American - Poet | December 27, 1948 -
I used to stand on the corner in San Diego with poems sticking out of my hip pocket, asking people if there was a place where I could read poems. The audience is half of the poem.
Juan Felipe Herrera
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The more we engage in society, the more firsts we have, then there will be a moment when we have no more firsts. Or maybe there will always be new firsts.
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I like marketplaces. I like train stations; I like being in trains. I like airports. I like walking down the street with a pen in my hand, writing, writing, writing.
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I gave my voice to poetry.
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Poetry, as odd as it is, and as hard to figure out as it is, many times, it's almost something that we're used to. It's kind of like a dream language that we had centuries ago, so that when we speak poetically or write a poem about what's going on, a real difficult issue that's facing our communities, people listen.
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I know I'm representing the Library of Congress, all the people of the United States and, of course, the Latinos and Latinas as well.
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I want our young Latinos and Latinas to write their hearts out and express their hearts out and let us all listen to each other.
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By middle school, I said to myself that it's time I begin to speak. I joined the choir, not because I wanted to. I forced myself.
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First grade was - I spoke only Spanish, and second grade - probably a bit more English. And by the time I hit third grade, I was learning, of course, much, much more English.
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Sometimes it's like that. I go, 'You know what? I'm going to just change scales. I'm going to even change instruments. And I'm going to go into the chromatics of the Spanish language,' and I do. You know, the poem is totally different. It's like a lunar voice versus a day voice, a solar voice.
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The goal for me is to be as expansive as possible, and the Library of Congress offers so many resources.
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I'm usually writing in English, and then I'll get the hankering to change channels. And usually I'll do that when I want to try a whole new set of keys, like musical keys.
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