Interview with Aleida Rodríguez and Julie Fay’s Intro to Poetry Class at East Carolina University

Aleida Rodríguez: just logged on.

Sarabande Books: just logged on.

Aleida Rodríguez: Hey, everyone

Sarabande Books: Hello, Aleida. This is Nickole Brown. I will be here
for the interview. Please feel free to ask me any technical questions.

matt: just logged on.

matt: hello

Student: just logged on.

kevin armstrong: hello

Tameka Pate: Hello

kevin armstrong: just logged on.

Claire: just logged on.

Danielle Melvin: just logged on.

Tameka Pate: just logged on.

Courtney: just logged on.

Glodeliz: just logged on.

kevin armstrong: hello

Tameka Pate: Hello

Student: hi, aleida, this is julie using a students computer i'ts taking
us a few minutes to get everyone where they ought to be so please bear
with us

Glodeliz: Hola, que tal?

Lauren: just logged on.

Danielle Melvin: Hello Aleida, this is exciting to actually be in a live
interview with you.

Courtney: hello

Michael Miller: just logged on.

Student: .....just logged off!

Lauren: just logged on.

MATT: just logged on.

Aleida Rodríguez: Good thing you can't see my pajamas!

Michael Miller: Good afternoon Miss Rodriguez

Claire: My name is Claire and I'm the first of 19 students to ask a
question. Did you keep journals as a girl which helped you with your
poems?

Joseph: just logged on

Josh: just logged on.

natalie: just logged on.

Glodeliz: When you sit down to write, in what language do you begin
writing in initially? Are your thoughts

Natatera: just logged on.

Julie Fay: just logged on.

Aleida Rodríguez: No, Claire, I didn't. I started keeping a journal when
I moved from IL to CA at age 14. A friend of mine, with whom I walk
every morning (except today), said that if she hadn't personally
witnessed my attention to detail she would've thought I'd made up all
that stuff about Cuba. There's alsl a long tradition of writers in
exile—Jose Donoso, Cabrera Infante, among them) of reconstructing, in
exile and in great detail, the place you've lost. When memories are all
you have, you hold on to them—like a picture album.

Aleida Rodríguez: I think in English, unless I spend a lot of time among
Spanish speakers. I always say my head's in Eng. while my heart's in
Spanish.

Lauren: How have you changed or grown since you have lived apart from
your native country and family?

Julie Fay: did you get lauren's question???

Aleida Rodríguez: Absolutely, Lauren. It was painful, that abrup
uprooting, but I learned early what we all learn sooner or later (if we
mature)—that we're essentially alone: born alone, die alone, no matter
how we try to forget about that in relationships. That knowledge,
though, rather than separating me, makes all of my connex poignant,
something I cherish precisely b/c it's so ephemeral. Exile also gave me
the opportunity to enlarge my world.

Aleida Rodríguez: I type with two fingers, guys, so I'm slow.

Courtney: I am curious about who was at the door in Threshold. Was it
enlightenment

Aleida Rodríguez: I don't know what it was, but there was certainly
something there. It was the Mystery, which is so scary, so unknown.

Julie Fay: everyone is going to say now what they read it/who that being
to be, so you don't need to repond. then we'll move on to another
question

natalie: I thought it was love

Julie Fay: I thought it was a ghost, a spirit, God, if you like to call
that presence that

MATT: opportunity/love?

Glodeliz: well what inspired you to think something might be there?

Natatera: I think it was a part of yourself

matt: i thought it was a person at the door, i got the impression it was
a lover but you turned them down because you were not ready for them and
you masked your reluctance to be with that person as bravery like you
acted like you didnt need them to be happy bu

Lauren: I thought it was your knowledge that you are talented and you
could be successful

Michael Miller: It is my opinion that God was at the door, or some
spiritual entity whith which we find some connection to save us from our
loneliness...as it were.

Glodeliz: your past kncking at your door

Tameka Pate: I thought that it was love or something that you onvce lost
that you were afraid to let back in

Aleida Rodríguez: God/love/opportunity—all the same to me. There was
something really there—my stuff is usu. based in fact.

kevin armstrong: love

Danielle Melvin: I think the person at the door is your own image of
yourself. Your true inner person. The person that doesn't want to really
feel that she's alone.you are alone.

Claire: I thought it may be a feeling that a life changing event would
occur which you didn't want to face, an fear of facing the future pains.

Danielle Melvin: I think it was the mystery that all of us have at one
point in life; me. Who am I? The part of us that can't be revealed until
we develop a relationship with God.....

natalie: ok, we're starting back up with questions going around the room


natalie: Julie had forwarded you my question and it dealt with how you
feel toward your writing now, as in do you feel more settled or
something, but I really can't remember what I wrote. I'd wanted to ask
you about that loneliness issue though. So, since I tota

Aleida Rodríguez: This is what's so amazing about writing: You put down
some words and they serve as both mirrors and windows for others.

natalie: So, since I totally disagree does that mean in your opinion
that I haven't learned or matured?

natalie: that last part was from my first part since it didn't show up
the first time

Aleida Rodríguez: You'd asked me if I was more content now, after
kvetching so much about the writing life in Rank, Still Life w/Cup, and
Why...Painter. I did feel lonely, b/c I perceived others to be more
interested in "careerism" than in love of the craft. I felt wounded by
that. Then about wanting writing to be less tainted by
corruption—painting, therefore, seemed more pure, more about
"play"—Holy Play, which I think the best of writing is. Now I do feel
more content, yes, b/c I realize that writing contains the best of all
the arts ("pictures," music, ideas, voice).

matt: .....just logged off!

Josh: In your experience as a writer you have learned what it takes to
make a poem work. Do you feel that you really understand the thought
process that goes into making a painting or a sculpture successful?...As
you contend in Plein Air...The tools an artist

Tomha: just logged on.

Josh: uses are more tyhan paints and brushwes...they involve thought
processes very similar to those you must use...( rest of joshs q)

matt: just logged on.

Julie Fay: Nickole—we seem to be having a problem with the length of
questions. is there a limit as to how long they can be ???

Sarabande Books: No, there is no limit to the length. As you can see,
Aleida's last response is nearly 4 lines long.

Sarabande Books: If you happen to get cutt off, simply continue with a
second post.

Julie Fay: her reponses are coming in fine, but our questions are
getting cut...

Tomha: I am the other Danielle...I wrote an answer under her name
(God)..

Aleida Rodríguez: I lived with a visual artist, and I saw the
similarities in the process—the accumulation on the page/canvas, then
the revisions, etc. What I envied so much was the distance those tools
have from our dailiness. That "play" factor, again.

Josh: so you don't feel that sitting down and writing didtances you from
daily routine?

Aleida Rodríguez: God, no. I have to use the same words I just used with
my mom's oncologist—and make them say new things. Once you walk far
enough into the woods, there's a kind of immersion/removal from the
world, but it's harder. At least as I see it/experience it.

Tomha: Do you still feel a sence of exile? Are you whole and complete
now or..........you fill in the blank.

Michael Miller: What function do your poems serve for you? By that, is
it an attempt to soothe your feelings of solitude? Or, are they an
affirmation of the ideals and visions you hold dear?

Julie Fay: while aleida's responding, nickole, could you tell us how we
can print out this "conversation"?

Aleida Rodríguez: I don't know if I'd say "whole and complete"
(hopefully that won't happen till the last day), but my relationship
to/with exile has certainly changed. Nature has healed that for me. My
connex to the "whole" (and here I include the spiritual), is less pain
ful. I am sep. from a small part of the physical world, but I am forging
connex to something larger. The exile I feel now from time to time, is
the exile available to all of us—that existential thing.

Sarabande Books: Julie, it is not possible to print it out from where
you are because old messages disappear at the bottom of the screen. I
am, however, archiving information as it appears and will mail you a
copy this afternoon.

Sarabande Books: If you like, I can e-mail it as an attachment.

Natatera: What is the one thing you think that you most personally gain
from writing your book?

Julie Fay: thanks, nickole, an email with attachment would be great

Sarabande Books: Are you on a Mac or a PC there?

Julie Fay: in this lab we're on macs, but I use a pc in my office and at
home

Aleida Rodríguez: It is a kind of solace, yes, to write. I've always
written out of necessity—to stay alive. I tried to commit suicide at
age 16, and writing saved my life. I was trapped btwn. cultures/worlds
and had to reach deep inside and make a life raft from nothing but
faith—and yank it out and put it on the page. A bit dramatic, I know,
but no less real. My poems are life raft and provisions.

matt:

Tameka Pate: You speak of your mother in your poem"My Mother in Two
Photographs,"what type of relationship did you have with your mom,if any, and has she inspired any of your writings?

Julie Fay: we think you've answered nat and michael's queistions—maybe
we could go on to Tameka's since we're running out of time

Tomha: Do you think that you are more than a writer? Are you only
writer? Is there more to you?

Aleida Rodríguez: My relationship with my mom is complex. We were close,
then we were adversaries. After I gained some perspective, I saw that
she was the strong one in my family—my taproot, supporting and
nourishing me. We have a great relationship now, based on a lot of
humor. She inspires me every day.

Julie Fay: pleas excuse Tomha—he doesn't follow directions very well,
bu thte rest of us do...

Tomha: Julie-Fay, professor please forgive me.....

Aleida Rodríguez: Yes, there's more—or at least I hope so! I'm a great
and loyal friend, for instance. And a pretty good cook. And I have a
good aesthetic eye for decorating my house—I say all of this b/c they
all give me enormous pleasure, and sometime it's difficult to stick to
one thing at a time (I'm a double Gemini and I could be interested in
100 things at once. I may take up painting at 80, who knows?

Julie Fay: each of the rest of the studnets is going to post you his/her
questin in the hopes that you'll be able to respond and we'll be able to
read your repsonses hwen we get the transcript from Nickole. Is there
any chance you'd be game to do this again in a wee

Natatera: Out of all the poems that you have done which one is your
favorite and why?

matt: if you were stranded on a desert island and could only take one
book of poetry with you what would it be

Joseph: I'm curious about the dynamics of sexuality in your work. Poems
like "The First Woman" & "The Garden" speak more obviously than
others-but still remain rather cloaked. Do you think it's necessary to
remain so obtuse? As Audre Lorde warns us, "Your silence

Joseph: will not protect you."
kevin armstrong: Did you have to work any bad jobs before you could make
a living as a writer?

Tomha: How do you think a moe intimate relationship with God would help
you writing? (life,exile)

Aleida Rodríguez: Sure! This is fun. Thx for all your good thinking.

Josh: there isn't anythign, as an artist that i am doing that hasn't
been done before...just like you ii am trying to sommunicate my ideas in
a new way....the tools i use are visual...things we aee everyday in
architecture...stc...so why is my task any easier.?

Glodeliz: Gracias a usted!

MATT: Have you ever been reading someone elses work, and felt like they
had written down exactly what was going on in your head?

Aleida Rodríguez: My word, yes! Hideous, soul-killing jobs. I still
don't make my living as a writer—I work freelance as an editor and
translator, which is precarious, money-wise, but I get to work at home,
and my schedule is my own. I dreamed for years of being able to work at
home, even if I have to work like a dog most of the time.

kevin armstrong: .....just logged off!

Michael Miller: Where do you most often find yourself writing? Do you
sit down and let the ideas pour out? Or do you find ideas come at
strange moments...like shopping or eating out?

Danielle Melvin: Your poetry is beautiful in your ability to mix two
languages, two cultures, that on the surface seem like huge contrasts.
Everything about the english language produces constraints while the
spanish language gives the words life as well as eliminating b

natalie: .....just logged off!

Josh: .....just logged off!

Joseph: I don't mean to be confrontational...I just see a wide continuum
between poets like Mark Doty and Paul Monette...even Marilyn
Hacker...who push the envelope a bit more.

Tomha: If you were standing before God and He asked you, "Why should I
let you into my Kingdom" what would you say?

Courtney: Do you have any other Spanglish books out

Natatera: .....just logged off!

Natatera: Are you working on any new material at the moment? You are a
wonderful writer!!!

Michael Miller: .....just logged off!

Tomha: .....just logged off!

MATT: Angie's Q...do you feel that you gained the most insight after
your suicide attempt? and also,i really enjoyed Peter on the Run,is the
punctuation his dialect?

Sarabande Books: Julie, don't forget about the Discussion area where you
can post some of these questions.

Lauren: .....just logged off!

Courtney: .....just logged off!

matt: .....just logged off!

Joseph: .....just logged off!

Danielle Melvin: as well as eliminating barriers, do you agree?

Julie Fay: ok. aleaida, thanks so much for your time. I'll be in touch
about when we might "get together" again—the students just now
suggested a cernce call so we could hear yourvoice. Would you be
agreeble to that? Bye for nowoa for noget together"

Glodeliz: .....just logged off!

MATT: .....just logged off!

Danielle Melvin: Describe your emotions when you write.

Claire: .....just logged off!

Danielle Melvin: Are you the most peaceful during these moments?

Danielle Melvin: You seem to be so in tune with the beauty of nature..

Danielle Melvin: The naturalness of the earth and its healing effects.

Danielle Melvin: .....just logged off!

Sarabande Books: Aleida, thank you for participating in this chat. I
will be sending you a transcript of today's interview as well.

Aleida Rodríguez: About the issue of sexuality in my work. I'm not
trying to be cloaked—lordy! look at Pas Seul or Things We Know. It's
just my way of being sexual. I've never liked poems littered with
sexually explicit stuff, and prefer the oblique angle—not b/c of "h
iding" but b/c of my personality . My battle has always been with
expressing myself as true to myself as possible. I would prob.ly sell
more books, or be accepted by ceratin groups if I were more explicit,
but it just ain't me.



Additional questions answered later:

E-mail from Aleida:

"Here are some answers to the remaining questions. I felt kind of weird
staying in the chatroom and talking to myself, so I decided to do it like
this:


Natatera: Out of all the poems that you have done which one is your
favorite and why?

Whatever poem I'm working on at the moment is my favorite, b/c I'm full of
excitement about/engaged with it. But generally I tend to like my more
"abstract" ones (the ones others don't)—like "The Invisible Body." That one
in particular b/c it was a departure from my "usual" in so many ways. I
didn't feel in control; instead, I watched, almost like a reader, as it took
shape.

matt: if you were stranded on a desert island and could only take one
book of poetry with you what would it be

That's a hard one. The first thing that came to mind was Rumi's work—b/c I
would need to keep my spirits up, and he has come through for me in my worst
moments. But, as a writer, I'd also smuggle in something that would engage
the part of me that's so interested in language—such as the collected Elizabeth Bishop—since that would continue to yield up surprises/delights. In otherwords, it would age well—like a good painting that you never tire oflooking at, can always find something new in.

Tomha: How do you think a more intimate relationship with God would help
your writing? (life,exile)

I feel it's pretty intimate as it is, though my sense of "God" is more
pantheistic—perhaps harkening back to the Celtic influence on northern
Spain. Druids galore.

Josh: there isn't anything, as an artist that i am doing that hasn't
been done before...just like you i am trying to communicate my ideas in
a new way....the tools i use are visual...things we see every day in
architecture...etc...so why is my task any easier?

Josh, it seems I can't answer this one to your satisfaction. Put simply,
my experience with visual art (I've made carved-and-painted wooden things,prints, book covers, among other things) is like playing with colored
blocks—as in preschool—so freeing. There's a kind of languageless peace, almost a trance. But the minute language enters the arena (again, for me),it carries with it all kinds of baggage—cultural, psychological, you name it (not that the artist him/herself doesn't bring that in his/her person [like you], but the materials themselves don't—is this any clearer?). A color isn't "loaded" the way a word is. Most writers I know
complain about how painful it is to write (this is not to say that every
creative person, regardless of medium, doesn't wrestle with his/her own
demons and the influence of forebears), but visual artists I have known, or
seen interviews with, usu. admit that it's like a mental vacation—play. Forinstance, most visual artists can work, and often do, with a TV on (!!!). I
could never do that.


MATT: Have you ever been reading someone else's work, and felt like they had written down exactly what was going on in your head?

Yes, and it makes my heart race. I love that! Scott Sanders, Annie Dillard,
and esp. that David Abram book— The Spell of the Sensuous. I was so glad
to have discovered it after I'd written Garden, b/c he explains
exactly what I tried to say. I read it as a prose commentary on what I'd
just written/tried to convey in poetry—I even wept.

Michael Miller: Where do you most often find yourself writing? Do you
sit down and let the ideas pour out? Or do you find ideas come at strange moments...like shopping or eating out?

They come at anytime and anywhere—those "triggers," I mean. Then I either
scribble a note (in a small notebook I always carry with me) about it and
move on, or, if I'm alone, I try to pounce on it right away, before it
evaporates. But I try to be available for it whenever/wherever—not that I'malways successful. I think Mary Oliver's A Poetry Handbook is great b/c it emphasizes the apprenticeship necessary to writing—as it is with the other arts—and she insists that you have to "show up" on a regular basis (a schedule) or it'll abandon you. Check it out.

Danielle Melvin: Your poetry is beautiful in your ability to mix two languages, two cultures, that on the surface seem like huge contrasts. Everything about the english language produces constraints while the spanish language gives the words life as well as eliminating barriers, do you agree?

I see myself (and by extension my work) as a marble cake. I'm too swirled
through with both cultures to have any perspective on that, to be able to
separate. In some respects, English, since I was educated in it (and Spanish
is a leftover from childhood), offers me more options; it doesn't hold me
back. And you'd be surprised by how often people feel "locked out" by the
Spanish. Unless it's at a reading, then the majority of the surprised
comments I get are, "Even though I don't know Spanish, I understood
everything!" But I wouldn't want the Spanish to be seen as exotic or
"better" than the English.

Joseph: I don't mean to be confrontational...I just see a wide continuum
between poets like Mark Doty and Paul Monette...even Marilyn Hacker...who push the envelope a bit more.

I appreciate the opportunity to address this issue, Joseph. And let's hear
it for that "wide continuum"! My pet peeve has always been that people want
artists with nonmainstream "identities" such as lesbians, Latinas, or exiles
to write about our culture, making our work serve the function of
anthropology or sociology, instead of leaving us alone to pursue our own
artistic concerns. Why do we all have to be the same? I personally share
very little with other Latina lesbians. My own DNA is encoded with
completely different interests—so why should I have to talk about the
latest "multiculti" issue? I don't mind that others do, as long as I don't
have to—I'm fighting for my individuality here. I have more in common
with Scott Russell Sanders, for instance, than I do with Cherrie Moraga, and
he doesn't even write poetry. The thing is, he shares my view of the world,
and when I read him, I feel more sustained. I'm just not built to satisfy
the agenda of a group—no matter what group. Maybe it's my response to
having lived under a totalitarian govt., maybe it's astrological—who can
tell? My job, as I see it, is to express my own vision/experience as best
I can, even if that pushes no larger envelopes. I like pushing the envelope
of form, as you can see in my book, but I leave it to the politicians to
attempt to speak for all of us. I can only speak for myself. I didn't
start writing to become a crusader for anything—I wrote to express
myself, to try to create art that would satisfy me. I am clearly "out" all
over the place; I'm just not always wanting to be limited to that as my
subject matter. Sometimes I wanna talk about it, sometimes no—the poem
determines that. I guess that's why I like Mary Oliver and Eliz. Bishop so
much—both lesbians who go/went about their business, "knocking off the
hats" that people try to put on them, as Annie Dillard has written in The
Writing Life . I like Mark Doty's and Marilyn Hacker's work very much—their range isn't limited to expressing a gay agenda. I don't respond to Monette's work at all, precisely b/c it seems to feel that "identity is enough"—not much art to be found there, in my opinion. For more on this issue, see my essay, "The Glass Cage," in Sleeping with One Eye Open: Women Writers on Surviving as Artists (Univ. Georgia, 1999).

Tomha: If you were standing before God and He asked you, "Why should I
let you into my Kingdom" what would you say?

It's too early to tell, but I don't think book publishing would be a part of
it! Besides, I hold with the Sufis, who say that heaven is here , not
elsewhere, only we have to adjust our perception/reception. That ecstatic
vision of our world is what I hold to, and I was grateful to have found it
in Rumi's and Kabir's work. There's no bearded guy preventing my entrance
into heaven—only my own limitations.

Courtney: Do you have any other Spanglish books out?

No. This is my first book, though I have published in mags and anthologies
for 25 years. My new ms. (of prose) contains only tiny amounts of Spanish (I
don't try to put it in, it surfaces when it fits). Unless I move to a
Spanish-speaking country, this'll probably be the case for everything I'll
ever write. But who knows? I'm open.

Natatera: Are you working on any new material at the moment? You are a wonderful writer!!!

I've just put together a ms. of prose (most of it published during the last
20 years, but uncollected). I don't feel very confident in that genre,
though, considering myself a poet through and through, so it's a risk—and,
in that way, it feels exciting.

MATT: Angie's Q...do you feel that you gained the most insight after
your suicide attempt? and also,i really enjoyed Peter on the Run,is the
punctuation his dialect?

What I learned was that I didn't really want to leave, I just couldn't
communicate and it was painful—so some insight, yes. I learned that I love
being alive (corny as that may seem), even if there are excruciating patches
now and again—the rough times (like the good times) will pass, but you
remain (like a bulb), and survival is beautiful in itself. I've never been
tempted again, and things have been worse. As for Peter's voice—it's not a
dialect, per se, but rather his emphasis, his excitement, his breathlessness
(and his quirky way of ending statements lilting up like questions at the
end). His reaction to the world that day is what I love about being alive
(and so I wanted to capture it)—that enthusiastic response that places
heaven here if only we could see the world with such fresh eyes. He has
said he wants that on his tombstone.

Danielle Melvin: Describe your emotions when you write. Are you the most
peaceful during these moments? You seem to be so in tune with the beauty of
nature. The naturalness of the earth and its healing effects.

Peaceful and agitated at the same time. Peaceful b/c I feel most connected
to things when I "settle down" that way—that essential/spiritual
connection, that "you're doing what you're supposed to" feeling. Nervous,
anxious, b/c I'm not sure I'm going to be able to render/convey it
successfully (that my abilities aren't up to my ambition/vision). Where I
live, there's lots of nature all around—the old part of L. A. that was
abandoned in the westward (read: beachward) expansion, so there are still
hills with nothing built on them, and I'm flanked by two large parks. I
don't think I could work—or, I could work, but it would be HARD to push
aside the concrete—in a sterile environment. Not that I don't think others
are able to create something out of concrete—it's just that I'm not
suited to it.

I hope that satisfies. Thanks for your interest."