another round of poems

April is National Poetry Month. Poets and poetry-lovers alike are celebrating in a myriad of ways. There are conferences and festivals, slams and open mics, contests and challenges, like  NaPoWriMo.

Over here at Zafatista, I know the least I can do to celebrate is post another list of some of my favorite poems. I created the first list back in September, and it is certainly time for another. I dug up many of these pieces in my Norton Anthology of Poetry, which I read in a high school English class. The book is a treasure, although it does not represent nearly enough women poets or poets of color or women poets of color.

Each poem tells a unique story. Read and comment as you see fit. Preferably, before NPM is over. :) 

The Fish by Elizabeth Bishop 

Dream Variations by Langston Hughes

El Chicle by Ana Castillo

Ars Politica by Julia Alvarez

When I Have Fears by John Keats

I Wandered Lonely As a Cloud by William Wordsworth

This Is Just To Say by William Carlos Williams

The Wrong Kitchen by Nikki Giovanni

Mirror by Sylvia Plath

Crazy Bunch Barbecue by Willie Perdomo

The Promise by Sharon Olds

Poets from bottom to top: Ana Castillo, Nikki Giovanni, William Carlos Williams.

the pura principle

Junot Diaz has a new short story out in The New Yorker. It's called "The Pura Principle." The narrator is the familiar Yunior, a character whose voice Junot has used before in his fiction. Yunior is one of my favorite voices in fiction, as well as one of the characters whose beliefs and choices tend to break my heart/make me flinch most often (see: Yunior's relationship with the character Lola in The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao).

"The Pura Principle" is about Yunior's relationship with his older brother, Rafa, who is dying from leukemia, but still won't repent of his tigueraje, mistreatment of his mother, and general selfishness. Although Junot's depictions of a weakening Rafa are moving, Yunior is the one we love. His Dominican York vernacular rings true and his funny-as-hell observations cut right to the soul of Dominican family life. Read it for yourself and decide what you think of Yunior. One thing is for sure: you won't easily forget the world(s) he narrates or the people who move through his narrative --- from Pura, who is briefly married to Rafa, to the old church ladies Yunior christens "The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse."

There is also the character Tammy Franco, a female figure I wanted to know more about. The misogynist gazes of Junot's protagonists sometimes render women characters in flat terms (this is deliberate --- I'm not saying Junot is a misogynist, merely that he sometimes writes from the perspective of male characters who are). And although women are certainly important in Junot's stories, they are not usually at the center. Tammy is an ex-girlfriend of Rafa's who into and out of the story. Her friendship with Rafa is enigmatic and she acts as somewhat of a hero, briefly, in the piece. At every apparition, I found myself thinking, "She's the one. She's the one I want to know more about." We never quite get what Tammy is all about, and the story is just fine that way, but I do secretly wish that Tammy will show up again in another piece by Junot. 

I'm endlessly fascinated by gender politics in Junot's work and "The Pura Principle" is not different. In this story, Junot depicts a world with complicated, problematic gender dynamics, language, and characters that in all their messiness evoke real life. 

 If anyone wants to talk gender in "The Pura Principle," please send me an e-mail or hit me up on Twitter. 

That's all for now. Enjoy the story. Keep reading!

manifesta of a zafatista

In The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz tells us a Dominican creation story. Adam, Eve, the serpent, and the Garden of Eden play no part in this genesis. In Diaz's tale, there are only Tainos and Africans, invading Europeans, and the land. Diaz writes that when Columbus landed on the island of Hispaniola in 1492, the world was hit with fukú. Fukú is “a curse or doom of some kind; specifically the Curse and Doom of the New World” (Diaz 1).

The New World is fallen, and colonization is the original sin from which all subsequent loss, misfortune, and brokenness stem. According to Oscar Wao, almost anything can be the work of fukú - a hurricane, freak accident, or food poisoning. However, after reading about the lives of the characters in the novel, one can discern that the most sinister curses are the legacies of colonization. Poverty, racism, militarism, patriarchy, and self-hate, to name a few, are all fukú.

But Dominican folk wisdom contends that we New World babies have not been left defenseless against fukú.

"Only one way to prevent disaster from coiling around you, only one surefire counterspell that would keep you and your family safe. Not surprisingly, it was a word. A simple word (followed usually by a vigorous crossing of index fingers). Zafa."

(Diaz 7)

If fukú is what puts up divisions between us, zafas are what break down these walls. If fukú is danger and persecution, zafas are protection and sanctuary. If fukú is oppression and silence, zafas are freedom and imagination.

Diaz offers his first novel, Oscar Wao, as a zafa - a counterspell to all the hardships and distortions of history.

Here, a definition:

Verb

zafar (first-person singular present zafo, first-person singular preterite zafé, past participle zafado)

(transitive) To loosen; to untie.

(reflexive) To come undone; to loosen up.

(reflexive) To free oneself of; to get free of.

Source: Wiktionary.

The verb zafar is the perfect description of what good writing can do. It can loosen our bonds, help us find the strength and consciousness we need to untie one another and ourselves, and overturn the original curse of fukú.

I want to be a zafatista - zinging folks left and right with literary blessings. I want my stories to be the uttered words and crossed fingers that help my people be free.

Thus, I write to you from this blog. I will share some words and some pictures, some thoughts. Please send me your blogs so that I may read your work. Hopefully, together we can be some sort of community, counterspell.

Zafa!