"I trust the words that appeal to the emotional or narrative condition being depicted": An Interview with Ruben Quesada

Ruben Quesada, author of Next Extinct Mammal, of which D.A. Powell says, "Like Whitman, Quesada is a poet of motion—journeying to the center of the US, where the traditions and innovations of first-generation Americans transverse the meditative starbursts of hills…. From Costa Rica to Los Angeles and across the continent, Quesada’s poems chronicle one family’s history…carries us toward 'that seam in space' where dream and experience intersect,” took part in this interview with Lauro Vazquez at the Letras Latinas blog.

A taste:

LV: And what words does Ruben Quesada trust? Do they come from a world in constant flux, from a cosmic matter, an already-lived material to which only the poet has access?

I trust the words that appeal to the emotional or narrative condition being depicted. My poems provide a sense of being in the world. I don’t try to sift through words to discover something unusual or esoteric; on the contrary, the process is much more painstakingly calculated. The Greco-Roman idea of decorum, as it applies to the aesthetics of poetry, serves to guide the poet’s use of language (the composition & craft) to render with convincing appeal the volatility of nature and time. Existing social conventions are not fixed; language is fluid and constantly evolving to more accurately represent the world around us. Walt Whitman may have begun to mirror the world around him by showing the landscape and the men and women of America on equal terms, but it was subsequent generations of poets that sustained this idea.

It is language, then, which provides us with a common union. Mutlu Konuk Blasing explains it best in Lyric Poetry: The Pain and the Pleasure of Words when she describes our acquisition of language as a “personal-communal” history. It is through language that individuals are able to share in the underlying or inherent connotation of words. The words I use are not accessible only by the poet, but they are the words I’ve come to learn and know. I grew up learning two languages; the words I’ve acquired and that I have come to trust were taught to me. I have come to these words on equal terms like any man or woman who lives in the cosmos.

Read the entire interview here.