Juan Felipe Herrara was recently named U.S. poet laureate. The son of Mexican migrant workers and a native of California, Herrara is the first Latino to earn this distinction.
He has published more than a dozen collections of poetry, along with short stories, young adult novels, and children’s literature, and was described by New York Times critic Stephen Burt as one of the first poets to successfully create “a new hybrid art, part oral, part written, part English, part something else: an art grounded in ethnic identity, fueled by collective pride, yet irreducibly individual too.”
One of his visions as the U.S. poet laureate is to construct an American poem, whereby everyone would be welcome to submit one or two lines of poetry to create a work that speaks to – and of – all Americans. As you know, if you have read his work, Herrara does not think small.
The project is named “La Casa de Colores, the House of Colors,” and the poem that emerges from this blending of diverse voices will be titled “La Familia.” Each month a new theme will be developed focusing on an aspect of American life, values or culture.
Congratulations to Juan Felipe Herrara and best of wishes on his wonderful undertaking. I’m certain the house that results will provide us with thoughts to ponder and questions to voice.
Following is an excerpt from one of Herrara’s poems "Exiles," which appeared in his second book, Exiles of Desire.
At the greyhound bus stations, at airports, at silent wharfs
the bodies exit the crafts. Women, men, children; cast out
from the new paradise.
They are not there in the homeland, in Argentina, not there
in Santiago, Chile; never there in Montevideo, Uruguay,
and they are not here in America
They are in exile: a slow scream across a yellow bridge
the jaws stretched, widening, the eyes multiplied into blood
orbits, torn, whirling, spilling between two slopes; the sea, black,
swallowing all prayers, shadeless. Only tall faceless figures
of pain flutter across the bridge. They pace in charred suits,
the hands lift, point and ache and fly at sunset as cold dark
birds. They will hover over the dead ones: a family shattered
by military, buried by hunger, asleep now with the eyes burning
echoes calling Joaquín, María, Andrea, Joaquín, Joaquín, Andrea
