These poems have me stuck

in a good way.


It's been awhile since I had some good reading. This is good reading. I have to start with Marisa de los Santos because I read her poems about 6 times. I'm still reading them. Her poems are both wordy, and not....at the same time. Meaning on the page, her poems appear pretty solid in length, one spans multiple pages, the others aren't necessarily haikus either. But every single word means something. Nothing is fluff. I have a problem with fluff in my own poetry and it's really hard for me to whittle lines down to the essentials and still feel as if i'm telling my story. de los Santos does this so so well.

Her poem, First Light, is my favorite. I like how she starts the poem giving us detail of where she is physically at one moment, and then unravels the reason why she's there in the next moment. Instead of cause & effect, she leads with effect & cause. (I'm outside chilling by myself. Why? Because my partner got a phone call from an ex girlfriend and I could tell from his voice that this wouldn't be a good convo sooo....i left) Of course she said it way more poetic than that. But, you get what I mean. I also love how I get this sense that she's highly concerned with what this late night conversation is about, but she never says that. Instead, as she's outside, she notes that the flower petals feel like her lover's skin, his inner wrist and his throat. She's thinking about him. He's on her mind. She left him in the room, maybe to give him privacy, but....she's definitely still mentally in that room with him.

These are my favorite stanzas:

The woman- thin, dark haired-who loved him last
spring called at 2am, her time. A whole
year gone and she's not finished wanting him

to suffer. When he spoke to her, his voice
was not his voice, was pavement cracking in
unseasonable cold, so i got dressed



Her line breaks are amazing and so important. "she's not finished wanting him to suffer" ...no i think she means "she's not finished wanting him" Lol. Which is why the ex is calling him at 2am in the morning....her time. Comparing her lover's voice to pavement cracking in the cold is so so good. I can hear that. It's whatever the opposite of warmth is, but she avoided saying His voice grew cold. I really appreciate her attention to small details that draw me in to that tense moment when you must allow uncomfortable space for things you want to be done and over with.   

My next favorite stanza is the last. She describes what happens once the convo ends and she goes back in the room.

When we're in bed the sun, now up, is white,
the floor, the walls, our bodies bleaching, as
my careful movements rip his breath to rags.



Okay, so let me know if my mind is just in the gutter but that last line has got to be the sexiest most elusive code words for having sex. Her "careful movements rip his breath to rags" yeah... she put it on him. Lol. He wasn't thinking about that phone call then!!

I also want to address the topic that we were supposed to keep in mind while reading all of these poems, How history and poetry relate to one another. I think history, in one form or another, is the main informant of poetry. It doesn't necessarily have to stem from a huge historical event. But it can be your own personal history. What happened yesterday is history. A poem about your first broken heart 16 yrs ago is history. So history is what poetry is made of. Of course you can also directly refer to historical events and ppl within your poems, such as what Miller does in his poem Before Hip Hop. He recalls great artists and infamous social figures of our past such as Nat King Cole and Miles Davis. This poem is actually about history that the reader can pin point precisely and know what/who the poet is talking about. Once again, history is poetry and poetry archives our history.