The Friday Influence

¡Hola! Happy to be sharing with y’all some recent publications 🙂

First, I am excited to share that I have two poems featured in the latest issue of Talking Writing. This publication of poems is special to me as it has me in two different modes. The poem “Listening” is more in the usual lyric narrative vein, while “On Touch” is more the work I do in the aphoristic, gregueria vein. Both poems mean much to me and I’m excited to share them.

Secondly, I am honored to share this review of Rotura by Dana Delibovi in the latest issue of Witty Partition. Delibovi does a great job of noting the nuances of the project, engaging with both the conceptual themes and the formal aspects. Rare is the reviewer able to honor the use of Sapphics while also unpacking some of the more politically charged moments. Indeed, Delibovi’s description of the book as both “polemical…[and] beautiful” is reaffirming on a number of levels.

I shared the above image on my Instagram account, poetryamano, with the following caption:

Here are some phrases that are good to hear at any point, I imagine. I don’t remember who handed me these mid workshop during my last semester at NYU getting an MFA, but I’m grateful for them. Still need to hear this. And if you needed to hear this, well here it is. I’m in the middle of doing a journal project, in which I go through the journals I have dating back to 2004 and transcribing anything that is of merit, merit being given a very generous, loose, yet complicated and ever-evolving form. I’m doing this so I can also get rid of the journals and have some space open in our very small apartment, haha. and if this frightens you, you can talk to Marie Kondo about it. I’m hoping that this transcription project will at least be worth reading over once, if not sent out into the world. But we are a ways off from that. Kind of lost my thread, kind of feels right. Welcome.

I’ll underscore the not giving up part today as the world continues its fluctuations of incomprehensible and incredible.

¡Cuídense!

José