The Beat: Iliana Rocha and Delmira Agustini

Alan May: 00:04

Welcome to The Beat, Knox County Public Library’s poetry podcast. Today, we’ll hear the poet Iliana Rocha read three of her poems: “Still Life;” “Houston;” and “Landscape with Graceland Crumbling in My Hands.” She’ll follow by reading the poem “Explosión” by the Uruguayan poet Delmira Agustini.

Iliana Rocha: 00:31

"Still Life"

for Aunt Carmen

Sorrow drizzles down, a gray feather, like a Vietnamese

woman painting the Virgin Mary’s minutiae on an acrylic

nail, she taps her finger on the margarita glass, claims

the antihero for holiness is inside. What exactly have I evolved

past? El Diablo no duerme written in red lipstick on the edge

of her cup stuck with salt, & the clouds on hangers are like

my grandfather’s blue satin Houston Oilers jacket, oil derrick

erect. Donkeys, globes, & assorted cartoon characters

half-cumbia from the ceiling by string, she takes out a CoverGirl

compact powder in the lightest shade, cakes on layers

in a way that no one understood when I did it in high school

in lieu of hanging out with the Mexican girls. The trumpets

& their relentless barking come by, serenading the table with “El

Rey,” & she is never afraid to confront nostalgia: Remember when we

crumpled up the rice fields, put them tequila-lit in barrels? When Daddy

telegrammed himself back from Normandy? Our sticky mouths

of masa harina not a platitude, but a plea for domesticity

we disowned? As a little old woman behind glass pounds

dough into tortillas, we line our newborns up in neat rows,

build animals from shredded newspapers & papier-

mâché. I connect my skeleton with brass fasteners, adding a bow

to my mouth with too-dark lip liner.

"Houston"

I woke up with another migraine today because I suppose I should be in love. Did you know that the freeways begin with dirt packed on top of itself? Then goes the asphalt, then the concrete, then the little symbol of patriotism. The roaches I leave behind jump into unsuspecting handbags, & naked, I examine my body for places to pick it apart. I float above the roses the Mexican landscapers plant like the woman in the Chagall painting looking for a way out of his dream. Up, the only exit. I discipline Texas, just like our forefathers would have wanted, stealing the gallop from a horse while I strangle it with a lasso. How much my dad is a mirror to those men on bulldozers making a city for us, but somehow, he defied gravity by holding spinning police sirens in his hands like drunken planets. Alarm bells went off, the white officer says. My grandfather left a couple of his fingers in Normandy, & I have the telegram that officially discharged him framed in gold because I like tragedies still & where I can see them.

"Landscape with Graceland Crumbling in My Hands"

A man hits on a woman, as Elvis would,

as subtle as a pool cue to the chest,

as careless as gunplay, a chandelier victim, as all

things covered in crystal are, like the studded rhinestone

suits displayed in a manner fit for mourning.

There is no celebration, despite the lights’

unconvincing attempts at glamour, each vitrine,

a confessional booth covered in lipstick graffiti,

the lumen brightness alternating in waves of what feels

like Catholic guilt & drunkenness, 1,000 years of Saturday nights

crammed into the baritone prayer of bass guitar crumbling from a speaker.

Another woman weeps at the surprise of his gravesite, there,

situated by the stillborn twin’s, a cloud Elvis tried unsuccessfully to move

all his life. The horses, too, know better, as their black shields

paint their view very, very forward.

Um, this next poem I'm going to read is by one of my favorite poets, Delmira Agustini, and she was a modernist poet living in Uruguay. And, I think, for her time, she was quite progressive and radical in her content, and this is called "Explosión."

Si la vida es amor, ¡bendita sea!

¡Quiero más vida para amar! Hoy siento

Que no valen mil años de la idea

Lo que un minuto azul de sentimiento.

Mi corazón moría triste y lento...

Hoy abre en luz como una flor febea;

¡La vida brota como un mar violento

Donde la mano del amor golpea!

Hoy partió hacia la noche, triste, fría,

Rotas las alas, mi melancolía;

Como una vieja mancha de dolor

En la sombra lejana se deslíe...

¡Mi vida toda canta, besa, ríe!

¡Mi vida toda es una boca en flor!

Alan May: 08:00

You just heard Iliana Rocha read her poems “Still Life,” “Houston,” and “Landscape with Graceland Crumbling in My Hands.” She followed by reading “Explosión” by Delmira Agustini. You can find links to the text of these poems in the show notes, along with an English Translation of “Explosión.” Rocha was kind enough to record these poems for us here in Knoxville, Tennessee. Iliana Rocha earned her PhD in Literature and Creative Writing from Western Michigan University. She is the 2019 winner of the Berkshire Prize for her book The Many Deaths of Inocencio Rodriguez published by Tupelo Press. Her first book, Karankawa, won the 2014 AWP Donald Hall Prize for Poetry. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Best New Poets anthology, Poetry, Poem-a-Day, The Nation, Virginia Quarterly Review, Latin American Literature Today, and many others. She has won fellowships from CantoMundo and MacDowell. She serves as Poetry Co-Editor for Waxwing Literary Journal, and she is an Assistant Professor at the University of Tennessee.

Delmira Agustini is considered one of the most important South American poets of the 20th century. She was the first woman in Latin American literature to publish poems that overtly addressed the subjects of passion and sexuality. She was born to upper-middle-class parents in Montevideo, Uruguay in October of eighteen eighty-six. She began writing poetry at the age of ten, and her first major work, the book El Libro Blanco, was published in nineteen o-seven, when she was just twenty years old. She went on to publish several other books that were well-received by writers and critics. Unfortunately, for a long time, much of what was written about Agustini focused on her biography and her untimely death. She was killed by her ex-husband in July of nineteen fourteen at the age of twenty-seven. You can find books by Iliana Rocha and Delmira Agustini in our online catalog. Also look for links in the show notes. Please join us next time for The Beat.