Zamora embodies moments of his poetry as though he were still a child living it. He's flashing back to the classroom where his teacher writes/translates his experiences onto his sketches. He's packed into a truck with dozens of others like matchsticks. He's holding his mother's hand and consoling her as she breaks down about not being there. He's rubbing a stick under the cast of his broken arm.
Zamora's poetry feels innocently presented; then, there's Natalie Scenters-Zapico's poetry. To me, The Verging Cities feels deeply woven into the fabric of an adult mind.
Adults do sophisticated things like dissociate and convey their dissociation. Adults can possess the cognitive ability to view death differently than children, to see it as reverent and holy, and not just an end of life. Adults might be deliciously haunted by the corpse of their beloved: "I inch the skin up like a blind, reveal two /nails where his eyes should be. If only /I had loved him sooner, how I'd have kissed/ each eye green" (p. 19, "The Verging Cities Watch Me"). How is this not the most disturbing yet intimate image?
I've never witnessed beauty in death. When my friend Jung died from heart failure, that was when I realized the shape of a human could no longer exist. His goofy legs would not saunter down the hallway anymore. His ears that poked out would no longer "be" ears. He'd decay. I saw death all around me. I was afraid of insect carcasses in windowsills and light fixtures.
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In Scenters-Zapico's work, I hold death and tenderness both in the palm of my hand, one and the same. It's not too far off from this line: "I wish it a death/ only the sun could bring in rings of heat:/ red, gelatinous, and boiled clean" (p. 36, "A Mass Grave Washed").
I hope I'm not insinuating that either poet writes solely from a child and/or adult perspective in these collections. That's just not even true. I noticed a different effect from each poet's angle of discovery and I thought perhaps it had something to do with when Zamora crossed the border (as a child) and when Scenters-Zapico crossed borders (with her future husband, José Angel Maldonado, as an adult). I feel that I have so much more room for analysis of these poets. I would be interested to encounter them individually and not necessarily in conversation with each other, though I do see how they speak at the same table.
i think that's a fair conclusion and apt way to fix the lenses of these books. SC is totally standing at a fixed point and telling her love / border story. JZ is personifying some adults, but his main lens is son, boy.
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Zamora's poetry feels innocently presented; then, there's Natalie Scenters-Zapico's poetry. To me, The Verging Cities feels deeply woven into the fabric of an adult mind.
ReplyDeleteInteresting, I didn't think of the lens as so but with you mentioning it, I can see it. Although Natalie and Javier talk about a similar subject but the lens is definitely different but I could not pinpoint it. I feel as though there are other differences of telling of their migration story but there's nothing wrong with that. The more stories, the more angles the richer the telling of the experience can be. Although this is a story of sadness, political strife and separation hopefully one day we won't have such violent borders but look back on this and say yes this happened how have we as a society learned from it?