Words matter. These are the best Juan Felipe Herrera Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
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.
In my writing, I want to address all communities, you know. I’ve spent many years talking about Chicano culture, Chicano history, and at the same time, I’ve also been in many communities and presented my work in many communities, in many classrooms, and that’s where my vision is and my delight is and my heart is.
My mother was a washerwoman – or a woman that cleaned houses in Texas… in Plano, Texas – who always loved poetry and always loved stories.
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.
I want to take everything I have in me, weave it, merge it with the beauty that is in the Library of Congress, all the resources, the guidance of the staff and departments, and launch it with the heart-shaped dreams of the people.
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.
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.
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.
Poetry is a call to action, and it also is action.
My mother was a great storyteller and a great historian in her own way. She only made it to third grade. She came from Mexico City at the tail end of the Mexican Revolution and that kind of turmoil and chaos and frenzy and also excitement.
What I really had was stories, the oral traditions of my parents. We moved so much that that was really our encyclopedia. A dream world told to me from my parents in the living room.
As a boy, I felt ashamed of being Mexican. I’d say I was Hawaiian.
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.
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.
Just like my parents immigrated from ranch to ranch picking crops, I have migrated from city to city.
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.
Sometimes you can do things with Spanish – like verbs and genders – easier than you can in English.
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.
Poetry can tell us about what’s going on in our lives – not only our personal but our social and political lives.
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.
If I can only be known as one thing, then, well, I guess it would be poet and performer and teacher.
I’m a political poet – let us say a ‘human’ poet, a poet that’s concerned with the plight of people who suffer. If words can be of assistance, then that’s what I’m going to use.
I’m very grateful to all the people of Fresno, to Philip Levine and all the poets before me, and all the farmworkers. I didn’t get here by myself.
I write while I’m walking, on little scraps of paper. If I have a melody going, I can feel it for days.
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.
