Institute for Latino Studies :: Momotombo Press :: Interview with Steven Cordova

	An Interview with Paul Martínez Pompa I first met Paul Martínez Pompa at the Association for Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) Conference in Austin, Texas in March of 2006. After the conference Francisco Aragón, founding editor of Momotombo Press, asked if I would be open to conducting an e-interview with Paul. I emailed the questions to Paul near the end of the summer in 2006. This is the third in a series of interviews with Momotombo Press authors. —Eduardo C. Corral, September 2006 Interview: ECC: The poems in the chapbook are unabashedly political. Your biographical note states you helped found a MEChA chapter at the University of Chicago. Does your political activism enrich your art? In what ways? How do you negotiate the tension between the actual and the imagination in your art? Or, to quote Richard Hugo, does the "truth conform to the music?" PMP: To some extent, I see my art as a form of political activism. The very act of writing poetry in the 21st century, particularly in the United States, is an unusual and odd thing. When nearly everything in postmodern America is done in order to spend or make money, writing a poem is a subtle act of dissent. There’s no immediate payoff, and any payoff that does come is typically insignificant. Also, considering that poetry has become an irrelevant entity in mainstream, mass culture, I don’t think that any poet who is writing nowadays can avoid being political. I don’t really feel a tension between the actual and the imagination. Even when I lie, I represent some part of myself. EEC: Would you classify your work as Chicano poetry? If so, what specific characteristics does your work exhibit that make it Chicano? Or do you believe, as Lorna Dee Cervantes once said, any poem written by a Chicano is a Chicano poem? PMP: I don’t think of my work as primarily Chicano, but that might be one of the words used to describe it. The word Chicano is loaded and complex and means different things to different people. So I guess it depends on what you actually mean by Chicano. I choose to use the word Chicano as a way of referring to my political, social, cultural self. But I don’t know precisely how that finds its way into my poetry. On another level, if a young Chicano/a is moved in some way by my work and wants to claim it as belonging to his/her community, I’m fine with that. But if someone wants to use the term simply to categorize my work, then I’d invite that person to read more carefully. ECC: Do you believe the American literary canon is amenable to re-definition and/or re-creation? Does a contemporary poet of color have to create his own canon, or does he have to address the old ones, or both? Why? PMP: The canon is amenable to change, but it is very slow to change. Grab any American poetry anthology and you won’t find many writers in there from marginalized backgrounds except for the occasional safe, token poet who doesn’t manage to raise eyebrows. Thankfully, I see some contemporary writers of color doing their thing in blatant defiance of anything the canon espouses. There seems to be a multitude of canons being created and recreated. I don’t know that we can speak of a singular canon any more. However, in creating his/her own canon(s), I think a poet would be naive and incomplete if he or she disregarded the traditional canon altogether. If for no other reason, it gives you something to write against. I also think there’s a constant tension between wanting to do your own thing and wanting to feed your ego by finding acceptance alongside mainstream poets. But a lot of great poems come out of that tension. ECC: At a reading at AWP Austin you mentioned several poems in the chapbook had been revised. Do you have a particular revision strategy? How do you know if a poem is "finished?" In what ways does the chapbook version of "Commercial Break" differ from the revised version? PMP: I don’t know when a poem is finished. I don’t know that any of my poems are finished. I revise constantly, but I also feel that sometimes too much emphasis can be placed on revision. Some poems are simply failed pieces of writing that no amount of revision can save. So I guess the challenge is trying to figure out if a poem should be saved through editing or if it should be abandoned. Editing “Commercial Break” is difficult for me because of its form or layout on the page. I’m still trying to find a way to structure that poem in a way that looks right. I don’t typically write in traditional forms, but in my head I have certain expectations for my poems’ forms. ECC: Is the chapbook a stand alone project or is it culled from a full-length collection? Did any unexpected themes/ motifs reveal themselves as you organized the chapbook? Does your current work continue to explore these themes/ motifs? PMP: The chapbook is a hodgepodge of poems that I felt were close to being ready. I can’t say I realized any unexpected themes or motifs, but I did learn some unexpected things about how the chapbook was being received. In talking to people, I think the chapbook has been slightly misread as being largely an urban piece. Yet many of its poems were triggered by events that occurred in suburbia. So I realized that I need to code certain poems a bit clearer. It might, however, be a result of being a product of the Chicago area. It’s an unusual city, perhaps, in that the suburb and city limits butt right up against each other and interweave at certain points. No major waterways or landmasses separate the two. So I suppose it’s possible to live in the outer rim of Chicago and have a suburban sensibility, and it’s possible to witness things in certain Chicago suburbs that most people would associate with urban phenomena. I hope to further expand on this paradox in future works. ECC: Is there a specific poet that opened your eyes to the possibilities of poetry? Is there a poem? PMP: The person who opened my eyes most to poetry’s far flung possibilities was a grad school, workshop peer of mine by the name of Justin Petropoulos, who is doing very important things in poetry. His work defies easy categorization, but an incomplete description might include part avant garde, part L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E, and part wise ass. He’s now a close friend and probably the person I trust the most when it comes to reading early drafts of my work. *Eduardo C. Corral* holds degrees from Arizona State University and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. His poems are featured in a chapbook published by Web del Sol. He won a “Discovery”/The Nation award in 2005. He’s the interview editor for Boxcar Poetry Review.

An Interview with Paul Martínez Pompa

I first met Paul Martínez Pompa at the Association for Writers and Writing Programs (AWP) Conference in Austin, Texas in March of 2006. After the conference Francisco Aragón, founding editor of Momotombo Press, asked if I would be open to conducting an e-interview with Paul. I emailed the questions to Paul near the end of the summer in 2006. This is the third in a series of interviews with Momotombo Press authors. —Eduardo C. Corral, September 2006

Interview:

ECC: The poems in the chapbook are unabashedly political. Your biographical note states you helped found a MEChA chapter at the University of Chicago. Does your political activism enrich your art? In what ways? How do you negotiate the tension between the actual and the imagination in your art? Or, to quote Richard Hugo, does the "truth conform to the music?"

PMP: To some extent, I see my art as a form of political activism. The very act of writing poetry in the 21st century, particularly in the United States, is an unusual and odd thing. When nearly everything in postmodern America is done in order to spend or make money, writing a poem is a subtle act of dissent. There’s no immediate payoff, and any payoff that does come is typically insignificant. Also, considering that poetry has become an irrelevant entity in mainstream, mass culture, I don’t think that any poet who is writing nowadays can avoid being political.

I don’t really feel a tension between the actual and the imagination. Even when I lie, I represent some part of myself.

EEC: Would you classify your work as Chicano poetry? If so, what specific characteristics does your work exhibit that make it Chicano? Or do you believe, as Lorna Dee Cervantes once said, any poem written by a Chicano is a Chicano poem?

PMP: I don’t think of my work as primarily Chicano, but that might be one of the words used to describe it. The word Chicano is loaded and complex and means different things to different people. So I guess it depends on what you actually mean by Chicano. I choose to use the word Chicano as a way of referring to my political, social, cultural self. But I don’t know precisely how that finds its way into my poetry. On another level, if a young Chicano/a is moved in some way by my work and wants to claim it as belonging to his/her community, I’m fine with that. But if someone wants to use the term simply to categorize my work, then I’d invite that person to read more carefully.

ECC: Do you believe the American literary canon is amenable to re-definition and/or re-creation? Does a contemporary poet of color have to create his own canon, or does he have to address the old ones, or both? Why?

PMP: The canon is amenable to change, but it is very slow to change. Grab any American poetry anthology and you won’t find many writers in there from marginalized backgrounds except for the occasional safe, token poet who doesn’t manage to raise eyebrows. Thankfully, I see some contemporary writers of color doing their thing in blatant defiance of anything the canon espouses. There seems to be a multitude of canons being created and recreated. I don’t know that we can speak of a singular canon any more. However, in creating his/her own canon(s), I think a poet would be naive and incomplete if he or she disregarded the traditional canon altogether. If for no other reason, it gives you something to write against. I also think there’s a constant tension between wanting to do your own thing and wanting to feed your ego by finding acceptance alongside mainstream poets. But a lot of great poems come out of that tension.

ECC: At a reading at AWP Austin you mentioned several poems in the chapbook had been revised. Do you have a particular revision strategy? How do you know if a poem is "finished?" In what ways does the chapbook version of "Commercial Break" differ from the revised version?

PMP: I don’t know when a poem is finished. I don’t know that any of my poems are finished. I revise constantly, but I also feel that sometimes too much emphasis can be placed on revision. Some poems are simply failed pieces of writing that no amount of revision can save. So I guess the challenge is trying to figure out if a poem should be saved through editing or if it should be abandoned.

Editing “Commercial Break” is difficult for me because of its form or layout on the page. I’m still trying to find a way to structure that poem in a way that looks right. I don’t typically write in traditional forms, but in my head I have certain expectations for my poems’ forms.

ECC: Is the chapbook a stand alone project or is it culled from a full-length collection? Did any unexpected themes/ motifs reveal themselves as you organized the chapbook? Does your current work continue to explore these themes/ motifs?

PMP: The chapbook is a hodgepodge of poems that I felt were close to being ready. I can’t say I realized any unexpected themes or motifs, but I did learn some unexpected things about how the chapbook was being received. In talking to people, I think the chapbook has been slightly misread as being largely an urban piece. Yet many of its poems were triggered by events that occurred in suburbia. So I realized that I need to code certain poems a bit clearer. It might, however, be a result of being a product of the Chicago area. It’s an unusual city, perhaps, in that the suburb and city limits butt right up against each other and interweave at certain points. No major waterways or landmasses separate the two. So I suppose it’s possible to live in the outer rim of Chicago and have a suburban sensibility, and it’s possible to witness things in certain Chicago suburbs that most people would associate with urban phenomena. I hope to further expand on this paradox in future works.

ECC: Is there a specific poet that opened your eyes to the possibilities of poetry? Is there a poem?

PMP: The person who opened my eyes most to poetry’s far flung possibilities was a grad school, workshop peer of mine by the name of Justin Petropoulos, who is doing very important things in poetry. His work defies easy categorization, but an incomplete description might include part avant garde, part L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E, and part wise ass. He’s now a close friend and probably the person I trust the most when it comes to reading early drafts of my work.

Eduardo C. Corral holds degrees from Arizona State University and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. His poems are featured in a chapbook published by Web del Sol. He won a “Discovery”/The Nation award in 2005. He’s the interview editor for Boxcar Poetry Review.