blog assignment - write on a piece that made you want to write in a different way

This poem had two influences: Martin Espada and Craig Santos Perez
My friend texted me one day to tell me that she found a poet with a similar style to mine, except better and more developed. Martin Espada. Imagine the Angels of Bread.

I didn't know I had a style until I read this book of poetry, which pretty much made my mind explode just cuz of the fact that THIS is where I want my writing to be. How he uses verbs in the freshest way possible, how he weaves dialects and academia into writing, how he shows but never tells, how he uses a slow steady pace how he unfolds stories for his readers - and they're always stories never rants or some random image or random play on words - there's always a distinct purpose.
This is a piece I really appreciated:

Beloved Spic

Here in the new white neighborhood,
the neighbors kept it pressed
inside the dictionaries and Bibles
like a leaf, chewed it for digestion
after a heavy dinner,
laughed when it hopped
from their mouths like a secret,
whispered it as carefully as the answer
to a test question in school
bellowed it in barrooms
when the alcohol
made them want to sing.

So I saw it
spraypainted on my locker and told no one,
found it scripted in the icing on a cake,
touched it stinging like the tooth slammed
into a faucet, so I kept my mouth closed
pushed it away crusted on the coach's lip
with a spot of dried egg,
watched it spiral into the ear
of a disappointed girl who never sat beside me again,
heard it in my head when I punched a lamp,
mesmerized by the slash oozing
between my knuckles,
and it was beloved
until the day we staked our lawn
with a sign that read: For Sale.


After reading Martin Espada, I began to carefully look at the way I use verbs , trying to figure out how I can use them in the most interesting way. I also paid attention to what kinds of details I isolated - it's not necessarily the amount of specific details you use but WHAT specific details you use, I realized. It was also the metaphors, the personification tools he used in a lot of his writing, the parallels he draws in certain situations. Like this short but incredibly powerful piece:

When the leather is a whip

At night,
with my wife
on the bed,
I turn from her
to unbuckle
my belt
so she won't see
her father
unbuckling
his belt


This piece is incredibly short and concise and yet tells a range of stories in one. At once we see his love for his wife, his wife's history, while also capturing a very small moment, a regular moment of simply taking off his belt, that actually means so much more. The parallels he uses between leather and whip and belt is also genius, in my opinon.

Another writer who really pushed me to think outside of the box was Craig Santos Perez. I just recently met him as a fellow Micronesian poet at a reading about a month ago, where we exchanged poetry. He handed me his book, Unincorporated Territory, and as soon as I flipped it open I had a wave of anxiety: he's a page poet, I thought. He's gonna hate my writing.

In my mind, I've created my own set of definitions of different types of poets - and this is in no way a set definition, it continues to change and evolve as I myself change and evolve. So there's the page world and then there's the spoken word. Page poets in my experience have been mostly academics, those who took the proper poetry classes who play with form and language. Spoken word on the other hand, is rougher around the edges, consists of guerrilla poets and is more about communicating ideas rather than language.

But this is besides the point. Cuz his book contributed in pushing me in a new direction in my writing: playing with the page and form.

His book dissects the history of his islands (Guam) while also exploring the use and power of his language. He uses Chamorru words and plays with the definition while exploring these words in their historical and political context. Total genius. There was so much more than what met the eye, I had to sit down and really think about every line, analyze the lines he drew on the page. On one page he actually maps the travel of a plane throughout micronesia - the same journey many micronesians have taken at some point in their lives. It was so crazy to see this journey on the page, and in a book of poetry at that! It also made me realize that you didn't have to water down your poetry for your readers, and that form and page can totally contribute to the power of your message.

So yes, ladies and gentlemen (or well whatever) I wrote my first page poem! Exciting. I know. That's what that shit is up there. Let me know what you guys think