American - Poet | December 27, 1948 -
Diversity really means becoming complete as human beings - all of us. We learn from each other. If you're missing on that stage, we learn less. We all need to be on that stage.
Juan Felipe Herrera
DiversityLearnYouHumanNeedUs
Let's detox our cluttered academic brain. That's what the poet does. People call it daydreaming, detoxing our minds and taking care of that clutter. It's being able to let in call letters from the poetry universe.
PoetryPeopleBrainCareUniverse
Yes, I am the first Latino poet laureate in the United States. But I'm also here for everyone and from everyone. My voice is made by everyone's voices.
I AmVoiceFirstLatinoYesPoet
We speak about understanding each other, having those conversations nationwide - culturally, historically - and yet there's a lot of gaps. So I want to assist with closing the gap of knowing about and hearing about our Latino communities in terms of literature, in terms of writing.
WritingSpeakUnderstandingWant
San Diego shaped me a lot. The visual landscapes, the emotional panoramas, the teachers and mentors I had from the third grade through San Diego High - it's all a big part of the poetry fountain that I continue to drink from.
PoetryMeTeachersMentorsFountain
All voices are important, and yet it seems that people of color have a lot to say, particularly if you look through the poetry of young people - a lot of questions and a lot of concerns about immigration and security issues, you name it - big questions.
PoetryPeopleColorNameQuestions
A pen is different from the pad, the key, moving your fingers across a screen. I like both. I like to work on sketchbooks, big old white sketch paper. I like how that feels, and I like to put different media on it. Then there's the phone, smartphone, iPad: It's the new page, and it's not the same page anymore.
WorkMovingKeyMediaPenPhone
I've worked throughout California as a poet: in colleges, universities, worker camps, migrant education offices, continuation high schools, juvenile halls, prisons, and gifted classrooms.
EducationCaliforniaHighPoetHalls
Marvin Bell always looked very closely at how lines could break, how you could put over one line into the second line. How you could stop the line two or three times within the line: You could make it stop.
YouStopThreeBellOverLine
I remember looking at James Joyce's journals. It was just amazing - it looked like ants had written on the page. So much writing on one page, every corner of the page was filled. Some of the lines were underlined in yellow or blue or red. A lot of color, intense writing.
RedBlueYellowAmazingWriting
We went from crop to crop, field to field. And my father had that army truck, a 1940s army truck from Fort Bliss, El Paso.
FatherTruckArmyBlissFort1940s
Perhaps, like the way these leaves spread out and the way they curl in many directions and how they have many features, I think that's how my road has been.
RoadThinkWayOutSpreadBeen
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