, I’m surprised by how
many people read poems as if they can have only one meaning. In my own
experience, I find it nearly impossible to hear the beauty and
meditative joy of a poem’s lines, or the sensual sounds of a syllable,
when I’m reading solely for narrative sense. So, I’ve come to think
that one of the first things to learn about poetry is to simply relax
in its mystery. We need to learn that a poem can have many meanings
and that it can be enjoyed without a complete understanding of the
poet’s intent. On a good day a poem might bring you great joy, on a
tough day, the same poem might reveal great agony, but the poem hasn’t
changed—it’s what you have brought to the poem that has changed. The
more you read a poem, the more time you spend with it, read it out
loud to yourself or to others, the more it will open to you—start to
wink and flirt and let you in. A poem is a complex living thing, its
multiple edges and many colors are what makes this singular art form
so difficult to define. There is an ancient Chinese Proverb that says,
“A bird sings not because he has an answer, but because he has a
song.” That is how I have come to think about poetry—that a poem isn’t
a problem to solve, but rather it’s a singular animal call that
contains multiple layers of both mystery and joy.
It’s that unique animal call that we have to carve out time for if we
really want to do the work that poetry requires. Though I admit I
struggle everyday to find the right balance between my writing
practice and the daily pressures of living, there are a few things
that help me remain true to the work of poetry. Although these may not
work for every writer, the following five points are what have kept me
writing poetry with greater ease and discipline on a daily basis.

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01.13.09 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (5)

Ada Limón

The Cat’s Got the Poet’s Tongue

I’m sorry that I haven’t been posting. Every time I got a free second to start a post, kerplop: A poem would come out. I suppose that’s no excuse or perhaps, in this setting, it’s the best (or only) excuse. But I do apologize for being remiss. Nevertheless, I was out with a friend last night (wait, I thought you just said, every free second you were writing, ADA?!) and we were sort of sharing our literary loves and the projects we were working on. And at one point we started talking about how difficult it is to talk about a project that is in the works, in the making. The project that is still nascent; before it is the final thing. The book. Of course, there are the pat answers that you give a parties, our well rehearsed tidbits of nada. When everyone else is talking about their jobs, their new houses, writers HAVE to have something to say.

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05.30.08 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (2)

Ada Limón

Regional Homesickness

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In reading Linh Dinh’s wonderful post about Montana and thinking of Bill Knott’s insightful comment in which he asked, “Is the regional poet extinct?” I began to think of how regional poetry is defined and, indeed, how I might define myself. Having been in New York now for 9 years, where I hope I have not let the “hegemonic nets” blind me to my own personal territory, I find it difficult to find a determinative factor that leads one to the self-proclamation of “regional poet.” I live in New York, but I know every name of every street in my hometown of Sonoma, California (okay, not the every single one, but MOST of them), I am personally invested in the town’s well-being as an artistic community, and I still read the local paper. I return often, sit quietly, and memorize everything from the inanimate objects to the singular stunning landscape.

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05.21.08 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (7)

Ada Limón

Shout Out to Latino Poetry Review

“To be of the air. I’m saying this to myself like a prayer, because I don’t know that we can be free—of nationality, body, belonging.”
—Miguel Murphy from Blood and Breath: A Conversation
There is very important new member of the poetry world. (This odd world of beasts and bones.) He is brand new and he is very handsome. He is made out of the river’s ripples and green mesquite. His name is the Latino Poetry Review. Bienvenidos LPR…y gracias.
With its first issue just now arriving, I’d like to applaud the little one and say first, you rock (that’s an official poetic term) and second, what took you so long? We’ve needed you.

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05.16.08 PERMALINK | NO COMMENTS

Ada Limón

The Fine Art of Mimicry

“I will know my song well, before I start singing”
—Bob Dylan, A Hard Rain’s Going to Fall
I hope you got out your window yesterday. I did, just for a couple of hours, but it was worth it. My friend M (we’ll call her that) is a young, new poet and she’s learning how to write, and doing quite well. But she worries that she’s trying to copy her favorite writers when she reads them all the time and then writes her own verse. This post is particularly for her.
A dear poet friend of mine is taking me out for a belated birthday dinner tonight (it was almost 2 months ago, but that’s apparently how busy our lives ended up). Afterwards, because it’s a bit of a tradition, we might sing a little karaoke. I hated karaoke until I met her. I sang a bit in school, the national anthem for high school homecoming (which was horrendous), then a bit in college, but for some reason karaoke made me cringe. But then, I learned to pick the songs I really loved. Even if they weren’t popular (usually old standards, some real grandma pleasers). I practiced them, and then I actually learned to be okay at it (not great, but you know, not terrible). Don’t show up and hold me to that, alright?
I bring this up because today, I was having lunch with a fiction writer and we talked about how important mimicry is when you begin delving into your own writing. At least it was very important to me, still is really.

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05.15.08 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (8)

Ada Limón

Slipping Out the Window

“I teach my sighs to lengthen into songs.”
—from The Renewal, Theodore Roethke
This morning, I was reading Roethke on the train (I admit, part of me was trying to block out the news, having been chained to its great sorrow all morning). And the sun is out today in the city; spring is fully upon us and racing full-fledged into summer warmth. The weather and the blooms reminded me of when I was studying as an undergraduate at the University of Washington in Seattle. It is the spring quarter poetry class that I remember most (I took it only in my senior year, having exhausted all of my other electives from drama to dance). The classroom we were in overlooked the quad where all the cherry trees blossomed in some unnatural frenzy of suggestiveness. We’d read poems and then most of us would stare out the window wide-eyed and restless. I was madly in love of course, as I usually am in the spring. (Aren’t you?) Anyway, my professor, Colleen McElroy, told this story of when Roethke was teaching there (the last place he taught before his death), in that same classroom on the ground floor.

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05.14.08 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (1)

Ada Limón

Shout Out to Literacy Through Poetry

In less than a week, one of my favorite teaching artist programs in New York City, The Community Word Project, will turn ten years old. And so will I. Well, sort of. I started teaching with them almost 9 years ago when I was in graduate school and it was my first foray into the world of both second graders, teaching, and the Bronx. It was also my first year in New York, so as you can imagine, my whole world was on overload. I remember my first day, I could barely breathe and I thought, “How is it possible that students, tiny, beautiful, little students, could make me so nervous.” But they did and I was and it was hard. But it got easier, and eventually, it got addicting. I still miss it, although occasionally I still feel like I work with, ahem, second graders. Now, CWP is a whole ten years old. They’d be in fourth grade! They’d be rocking the elementary school with their new kicks and poems about big kids stuff. So, hats off to The Community Word Project and to the amazing work they do. I’m including a bit of information about their work and their benefit next week.

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05.13.08 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (2)

Ada Limón

Feliz Cinco de Mayo & Louder ARTS

Feliz Cinco de Mayo
First let me start with a brief description of this day. Being of Mexican heritage, I’ve had to explain it on a regular basis. So, I thought I’d just give a quick rambling, if only to say: This day is not just about margaritas and tortilla chips (although I find nothing wrong with either of those things and hope to partake in both shortly).
The first thing that I find myself reminding people of is this: Cinco de Mayo is NOT Mexico’s Independence Day (which is actually September 16th or midnight of the 15th depending one what you’re reading). Instead, it is in celebration of the day, May 5th, 1862, when 4,000 members of the Mexican Militia defeated 8,000 members of the French army in the town of Puebla. (Napoleon wanted to take over and install Maximilian as ruler of Mexico).

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05.05.08 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (8)

Ada Limón

A Little Levis on Derby Day

I grew up going to the track. Well, that’s a slight exaggeration. My stepfather—a writer and a wonderful human—likes to bet on the horses. Every time I go back to Sonoma, my hometown, he and I take at least one day to drive up to OTB and lose a little money. I lose. He wins. So, it’s only fitting that I’m thinking about him today as the Kentucky Derby gets underway and I still need to get my bets in before post. Mostly, on the drive to the races we end up talking about language and poetry in one way, shape, or form. These long drives up Warm Springs Road to Bennett Valley and back has done very serious things to my brain. For starters, it has linked horses and poetry forever.

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05.03.08 PERMALINK | COMMENTS (1)

Ada Limón

Thursday Shout Out: Jimmy Santiago Baca (okay, it’s Friday)

For many Latino (and non-Latino) poets, Jimmy Santiago Baca is a hero of sorts. With a long sordid history of pulling himself out and up from the mire, Baca has traversed the poetic world as both a rogue and a wayward leader. Still, I am often surprised that he is not as well known as he should be. With his first poems published in Mother Jones and lauded by Denise Levertov while Baca was still in prison in the 70s (he spent 6 years in prison on drug possession, read his book, A Place to Stand), he has since made a life and a living out of writing. Based in New Mexico and spending the majority of his time writing and running workshops in prisons, in schools, and in the community, Baca has become an epic figure in Mexican American poetry. His book, Spring Poems Along the Rio Grande (New Directions, 2007) is a quieter Baca, an older, less angry Baca. Full of ruminations and reflections on his life along the bosque, this is a book meant to be read in the sage bushes without the noises of the city tuning out the birds. Two days ago, I pulled it off my shelf since first reading it when it came out last year, and thought I’d give it a shout out. I suppose I needed its quietude and whisper.