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Poetry for All

Episode 26: Brenda C‡rdenas, ÒOur Lady of SorrowsÓ

[intro music]

Joanne:

Hello, IÕm Joanne Diaz.

Abram:

And IÕm Abram Van Engen.

Joanne:

And this is _Poetry for All_.

Abram:

In this podcast, we read a poem, discuss it, learn from it, and then read it one more time.

Joanne:

Today we are delighted to have Brenda C‡rdenas as our guest. Brenda is the author of _Boomerang_ and _From the Tongues of Brick and Stone_. She is an editor of multiple volumes of poetry, including _Resist Much/Obey Little: Inaugural Poems to the Resistance_ and _Between the Heart and the Land: Latina Poets and the Midwest_. She was appointed the poet laureate of Milwaukee, Wisconsin from 2010 to 2012 and she was one of the 2021 faculty members at the Canto Mundo Latinx Writers Retreat. She is associate professor of English at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee and Brenda, thank you so much for joining us today.

Brenda:

Thank you for having me. IÕm so pleased to be here.

Joanne:

We would love to discuss your poem ÒOur Lady of Sorrows.Ó Would you be willing to read that poem for us?

Brenda:

You bet. ÒOur Lady of SorrowsÓ: [https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/58864/our-lady-of-sorrows]
      
Abram:

ThatÕs so good. 

Brenda:

Thank you.

Joanne:

So Brenda, could you say a bit about this poem, which is an ekphrastic poem, itÕs inspired by an art object by Ana Mendieta. Could you tell us a little bit about the inspiration for this work, a bit about her as an artist?

Brenda:

Yes, definitely. So, IÕm in general, IÕve always been drawn to the media of performance art and earth works, body works, to the ephemeral quality of that kind of work. And with earth works, to their recognition of human beings as part of nature, rather than separate from it. So IÕve written poems responding to several such works by Ana Mendieta and by other artists as well, but to speak to my obsession with Ana Mendieta, I will provide some background information on her, on the artist, because in this poem and in other poems, I not only respond to the artwork itself, but I incorporate allusions to her life. She was born in Havana, Cuba after the Cuban Revolution and the Bay of Pigs invasion, thousands of Cuban parents began sending their children to the United States with the encouragement and the help of the United States government, the Catholic Church, and an organization of US businesses, which funded the travel--the childrenÕs travel. In 1961, through this effort--which they called ÒOperation Peter PanÓ--MendietaÕs parents sent her and her sister into exile in the United States. And in an interview with Lisa Montano, Mendieta said about this experience--and IÕm quoting her here--Òmy sister and I were alone, without speaking English, having been placed in a Catholic orphanage run by nuns in Iowa. It was a very devastating experience because I felt alienated and totally misplaced. A culture shock.Ó Ana spent the next several years moving between foster homes, orphanages, and juvenile correctional facilities, and despite this, she became a United States citizen in 1970. Ironically, not out of any sense of belonging to the country, but rather so that she could travel outside of it. Some of her work she did in Mexico and in Cuba. She eventually created over two hundred ephemeral pieces in which she engaged the earth as her sculptural medium. I first became enamored with early pieces, like her _Tree of Life_ series where she merged her physical body with the earth. Those led me to later pieces, like the _Silueta_ series, of which the photographs of that I wrote this response to is one of the _Silueta_ series. And in that series, her body became like a template to mark her silhouette on dirt, grass, sand, mud, snow, rock, gravel, ice. A number of our historians and critics read her work as purely autobiographical or therapeutic responses to the development and loss that arises from her exile. And to be fair, Mendieta herself often points to her exile as the impetus behind her work. In 1981, she said, Òthis insistence of communion with nature has to do with reaffirming my ties with my homeland, as well as my identification with the spirits of my ancestors and my ancestorsÕ identification with the land itself.Ó But she also says of her _Silueta_ series, Òusing my body as reference in the creation of these works, I am able to transcend myself in a voluntary submersion and total identification with nature. My art is the way I reestablish the bonds that unite me to the universe. All the sculptures are human scale, thus visualizing the body as an extension of nature, and nature as an extension of the body.Ó So these notions about her work have always resonated with me. Things that she had to say about her own work. And then I found this amazing book by art historian Jane M. Blocker, called _Where is Ana Mendieta?_ and I think it--for me anyway, from what IÕve read--the most insightful analysis of Mendieta. Blocker points out that MendietaÕs Òearth as wombÓ is both maternal and sexual, is not only homeland but also prehistoric origin, linked to ancestry, burial sites and sentient being. And that, in BlockerÕs words, Òit is always, also the subject of national, political, and patriarchal claims, deeply tied to colonial resistance.Ó Blocker writes that Òby persistently referring to herself as ÔhomelessÕ, Mendieta performs in the liminal, not only between nations, but between ethnicities, races, and identities. She unmoors notions of belonging, borders, margins, and centers.Ó IÕve always been drawn to the spaces between, whether IÕm writing ekphrastically or not, IÕm always drawn to the notion of spaces between, to the liminal, to the liminal. And MendietaÕs work becomes extremely powerful for me because it ultimately resists being defined by any nation, itÕs sort of the non-national, and in doing so, it erases borders and also because it integrates life and death into a continuum. And that becomes especially resonate given her short life. Sadly, when she was only thirty-six years old, eight months after marrying the sculptor Carl Andre, she was found dead on a roof top thirty-four stories below the window of AndreÕs New York City apartment. So that background is so rich and complex that itÕs almost impossible for me to engage with her artwork without engaging with her. Right? With her life. And so my poems, theyÕre an effort to understand it and her experience. TheyÕre an imagining of what more she might say and theyÕre an invocation of what I feel is her deeply inspiring spirit.

Abram:

Yeah.

Joanne:

ThatÕs amazing. And you know, for people who are listening to the podcast, they are not going to have the photograph of this particular piece in front of them, but maybe just to describe it; itÕs a black and white photograph of one of her pieces from the _Silueta_ series and it looks like an outline of a body engraved into the side of a hill or a mountain. Is that how you would describe it?

Brenda:

Yeah. To me it looks like that too. Like a body resting on its back with the stomach up. Or it also to me looks like it could be a knife and thatÕs why at some point I say:

					...Keep
		your eyes sharp for a dagger.

Abram:

Yeah.

Brenda:

So I think we can look at that and, you know, if youÕre sort of doing the ink blot thing?

Abram:

Yeah.

Brenda:

[laughing] You could see it either way, but it looks more like a body.

Abram:

Yeah. IÕm curious in your moves in this poem. There are parts where youÕre using a kind of command. So, ÒKeep / your eyes sharp for a daggerÓ and ÒKiss / this sacred spot.Ó And then other parts where you pull back, so you move from there to ÒNotched heart cradles / a planet heavy with night- / mares flying into empty mouthsÓ and then to a ÒsheÓ and then to a Òthey.Ó So IÕm curious how you imagined the moves you were making in this poem as you put it together.

Brenda:

I think it begins with the directive as though IÕm saying to other viewers. Or to myself Òlook for these things,Ó Òwatch for this,Ó Òlook at this.Ó And it does those commands throughout much of it but then ÒNotched heart cradles / a planet heavy with night- / mares flying into empty mouths.Ó In the photograph where the figureÕs stomach would be, itÕs like caved in but the piece of earth thatÕs on top of it is protruding. So it almost looks to me like the figure is holding--could be holding--the world. That could be a womb. And we speak so much of the Òwomb of the EarthÓ in her work, right? And that could be like holding a child in a womb. Right? So I saw that as both things. And you know, the Òplanet heavy with night- / maresÓ I think speaks to in general the kind of state weÕre in with the Earth, with climate change, and with the age of extinction that weÕre living in, but other nightmares as well. At the time I was writing this, I had also happened to read a news story, it was an article, about pregnant indigenous women in Wahaca, Mexico being turned away from a rural health clinic because it was understaffed and one woman having to give birth to her son on the lawn outside the hospital. So the figure in MendietaÕs photograph, looking like it could be pregnant, and that story began to merge for me. And itÕs horrifying! Right? That this woman had to give birth outside in the grass! And at the same time, itÕs horrifying, but at the same time, thereÕs something sort of beautiful about that child being born right onto the earth. And so, those things were mixing in my mind and so where I say and ÒSheÕll push her ponderous child / into the dew of a San Felipe dawn / name him SalvadorÓ _that_ alludes to that story I read. Because the woman actually named the child Salvador, which means Òsavior.Ó And so I donÕt expect my reader to know that. I donÕt expect my reader to know the news story. ItÕs for me, those things were already intermingling, and so when I saw this figure in the photograph as either carrying a world where her belly would be or being pregnant, those two things came together. And maybe thatÕs why I moved away from the command there and so it might be that there, I needed to stop after ÒlistenÓ with the commands because I needed to, wanted to look to some future.

Joanne:

I love that you use the future tense because it takes on an almost a prophetic tone. Like you say itÕs a future telling voice and the authority that comes with that and the way it makes us capable of visualizing a whole other reality is amazing. And for our listeners who are thinking about how ekphrasis works, yes of course it can be descriptive, but it can also be argumentative, it can be meditative, other elements can filter in to be in conversation with the artwork and I feel like those lines that you just describe do that really nicely.

Brenda:

I think the best ekphrasis moves beyond description. If we donÕt move beyond description then we might as well not write the poem. We might as well just go look at the artwork. Right?

Abram:

[laughs]

Joanne:

ThatÕs right.

Brenda:

So, I think the best ekphrasis is in conversation or in correspondence in some way with the artwork, and it does do _some_ description, but then, again, it moves beyond that and it analyzes or it imagines what might happen just off the canvas, right? Um. Yeah.

Abram:

Even as weÕre sort of beginning to prophesize and move towards this future, where thereÕs a kind of birth, where thereÕs even thereÕs a kind of hope in that, right? Pushing this child into the dew of this dawn. And then behind that is all this erasure. I mean, itÕs a beautiful meditation on Ana Mendieta, of course, who did all these performance pieces and other pieces that were _meant_ to be ephemeral. That were _meant_ to be erased. That were _meant_ to disappear. And of course, in your own poem, you revisit the first part and much of it is in a certain sense washed away. But the words that remain are so powerful and so IÕm wondering if you could just speak about how you move from that first part and into the second with this erasure of most of the poem except for a few key words that return.

Brenda:

One of the reasons I did the erasure in the second part was to speak to the way that her work is ephemeral, that it will all be washed away. This is carved in stones, so this might take a little longer but she also did works on beaches where all you needed was the tide to come and it was gone. And so that my first impulse was to do that in order to respect the ephemerality of the work, but you know, I know youÕre asking why those specific words, you know? How was it that you chose what you were going to leave, which is always the question with erasure, right? And for me it was this idea that I spoke about earlier when I was quoting her and Blocker about her union; itÕs more of a union with the earth. ItÕs this recognition, right? That we are part of the earth, that we are part of nature, that we are creatures like all other creatures that we talk about as being in nature, as though nature was something separate, right? And that there _is_ no separation, so I chose words Òstone,Ó Òclay,Ó Òearth,Ó Òrain,Ó right? The words that are nature words. And then ÒorphanedÓ because she was orphaned. Right? She was orphaned, and thatÕs why, you know, earlier in the poem where I use ÒorphanedÓ I speak of her orphaned feet and the figure in the photograph doesnÕt have any feet. Right? You donÕt see legs defined or feet defined. And so in the earlier part of the poem, Òwash away like her orphaned,Ó and I purposefully broke the line there, right? To emphasize Òorphaned / feetÓ but then I brought ÒorphanedÓ back with ÒheartÓ because of the way in which her orphaned heart that she felt that all her life that exile. ÒEclipsed,Ó and I guess with her death that orphaned heart was, in a sense, eclipsed. When I did the erasure, I put the words where they would have shown up in the line and so they end up falling down the page and she _fell_ to her death.

Joanne:

Yeah

Brenda:

So I was thinking about all those things when I was choosing what words would remain.

Joanne:

Wow. Okay. ThatÕs incredibly helpful to me because now that IÕve heard you talk in some detail about what her work means to you but also how she was thinking of herself in exile for so long. The way you described her orphaned heart and in that fine word, ÒeclipsedÓ, her orphaned heart eclipsed. ThereÕs a way in which she was a kind of orphan for so much of her life, but then that was eclipsed by what? By the work? By her relationship to the work? By what happened to what her work meant ot people after her death?

Brenda:

Yeah!

Joanne:

Like were you thinking about all of those layers as you were doing that erasure?

Brenda:

I was probably thinking of the _pain_ being eclipsed. Right upon death that we donÕt have to think about--not that in any way I celebrate her death at all, I mean she left the world far too soon and that it was a terrifying death, I donÕt mean it in that way--but death in general is another part of life. ItÕs an extension of life, you know? And there are other ways to view death besides the way that American culture views it. You know? IÕm also incredibly drawn to the Mexican holiday of Dia de los Muertos and not because of the popularized [laughing] commercialized view around it now, but because itÕs really about the fact that we die but we never really die, right? We go on, whatever you want to call it, depending on your beliefs. The spirit, the soul or just matter, right, into the universe. Or she goes on--Mendieta--by leaving her work! SheÕs here. SheÕs still here! SheÕs still very present for me! You know? So death just being another sort of part of life. On Dia de los Muertos, you light candles, you leave offerings, because you want to invite the dead to come back.

Abram:

Knowing all that we know now, would you be willing to read this poem for us again?

Brenda:

You bet! ÒOur Lady of SorrowsÓ: [https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/58864/our-lady-of-sorrows]
       
Joanne:

Beautiful.

Abram:

ThatÕs beautiful.

Brenda:

Thank you.

[outro music starts]

Abram:

For more information about Brenda C‡rdenas and Ana Mendieta, the artist who inspired this poem, please visit our website at poetryforall.fireside.fm.

Joanne:

And you can subscribe to _Poetry for All_ wherever you get your podcasts and please be sure to follow us on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter.

Abram:

Thank you for listening and thank you so much Brenda for joining us today.

Brenda:

Thank you for having me.

[outro music continues to end]