Interview with poet Marina Rivera

Something magical, and that's when I wanted to write. And once I wanted to write, once I knew that it existed, then I began to try. And some of it began to work, some of it began to be recognized by some teachers as being worthwhile. And then later in college, I wrote more. And some of it would come down almost like a dance I caught up in my head, and my hands put down in the paper. And when it was like that, I knew that it was something of magic. And it's been the closest to anything of importance beyond my own life, beyond my own being, beyond my own aliveness, the time at which I've created something that flowed down has been the time in my life I have been most alive.

It's the time I treasure most. And if it times I have sung in a kind of duet with people who also love poetry, it was then that I felt most alive and loved. Back in 1977, a few of your books were published in Estesna and so on, and I always asked myself if poetry really changes as the person I choose and gets on with life. And you say that the poetry that Maddie and I was writing back in 1977 is significantly different from what she's writing today, or is there a continuity and a sameness to the poetry?

There are two voices in my work. One is white. The other is brown. I think maybe it is the brown girl that sings. And that hasn't changed. The things I valued as a child, I value still. The central emotional core of my work is exactly the same, but the white girl. The one with the name spelled with a Y instead of an I of my real name. That white girl writes differently. It is tighter. It is more dependent on idea because that person has read more, absorb more, and all collects and collects and collects as convoluted, turned back on itself.

It's geometric, it's puzzles worked over and over again and redoubled. That aspect of the work, it's more intricate, it's more complicated. From the standpoint of skill, it's much better than what I wrote then. In the beginning it was simpler. There were simple songs. You see, of the two published books that exist in libraries, there have been now two full length collections unpublished and two shorter collections. The last thing I wrote was two Christmases ago, a long, chatbook-length manuscript about the child. The unborn child and the terrible tragic way in which we are defrauding him over and over again right now in our present world, as we know it, but the bulk of my work and

the changes of my work have not been heard, have not been published. So that all that people have are these simpler songs of a brown voice, the emotional voice, an important voice. But all these later complexities are largely unpublished. But I guess what I'm saying is the reader, yes, she's changed greatly. The singer is the same. I couldn't, Marina answers the question, after all this years I continued to write poetry. How does she end that?

What do you mean, why do I continue to write poetry even though it hasn't been published much? You know, aside from whether it gets published or not published, you continue writing poetry too. I go on writing despite not publishing because I have considered my work part of a two-part song maybe it's a game but in my

hard parts I believe that it is a song. And I would never defraud that other part of the song from its right to an answer if I can't remain alive.

Let's stop there, you see people, poetry is about a job or money. For me it has been my food. I can no longer talk about it.

I've honed down everything to such a small place. It's too important. It's too important it means too much I can't talk about it anymore. I can only write it and maybe read it. Maybe once I began to read again and to work again if I were ever in the work. It hasn't belonged to anyone for so many years in the sense of it's been like a lock chamber, a refuge.

I can't suddenly go out some place and talk about it and be social about it and be academic about it. It's been the only place I have been alive. Is it fair to ask, I know that through your writings you have contributed a lot to the buyer of poetry. Yes, it's kept me alive. Did you have anything else to add? You don't take advantage of the emotional weakness that I have in speaking of these things after so many years.

Make me look ridiculous or foolish when you use these words. Pick the places that reflect strength and use those. Frank, I think we may have enough. It's not in anything that could be said about me or about my life or how I've lived or any of these things. If the poem itself is not of worth of beauty, nothing you can say about me or my life can make it beautiful or worthwhile or art. I can't understand that.

Sorry, some of the questions touched on some things that are so powerful to you. Don't feel sorry. I think of how often times I have tried to reach out to someone and bring them back into the circle. If it was a circle, I had anything to do with. And I am profoundly aware when someone has found that for me. You see, what I need to do now is I need to have a place for this last chapter to be printed.

I need to have a place where I can talk about people like me and somehow say it loud enough and well enough so that this terrible division of children can stop. Well, if you don't mind, it hasn't stopped and it's very unfortunate. But as you know, I work for the Mexican government and I have a position to see a lot of things. And there are some things that I have to see every day that just break my heart.

It's very hard to talk about these things because they're so very thankful and yet they have to see it every day. Be witness, be a witness to them, everything to everything from the abuse of the physical body to the abuse of the mind and tender hearts. It's just a thing that continues. Of course, it has affected many ways. What I try to do is to be a helper in some ways. Sometimes I can't, sometimes I can't. What I can tell you is that those ones go very deep, very, very deep. I wonder how people will survive if they will.

And then I look at my own case and realize that it really wasn't that easy for me, you know, just like it wasn't for me. Irraculously, if you are, you have eyes to become productive people. So that case will be home. The tragic thing is the potential, the potential everywhere in the world, the potential. What life could be and what it is. People sometimes think that the lack of material goods, lack of a position, lack of power, lack of so many things.

That's not where the lack is. The lack is in the variance, the discrepancy between what the world of the child and the developing child and the new adult and the new age, human being. What that world, a new world, the whole different idea about what day to day existence is about. And I spent the last eight to ten years thinking about the changes that are needed and the true lack is between what is now, what people call wealth, what people call knowledge, what people call this rich world in which we live, this modern world, this, and they use all the brave new world, agitives, but the difference between the world in which we live and the way the world could be.

There's where the lack is, but that's the world I want for all people. How do we get from here to there? I'm okay. Don't worry about me. That's all I ever do is just need to wet my face so I wet my face. I'm a little white school girl. You just wet your face and you're a little white school girl and then you go out and you can do or be anything.

And I kill his heel. It wasn't four or five years ago and I can do it again. I can go anywhere, talk about the work, talk about anything they want to talk about. Never break, never cry, never be emotional, voice remaining the same. I can be that way again. Just right now, I can't be. I think you did well. You can't use all that blubbering. It's not going to be of any use. He went on to do something else.