Music Credit: -“Puro Son en Concierto,”, traditional, performed by La Familia Valera Miranda. Dan Vera: "Norse Saga” – “Let us praise the immigrant who leaves the tropics and arrives in Chicago in the dead of winter. Let us praise the immigrant who has never worn coats, who must bundle up against an unimaginable cold, for they will write letters home that speak of it like Norse saga, with claims that if a frigid hell exists, the entrance is hidden somewhere in this city. Let us praise the immigrant who fears the depths of the subway, the disappearance of landmarks to guide them through the labyrinth. Let us praise the immigrant who dreams of the pleasures of sunstroke, who wakes each morning to the alien sight of their breath suspended in the cold city air." <music> Jo Reed: That’s poet Dan Vera, reading his poem, “Norse Saga, and this is Art Works, the weekly podcast produced at the National Endowment for the Arts. I’m Josephine Reed. We close National Poetry Month with Dan Vera. Dan is a first-generation Cuban-American, whose poetry sings of multiple identities, ethnicity, geographies of migration, and displacement. With imagery that is tender, witty and, surprising, Dan Vera navigates the linguistic shoals of English and Spanish and explores how language can bring us together and pull us apart. Dan’s latest collection of poems is titled Speaking Wiri Wiri and it was awarded the 2012 Letras Latinas/Red Hen Poetry Prize. “Norse Saga” comes from this collection, and, on the face of it, it’s an odd topic for a Texas-born son of Cuban immigrants. Dan Vera: I wrote the poem after living in Chicago. I lived in Chicago for two years, and my parents had lived in Chicago for two years when they first came to the United States. Back then, you know, you had to be claimed by someone, and the only person that they knew was a Swedish Salvation Army captain. Her name was Captain Carson – La Capitana Carson – and I grew up hearing her name invoked as a saint. She had known them. She had worked in a hospital – my father had been a nurse during the revolution in Cuba – and she knew them, and she claimed them. She brought them to Chicago February of 1962. They had never left Cuba. They had been born and raised there. They didn't own coats. I grew up hearing that story, and I grew up hearing the refrain that Dad would say, "If there's a frigid hell, the entrance is hidden somewhere in that city." Whenever Chicago would come up, he would just get this look on his face, this pained, chilled look, and he would say that phrase, which always made us laugh. And then I had the opportunity to take a job there, and I remember when I called – I was living in Denver at the time – I called to tell them. He got very quiet, and he said, "Daniel, I did tell you about Chicago, didn't I?" But back then what I didn't comprehend was what it must have been like for them. They were my age at the time I was living there, and my mother came and visited. It was the first time she'd been back in 35-plus years, and it was arresting for me to just see this woman on those sidewalks, to walk around those blocks and have her tell me the story of those two years when they were utterly lost, where everything was in a completely foreign language, where she was afraid to take the L-train because, if it went under a tunnel, she wouldn't have any way of navigating. It was all visual for her. To imagine her and to imagine the two of them attempting to do this thing, to come to a country in a different language, was really moving to me. So the poem really kind of comes out of this comprehension that, hopefully, we're fortunate enough to sort of get about what our parents sort of went through, and if we're the children of immigrants, sort of what it takes to sort of leave everything you know and go into a completely different place – especially in those days when there wasn't a community. For me, it was also instructive about American history at that time. The people in that neighborhood – it was a working-class neighborhood at the time, and it was mostly Eastern Europeans. So most of the people living in that neighborhood were émigrés from the Eastern Bloc – they found sort of common cause between these two Cubans with their little baby and whatever they had sort of gone through, leaving Estonia. So that was really amazing too, to think of them in that setting. Jo Reed: You were born and raised in Texas. Dan Vera: Yes. I was born and grew up in South Texas, a very small town – Raymondville, Texas, which is down in the valley – and then Corpus Christi, Texas, for most of my childhood. Was in Texas through college. Jo Reed: Cubans living in South Texas. That's a little unusual, isn't it?] Dan Vera: Very unusual. <laughs> Yeah. Jo Reed: Did you feel different or out of place at times? Dan Vera: Yeah. It came out when I would speak Spanish. People didn't assume I spoke Spanish as a kid, and people would say, "Oh, where are you from?" and I would say, "Well, I was born here and raised here, but my family's from Cuba," and they'd say, "Oh, Cubano." And then I'd – we'd – visit relatives, infrequently, but we'd visit relatives in Miami, and I'd open my mouth to speak Spanish, and they'd say, "Where are you from?" and I'd say, "Well, you know, my parents are from Cuba, but I, you know, grew up in Texas," and they'd say, "Oh, Tejano." So it was this kind of complete mixture of cultures and language. I was just recently back there for the first time in about 30 years, and it was really amazing to sort of be in that space and feel the resonances of the song of the birds in the trees and the feel— Jo Reed: Did you feel at home? Dan Vera: I did. The minute that the doors opened, and I felt the warmth, there was something – the sort of wet warmth, the rain was sort of coming in. From that moment on, it was not places as much as the environment, the feel of it, the feel of the air, the sounds of – so much birdsong in that part of the country. It's a tropical part of this country that most people don't know about when they think of the border. But just being back there just brought back all these memories I didn't even know resided, that have sort of lived inside of me without knowing they were there. It was, it was pretty magical. Jo Reed: And your book, Speaking Wiri Wiri, looks at memory. It's divided into five parts, and one of the parts is "The Trouble with Memory." So trying to grapple with memory is – I mean, it's something your parents I'm sure did too, with their memories of Cuba. Dan Vera: Yeah. I think it was connected to the experience of being away. I mean, not only away from Cuba but also away from so many people. I think if they had decided to settle in South Florida it would have been a radically different experience, but there was something about an exile upon exile, sort of double and triple, and sort of the feeling that – from one generation removed – for my parents it was about not only things that they missed, their family members, but also the land and what they would describe – the flowers, the birds, the songs – all those things. I mean, looking back as an adult, sort of remembering these, really these incantations of loss, these names of things, and this is really 1970s and '80s, and of course nowadays you can go into a grocery store and have access to a lot of things from different parts of the world, but back then it, it was impossible to access a lot of those things. And food and language and song, those things are so connected to memory, and I think immigrants now have much more access to those things in a way that, you know, my parents just didn't have. So it was always this – the experience was sort of growing up in the world we knew, that I knew, and yet at the same time the background of that, one of the backgrounds was my parents sense of loss and missing and what was left behind. Jo Reed: Well one of the things they left behind was food, and you write about food a lot. One of your great poems centers on food, “Mama Makes the Local Paper.” Dan Vera: Oh, yeah. Jo Reed: Please read it. Dan Vera: "Mama Makes the Local Paper” – “Because Cuban food in South Texas is like dishes from Venus or Mars, a reporter is sent to interview Mama. She cribs the recipes from Cocina Criolla and is photographed with her plates, in her nicest dress and a bouffant the size of our pressure cooker. The reporters asks, 'Is it spicy?' and betrays the fear that if a name is accented it will surely burn your tongue. My mother demurs and reassures that, 'The spices we use are onion and garlic,' but wisely withholds the amounts, which would undoubtedly alarm the stomachs of Middle America. It's 1974, and Corpus Christi, Texas, has never seen a thing like this. Looking back at the newspaper clipping, my mother appears now as a pioneer. Boldly she made the first fricassee south of San Antonio, the first ajiaco, the first ropa vieja, and certainly the first congrí. Where are the historical markers to the persistence of cooks who held fast to the old plates, who made flan in the New World?" Jo Reed: Food is one of those cultural landmarks that people want to take with them, and search for ingredients and – Dan Vera: Sure. I have vivid memories of my sister and brother and I would sort of laugh about living in Corpus Christi, Texas, and on the rumor that somebody had had some frozen Cuban fruit of some kind, and we would sort of jump in the car and drive to the nearby town for mamey in pulp – usually a sort of fruit pulp or something. I mean now it's a completely different reality, but boy, back then it was just so hard. It was about searching for these things, and if not, then sort of finding some other way to sort of alter or adapt the food that was made. Jo Reed: We often lump Hispanics together, but, obviously, there are very real differences, and the words in Spanish could convey totally different meanings. Dan Vera: I mean, yeah. I quickly learned, and I still continue to learn, that there's so many different nationalities and Latino cultures in the United States, and I've had the opportunity to live in different parts of the country, and words can be a minefield sometimes. They can have completely, radically different meanings depending on what community you're in, and so it's been interesting to sort of kind of live with these multiple meanings of words. Jo Reed: And in, “Tower of Babel,” you write about that very thing. Please read it. Dan Vera: “Tower of Babel” – “Exegesis of a funny story in which my father acts for change, change being 'menudo' for Cubans, 'menudo' being tripe soup for Mexicans. It is 1966 in Dallas, Texas. My father makes his request to the owner of a Mexican restaurant who is delighted to comply and asks how much menudo he'd like. My father replies, 'Five dollars' worth.' This is 1966, and the owner asks if my father brought a container to carry home five dollars' worth. Considering it a joke, my father smiles and replies, 'I'll carry it in my hand.' Thinking of the gallons, the owner is not amused and insists on a container. Then the shouting commences as neither man can be convinced he is not dealing with an idiot. My father keeps pointing to his palm while the owner makes the shape of a vessel, and they grow angrier with each other. Finally, one of my father's friends rescues him from the exchange, takes him aside, and explains the difference." Jo Reed: Are you as comfortable in Spanish as you are in English? Dan Vera: No, I mean, I spend the majority of my life in English. I write in English, I have a fluidity with English that I don't have in Spanish. I mean, my comprehension is good, and I love reading work in Spanish, but I'm an English speaker and an English writer, and at the same time I'm sort of stunned by the way in which Spanish terms and words kind of pop up and have sort of a hold. It's one of the beauties of good translation because trying to capture at least the spirit and the essence of the word is so difficult to do but so important. Jo Reed: So many of your poems use Spanish words and phrases, and I’d like you to read one now. How about "Ambrosia on Four Legs?” Dan Vera: Yeah. This poem begins with an epigraph by Richard Blanco from a poem I was tickled by when I came across, called "Havanasis," which is his attempt to tell the Genesis story as if it had taken place in Cuba. This is titled "Ambrosia on Four Legs” – I never get asked to read this, so I'm sort of delighted. "Ambrosia on Four Legs” – “But he wanted something more exciting and said, 'Enough. Let there be pork,' and there was pork. Deep fried, whole roasted, pork rinds and sausage. I tell my father they think it traveled on birds who flew across the Pacific and passed it to the pigs – 'Pobres puerquitos,' he says – who then passed it along to the farm workers – 'Pobres campesinos' – who then passed it along the line to some American tourist. 'Pobres turistas.' Mamá walks in and asks, 'Swine flu? Qué es eso?' 'Technically it's called H1N1 influenza.' 'Pero qué es eso?' 'Swine flu, pigs, you can't eat any pork.' She looks at me and says, 'I've lived long enough. I'll take my chances.'” Jo Reed: What brought you to poetry? How did you get hooked? Dan Vera: Well it really wasn’t until college. I was a history and anthropology double major, but the last semester of my last year in college was the First Gulf War, and at least in my small liberal arts school in Texas, there wasn't a lot of conversation happening about what was happening, but we were all thinking about it and concerned about it, and somehow I found myself writing, journaling, which isn't something that I really did much. But I clearly had to work something out about how I was feeling about this – what was promised to be a short war – and I found myself writing it in verse form, which kind of stunned me. And then, even more surprisingly, sharing those poems, which I probably wouldn't share with anybody today. But sharing those poems with friends of mine, really – people my age, and really – I was struck at how they felt I was sort of talking about something that no one was really speaking about. There were concerns about what a war meant for our generation. And I just continued, really sort of reading more poetry, going back and reading Whitman and Dickinson. And then, I remember out of college, about a year after that, stumbling into a used bookstore in Tacoma, Washington. I think bookstores are sacred places, and I came across a small little volume of poems by Pablo Neruda, the Chilean poet, one of his posthumous works, el Libro de las Preguntas – The Book of Questions – and I was absolutely mesmerized by the poems in that book. I've described it as that moment in "The Wizard of Oz" when Dorothy's cabin lands, and it goes from sepia to glorious technicolor. I had no idea that language could move in that way, and I think I was just hooked. I mean, something that I was sort of doing on my own – I mean, I do believe that poets are ultimately moved to poetry from some sense of gratitude and sort of emulation of the work of other poets who have kind of moved them, and in some small way we try to be in conversation with the poets who moved us. Yeah. Jo Reed: I was just going to ask you that. Dan Vera: It’s not that I want to do what the poet does, but it feels as if a window has opened into like another – yet another room in the house of poetry, if I can be that grand, and I think good poetry sort of gives us permission to sort of explore our lives in new directions, and I feel very fortunate to sort of have come across that book by Neruda, but also his other works and the works of other poets, and books in other languages, and it's just a very wide world of possibilities. Jo Reed: Well your book, and we have to – first of all, the title, please – Speaking Wiri Wiri. What is that? Dan Vera: Speaking Wiri Wiri refers to a phrase that my father used growing up. When my parents came to the United States, I mean, they spoke maybe just a little bit of English, but not much. My mother went back to school, got her degree. My father never learned much English. He sort of ministered to Spanish-speaking congregations. He was a Methodist minister, so Methodist Cubans in South Texas, it becomes a census group of like 15. But he never learned a lot of English, so we were always asked to speak Spanish, especially at the dinner table, and I'm the youngest, so when I came along, all the siblings, we spoke English. We were sort of English-dominant. And whenever we got a little too carried away in the English, he would say, "Stop speaking the wiri wiri." He'd say, "wiri wiri," which – we think – we just figured it was sort of what English must have sounded like to him, and we thought it was very funny. Since the book has come out, it's been interesting to find out that "wiri wiri" – someone sent me a link to a mexican norteño band that has a "wiri wiri" song, which is – they use it – in the sense of "yada, yada, yada." Jo Reed: Let’s hear the poem. Dan Vera: "Wiri Wiri” – “The language holds us together. How you are bathed in it, ‘til you tire and run or are pushed away from the tongue by parents who'd spare you the hurdles they jumped. The language pulls us apart. How we are bathed in it, made to never forget, reprimanded for not speaking it by parents who would not be left behind. 'En esta casa se habla Español. No se habla el Wiri Wiri.' Demands for the sounds from that singular place, with its undeniable song." Jo Reed: How did your parents react to the fact that you are a poet? Dan Vera: I'm fortunate <laughs> in the sense that they both knew poetry and loved poetry, and I have very sweet memories of my father and my grandfather, who I was close to, reciting poems by José Martí, who is a great Cuban poet and kind of the father of kind of the George Washington of Cuba, modern Cuba. So they would recite his "Décimas," which is kind of the folk form, and also other poets, and so I grew up with family that understood poetry, that respected it. My grandfather wrote poetry, more sort of religious poetry, but there was a sense that writing poetry wasn't this odd thing. They have been delighted. They were delighted when my first book came out. They’ve been tickled when this second manuscript won a prize and was able to be published. Yeah, so I think in most Latin American countries there's a sense of poets existing and being part of society and the culture that's – they have not so Americanized that it's this odd, odd thing for them, fortunately. I've never thought about it quite like that, but it was something they could wrap their head around. Clearly they were sort of concerned about sort of viability, but I think they were just sort of delighted that these stories – that in some way I'm sort of capturing some of their experience, and that's been a really interesting process to be part of. Jo Reed: Well, you mentioned José Martí, and you have to read the poem "The Commemoration of Forgotten History." Dan Vera: Boy, I'm so glad – no one ever asks me. <laughs> So yes, "The Commemoration of Forgotten History" is – in this poem, my grandfather – "abuelo" is the term I use – Antonio, Antonio Triana – I name him by name. Anyway, he was quite, I don't know what the term is, a "Martí-phile" or. It's titled "Commemorations of Forgotten History." "We are tired Cubans in the Catskills, standing by the side of the wooded road outside of Haines Falls, New York. We have come this far to see the exact place where José Martí wrote his simple verses. The grand lodges of the leisure class are gone. The town the poet's doctor ordered him to has largely disappeared into the dust. Abuelo is upset to find no historical marker, no cognition in the eyes of the townspeople, who are oblivious to the sacredness of this spot. Expecting statuary and murals, he is flabbergasted in disgust. 'How can they not know Martí was here?' He is a romantic for the romantic, heroic for the heroic, apostle of liberty. Making peace of it, Abuela suggests we do it ourselves. The falls that gave the name to this place still flow under an arched bridge of stone like the verses that bubble forth from his tongue. Abuelo Antonio recites the simple verses, commemorates where there is no commemorations, marks the spot where a poet once wrote his simple song." Jo Reed: What inspired this? Did this actually happen? Dan Vera: Martí is somebody who I've lived with in one way or another most of my life. Most people know-- if they know Martí, they know he wrote the lyrics for "Guantanamera.” It’s probably Cuba's most famous song. It's sort of the national song. You know when people try to define Cuban-ness, even to this day, Martí is a figure. He is the founding figure of liberated Cuba. Some years ago, I picked up a copy of his simple verses, and I was stuck to have a weird little factoid on the back of the little volume of his poetry that he had composed this in Haines Falls, New York, and I was like, "What?" I mean, this is probably the Cuban text, and I was stunned to find out it wasn't written in Cuba. That Martí, this consummate Cuban figure, wrote the work that is so synonymous with Cuban identity not in Cuba but in exile. So, you know, even that work is not only Cuban but also very much American. He was a longtime journalist in New York who wrote some astounding commentary on 19th century America, and 19th century democracy, and urban life in the United States. So to find out that Marti's work belongs in the American lexicon as much as it belongs in the Cuban was really eye-opening to me. So the poem was in some way trying to sort of imagine the figure in my life who brought Martí – my grandfather and my grandmother, who appears at the end of the poem – these two figures who brought me Martí, imagining them in this place in New York, in conversation. There's so much history that is recorded in stone and yet so much more history that isn't. The last section of the book is titled "A Guide to the Imaginary Monuments," and it was my attempt to imagine what these monuments would look like in not only sort of recording history but also recovering a lot of hidden history. Jo Reed: One of the current projects you're working on is called "Pintura: Palabra." Dan Vera: Yes. Jo Reed: Tell me about it. Dan Vera: So "Pintura: Palabra" is a project of Letras Latinas, which is an initiative housed at the University of Notre Dame, but it's basically a project to support Latino letters. So the prize that published this book, Speaking Wiri Wiri, is co-run by Letras Latinas and Red Hen Press, my publisher. So, "Pintura: Palabra" is this really wonderful project that brings Latino poets, Latino writers – because now they're doing some prose work as well – brings Latino writers together in connection with this Smithsonian exhibit of Latino art. Jo Reed: And that's called "Our America: The Latino Presence in American Art." Dan Vera: That's right. And my understanding is it’s – it's the first large-scale exhibition of artwork by Latino Americans put on by the Smithsonian, and it was a fantastic exhibition, and I was fortunate enough to be among the first group for a series of workshops in ekphrastic poetry. Ekphrastic poetry is poetry written in conversation or in response to artwork, and I had never had this experience of writing ekphrastic poetry, so it was kind of was a new experiment for me and one that I very much enjoyed. And there isn't a lot of Latino ekphrastic poetry, and so it's this really great synergistic connection between the exhibition and these gatherings of poets. I was fortunate enough to be part of the first one, but as the exhibit has traveled – it was at the Smithsonian American Art Museum here in Washington, but it's traveling around the country – and in each one of these places Letras Latinas has brought together Latino poets and writers to write in response to these artworks. Jo Reed: Poet Lore then got into the mix. And Poet Lore is— Dan Vera: "Poet Lore" is the oldest poetry journal in the United States. Walt Whitman famously was published in it, so it dates back to the 19th century. And Poet Lore published the very first collection of poems that were created out of that first group of poets. Jo Reed: And that's the current issue of Poet Lore. Dan Vera: That's correct. Jo Reed: Dan Vera, I’d like to end with another poem. How about "The Forgotten Fruit of Cuba?” Dan Vera: "The Forgotten Fruit of Cuba” – “We were in the kitchen when my parents begin speaking of the forgotten fruit of Cuba. ‘Remember anon?' asked Mamá. 'Una fruta blanca,' says Papá. 'Filled with tiny seeds,' my mother adds. 'But nothing in the world tastes like that.' The litany continues. Guanabana, mamey, melocotón. ‘Melocotón? That's peach. We have peaches,' I say, and point to my yogurt. 'But nothing like the peaches in Cuba,' my mother says, and my father nods in agreement. They stare at the plastic container as I take another spoonful of melocotón, or durazno, as the Mexicans call it, into this mouth that has never tasted the forgotten fruit of Cuba. 'Shangri La,' my mother says. 'Shangri La,' my father repeats. A faraway look comes over their faces, as if their tongues had activated a memory from a hundred years ago, perhaps from another dimension that only exists in their dreams." Jo Reed: Dan Vera, thank you very much. I appreciate it. Dan Vera: Oh, it's been a pleasure. <music> Jo Reed: That is poet Dan Vera. You've been listening to Art Works produced at the National Endowment for the Arts. The Art Works podcast is posted every Thursday at Arts.gov. You can subscribe to Art Works at iTunes U – just click on the iTunes link on our podcast page. To find out how art works in communities across the country, keep checking the Art Works blog, or follow us @NEAARTS on Twitter. For the National Endowment for the Arts, I'm Josephine Reed. Thanks for listening. <music: "Puro Son en Concierto" – La Familia Valera Miranda>