Photo courtesy of Carlos Trujillo

David Huerta and and his translator, Mark Schafer, reads from the new anthology “Before Saying Any of the Great Words,” at Swarthmore on Thursday, April 16.

BY MARY PRAGER

In print | Published April 23, 2009

On Thursday, April 16, 2009, award-winning poet David Huerta and translator Mark Schafer came to Swarthmore on a book tour to read from their new book, “Before Saying Any of the Great Words,” an anthology of Huerta’s work from 1972-2003. The reading was sponsored by the Spanish Section, Modern Languages & Literatures Department and the Swarthmore College Library. Thanks to Professor Aurora Camacho De Schmidt, Mary Prager of The Phoenix was able to sit down for a casual interview with Huerta a few hours before the reading took place in McCabe. The interview was conducted in Spanish and translated into English by Prager. It began on the topic of the phrase, “norte del nombre,” or “north of the name,” from the book-length poem “Incurable.”

David Huerta: If I remember correctly, this image belongs to “Incurable,” a very long book that I wrote and published in 1987, and “the north of the name,” the complexity of this image, is in the preposition of the name. “The name” is something that pertains to the north, and the north is one of the cardinal points. So there is a double meaning, an ambiguity. So we have in the first part, that “the name” has a “north,” or the north is something that pertains to the name.

Here we also have a colloquial expression. “Tener un norte” means, as you say in English, to have a clue. So to have a clue, of a name, is to understand its significance. “To know the north” of a name means to have a clue … the key of the name is the north of the name. But the first thing that occurred to me is that the name is in the north; that the name is a place. What kind of place is it? It is a place thanks to which we can orient ourselves. Language is what permits us to have orientation. Language is a map, or a continent. How do we orient ourselves in reality? What is our route, our compass? Names and language. So, language is what allows us to travel through reality.

It’s complicated, but at the same time, it’s very simple. How do we understand the world? By talking about the world. And poetry is very interesting in this way. You know, this is the second time that this phrase has been brought to my attention. A student of mine asked me what I was saying with this. So what we are doing now is like the second act of a play that was started before. The name is a phenomenon, a part of language … and this is the liberty that poetry gives me. And it’s also an instrument for navigation.

Mary Prager: Many cultures create myths to guide people, using thousands of words. Your project — poetry — is to use very few words, to reduce the great stories to something essential. What do you think about this reduction to the minimum?

DH: What you’re saying is something interesting that anthropologists and ethnologists study, the mythical consciousness. Everyone, I think, needs people, reasons, relations, and most of these stories are mythic, which give basis to the life of the society, the tribe, the group, to the big communities and the small communities. And there are many myths, of the solitary individual, of deities, of creation. But there are smaller myths, which are individual myths: our dreams. No? The myths, the great stories, are collective dreams, and dreams are individual myths. Where the collective myths and individual dreams communicate with each other, is where poetry appears. Right? And it tries to unite the individual with the community. And what better than words, it’s the element that unites, the bridge, or the path, to unite the individuals that dream with the communities that create myths. It’s like the community dreamt the origin of the world, so that when you wake up, you think, “Oh, the world was created by a God that I dreamt.” …

MP: In the poems of yours that I’ve read, in [points to another anthology] and in “Before Saying Any of the Great Words,” you reference outward sources, like Cortazar, who laughs at the great words, and even a reference to David Bowie.

DH: Slimy thoroughfares.

MP: Yes. (laughs)

DH: (laughs) It’s from a disk called Diamond Dogs, which in itself is a fascinating title. In my books there are lots of references to what happens to me, to what I know, to what is in books, and to what there is in the modern life and the ancient life, because the themes of poetry are all the imaginable themes. The theme of poetry isn’t death, or love, but anything, it could be a song by David Bowie, a Russian poem, the conversation we’re having now … For me, poetry is a total discourse, a totalizing discourse. And it’s especially valuable because it sets us apart from the instrumental use of language.

MP: Hm, I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying.

DH: When we sit at the table and say, “Give me a saltshaker,” that’s an instrumental use of language, pragmatic. “How do I go to the museum?” This is a pragmatic question, instrumental. We’re using language. We’re using it to serve us. But when you say, “Diamond Dogs,” this is a positioned scene of a few words that are never together, and there, something interesting, something beautiful, something that helps us to live, can appear … not just something that lets us pay, or live, but rather, something that puts us on another plane of language, the imaginative of language.

I’m not a fan of contemporary poetry that reproduces what people say on the street. Why reproduce what people say on the street? What people say on the street is not poetry, it’s not interesting. It seems more interesting to me to say “Diamond dogs” and “North of the name,” than that.

MP: That makes me think of Jaime Sabines’s “Espero curarme de ti,” and phrases which he uses within the poems like “give me water,” “night has fallen,” which are examples of the use of the practical use of language.

DH: What Sabines is saying is that in those words, there is something more than what is signified. And what we have there is the sentiment between the two people, between the man and the woman … The instrumental or pragmatic use of language doesn’t have to be just that; it can transcend itself … “It’s getting late” can mean different things … Language is full of all of these energies, all of these absolutely extraordinary energies.

MP: I have a question about one of your poems, “Opens and Closes.” “Abres un filo de navaja/para que gotee la transparencia.” (“You open the razor blade/to let the transparency trickle out.”) When I read this, it seemed like an energy was spilling into the page, like something was opening in that moment. Is this what you mean by energy? “You close the somnambulant pail of night/and a river of shadows overflows.” Where do these metaphors and images come from?

DH: From everywhere. These two lines come, in some form, although the reader doesn’t need to know, but I’ll share with you where they come from. This is a special key, which I’ll share with you. There is a scene, the first scene of a great surrealist film called “Un Chien Andalou” by Luis Buñuel.

MP: Yes, I’ve seen it.

DH: In the first scene, a man with a razor blade appears, and you see in the sky a cloud that passes in front of the moon. Then he opens the razor and opens the eye of a woman, and slices open the eye of the woman.

That’s the image. What comes out of the eye of the woman is crystalline, a crystalline, transparent substance. And what you suppose that these are the visions of the film. This is, as the musicians say, a variation on this theme, this surrealist Buñuelesque theme. It’s a terrible scene, it’s haunting … This is a variation on that theme, of the open eye … But this is a poem of love. The “you” of “you open” is the “you” of Sabines. You open, you open me, and what comes out of me is pure transparency. You bring me clarity.

MP: Some people have called your work postmodern, but what do you think of this name, this classification?

DH: I don’t think much of it. What interests me is poetry, postmodern, modern, premodern, classic, but fundamentally, poetry and not labels. I don’t distinguish between modern poems and ancient poems … The era of the poem doesn’t bother me. Poetry is like a newspaper. A newspaper records the news of today. A poem records the news of forever …

MP: So, you are also a journalist.

DH: Yes, I’m also a journalist, but I’ve suspended my work as a journalist to become a professor. I do very little journalism now but I did it for almost thirty years. It’s a very honorable and necessary activity, for the health of the community. So you must deal with the truth very carefully. I wrote opinions columns, and not news. I wrote from my house, commenting on political acts, contributing so that people better understood what was going on. I was more of a political commentator than a reporter.

MP: So what do you think now of Felipe Calderon?

DH: I’m not supportive of his government. My political position is very different than that of Mexico. I’m also very disillusioned with the Left, which I supported for many years … So I’m feeling very isolated, and I’m waiting for the moment to intervene … but my work right now is in education. It’s almost a dogma for me. I don’t think there is any human or divine power that can dissuade me from that. I’m absolutely convinced that education is the solution to many things … For me, that is more important than writing poetry, to teach classes for writing poetry and teach students to take from literature as much as they can. It’s wonderful to read — a complete wonder …

MP: Out of music, poetry and literature, which is the most important to you?

DH: It’s music. For me, music is the maximal art. Music is for me the maximal art. Everything else, all the other arts, are measured by their proximity to music. Poetry is a lot like music. I would have liked to be a musician, but I didn’t have the power or concentration. But I listen to music, I make a little music, and it is a form like the background of my life. It’s my atmosphere, to listen to music, more than reading poetry. And everything else is important and interesting, it’s a source of stimulus, reasons to live, to reflect; the cinema, the theater, dance and painting. There is nothing mesquino, cheap, tight-fisted. Nothing is tight-fisted. Everything can give is something if we are disposed to it. Music more than anything. And, animals. I think these are two activities which make life worthwhile: listen to music and live with animals. They make us ask questions that are not easy to answer. What is going on in this world.

MP: I haven’t read many poems of yours about either.

DH: No, I haven’t written about them, not very much. But I will …

MP: What were you doing when you were 20 years old?

DH: My life was very different. I had a daughter. I was a young man, but I was living an older life. My daughter was a year old when I was 20 years old, and she was born when I was 19. So, it was too bad that I couldn’t live the life of a student. The life of a student is great.

MP: And the life of a poet?

DH: One thing is true. As a poet, you don’t get rich. This is the path that I chose. But I know people, I travel, and the most important is that I do what I want. To do what one wants, and to be rich, is too much. But I am very content, and I know Professor Aurora, and all of you, and with my translator, with Marc, I said, How wonderful, that we travel.

MP: How do you write poetry? And you can interpret this question as you like.

DH: I’ll refer to the concrete act of writing. The answer is, in all the possible ways. I write by hand, by computer. I always have blank papers to write on public transportation. Sometimes it’s uncomfortable, on foot, on the subway, in the metro. Sometimes, above all poems, I write without writing them. That is, it’s an activity that I find very satisfactory, it’s very difficult that … this. I’ll give you an exmple. “Abres y cierras,” I wrote without writing. IN the metor, squashed, thinking. In the lines, and I memorized them. Oe hour later, when I had them in my head, I arrived home and wrote them. And this is an easier task for poets. You write a verse, you “write,” with the head.

MP: And with the ear?

DH: Of course. In this case, I’ve heard it internally. Which is a marvel. On the metro, when I can’t hear, I murmur. And sometimes, I write in a peculiar manner. I’m not the only one, there are other writers who do this, which is to write, speaking, recording as we are dong now. Instead of writing, I dictate. This way, I wrote parts of “Incurable.” Recorded, in a recorder, a tape.

MP: “Incurable” is a very long poem … how much of it did you record?

DH: I recorded a small part. But twenty or thirty of the pages were recorded, transcribed, and later transcribed, and corrected and corrected. We used machines that you wouldn’t be familiar with, from generations before computers. In those age, we used [typewriters] to correct and correct and correct. But in the beginning it was with the voice, it was auditory. But the answer is that I write in all manners, by pencil, pen, by computer, I record and I memorize. And I think it’s worth trying this variety of forms of writing, because it leaves you very free. It leaves you very free to write how you want.

« RETURN TO LIVING & ARTS

« PREV ARTICLE | NEXT ARTICLE »