Poetry Is a Call to Action: Juan Felipe Herrera Visits NPR in Washington

If you tuned in to NPR's "Morning Edition" yesterday, you might have heard a sound bite from the next United States poet laureate: Juan Felipe Herrera. If you missed it, there's still time to listen to Herrera in conversation with Renee Montagne of "Morning Edition" and hear a sneak preview of Herrera's inaugural poem. More:

When Juan Felipe Herrera came to NPR's Washington studio, the poet laureate carried a sketch pad of drawings and scribbles of poems in the works. Herrera is the child of Mexican migrant farmworkers. He grew up following the seasons as his parents picked crops in the heat and dust of California's fields.

Herrera gives his first official reading as the nation's new poet laureate on Tuesday. When he sat down with NPR, he shared something from his sketch pad — a fragment of the poem he was writing for his inaugural reading. The poem is called "So I Will Speak Of It" and it's about visiting an indigenous community:

Let it begin — you say, crimson fibers &
solar epoch rise up at the broken spike of
the life-highway
bones of ragged singers the ones you find
painted in street shadow life

the ones made of sugar black coffee tin can
drink
asleep by the mountain scar — they
still keep songs woven on brown-off-white
belts

let grandfather fire Tatewarí tear himself
for the ache sweet waters of mother waves
Aramara
teal-glaze ocean-red beads sea speak here

speak here:
long & ancient strings splintered
tiny guitar plywood sanded down
sit here — this corner by Fanta machines
teetering
gas pump road to Guadalajara - - -

Who
will
listen? [...]

More at NPR.