After my dad's death, I wrote numerous poems where he tended to his plants, watering the yard of our red-bricked home in the Rio Grande Valley. His Corona de Cristo plant was one that I was both curious and scared of. The first draft of this poem was a contemplative piece that just observed the plant. However, in reworking it with Claire Bowman, the exquisite editor at Host Publications, she urged me to dig deeper. The poem, then, became an exploration of guilt and sexuality.
Bianca Alyssa Pérez on Corona de Cristo |
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"Darius Atefat-Peckham ’23 on Poetry as Sincerity"
"For Atefat-Peckham, language is not just deeply tied to place, it is also eternally connected to love. In Book of Kin, Atefat-Peckham embraces the Persian that he knows and lives in. He accepts that his Persian can exist 'broken' and this acceptance becomes a crucial element of his poetic expression....'For me, poetry is confronting mystery. When I go to poetry, I am seeking a deeper connection with a beloved place, a heritage I don't know.'"
via THE HARVARD CRIMSON |
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What Sparks Poetry: Luisa A. Igloria on "Caulbearer"
"It is believed that the child, this caulbearer, is marked with a kind of otherworldly protection; some say, even second sight—because for no matter how short a time, it knew what it’s like to inhabit a space in its transit from one world to another. For me, what we bring into poems as well as the poem itself lives in this same kind of liminal territory. It’s as if in the poem we are allowed a veiled glimpse of visions and insights from feeling and remembrance, mingled with the facts of our real and imagined lives and circumstances." |
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