Poetry in Motion, Day 29 (Ana Castillo)

This penultimate post for April on the Poetry in Motion series is a poem by Ana Castillo, the last of my framed and signed posters, hung on my office wall between Yusef Komunyakaa and Sherman Alexie.

This one is unusual in many aspects. It is by far the most colorful one and by virtue of its look, one of my favorites. It's also the only signed poster that I have for which I was not present at the signing. In fact, I never met Ms. Castilo.

My memory is a bit hazy here. I believe it was the late Winter, early Spring, some time in the 1999. I had recently seen the Hawai'i-based writer Lois-Ann Yamanaka reading at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn. I met Lois, incidentally, initially at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books in 1996 or 1997. We kept up a sporadic correspondence. At Pratt, two years later, Lois introduced me to her literary agent, Susan Bergholtz. Later that Spring, Ana Castillo was doing a reading in the New York City area and my schedule (Shayna had recently been born) didn't allow me to make the reading.

I was bummed because I had the poster and wanted to get it signed. I was looking at it forlornly, thinking what could have been, when I, as they say, read the fine print. At the end of the poem, in tiny wording on the poster, were the permissions: "Reprinted by permission of the author and Susan Bergholz Literary Services, New York." Bingo.

I had Ms. Bergholz' card and called her, explaining my dilemma. Would she be kind enough to let me drop the poster at her office and have Ms. Castillo sign the poster for me when she was in town for the reading. The answer was "Yes," and the rest is history.

Here's the poem:

El Chicle

for Marcel

Mi'jo and I were laughing --ha, ha, ha--
when the gum he chewed fell out of his mouth
and into my hair which, after I clipped it,
flew in the air, on the back of a dragonfly
that dipped in the creek and was snapped fast
by a turtle that reached high and swam deep.

Mi'jo wondered what happened to that gum
worried that it stuck to the back
of my seat and Mami will be mad when
she can't get it out. Meanwhile,

the turtle in the pond that ate the dragonfly
that carried the hair
with the gum on its back
swam South and hasn't been seen once
since.

Throughout the month, for each poster I have reprinted the text of the poems as well. This has often been a matter of copying the text from the Poetry Society of America's website. The PSA is the chief sponsor of the series. I have found, however, that some of the poems archived on their site are no longer available there for viewing. This has often left me with the challenge of retyping the poem (okay, not that challenging) or finding the poem elsewhere on the web.

"El Chicle" is one of those no longer archived, so I tracked it down on Ana Castillo's website. To wit, the poem is slightly different there. Spacing is the most significant change:

El Chicle

Mi'jo and I were laughing
ha,ha,ha--
when the gum he chewed
fell out of his mouth
and into my hair
which, after I clipped it,
flew into the air,
on the back
of a dragonfly
that dipped in the creek
and was snapped
fast by a turtle
that reached high
and swam deep.
Mi'jo wondered
what happened to that gum
worried that it stuck
to the back of my seat
and Mami will be mad
when she can't get it out.
Meanwhile, the turtle in the pond
that ate the dragonfly
that carried the hair
with the gum
swam South on Saturday
and hasn't been seen
once since.

Aside from form (which, in all fairness, may have been manipulated to better fit the size and art of the poster), the dedication is missing. Look at the differences of the last few lines:

Poster:

the turtle in the pond that ate the dragonfly
that carried the hair
with the gum on its back
swam South and hasn't been seen once
since.

Website (and let's assume, most recent) version:

the turtle in the pond
that ate the dragonfly
that carried the hair
with the gum
swam South on Saturday
and hasn't been seen
once since.

In the current version, we lose the descriptor "on its back," and gain the timestamp "on Saturday". Definite improvement, especially the addition of "Saturday", which adds to the alliterative ending of the poem.

Previous BillyBlog Poetry in Motion posts:

from "My Grandmother's New York Apartment" by Elizabeth
 Alexander (Day 1)
from "A Bouquet" by Bei Dao (Day 2)
"Separation" by W.S. Merwin (Day 3)
"The Groundfall Pear" by Jane Hirshfield (Day 4)
"For Friendship" by Robert Creeley (Day 5)
from "Crazy Horse Speaks" by Sherman Alexie (Day 6)
"Hunger" by Billy Collins (Day 7)
from "Little Man Around the House" by Yusef Komunyakaa (Day 8)
"The Loon on Oak-Head Pond" by Mary Oliver (Day 9)
from "I Am Vertical" by Sylvia Plath (Day 10 - part 1)
"Two Haiku" by Kobayashi Issa (Robert Hass, trans.)
 (Day 10 - part 2)
"you say 'i will come' " by Lady Otomo No Sakanoe (Kenneth 
Rexroth, trans.) (Day 11)
"You Called Me Corazón" by Sandra Cisneros (Day 12)
"Too Much Heat, Too Much Work" by Tu Fu (Carolyn 
Kizer, trans.) (Day 13)
"Sew" by Donald Hall (Day 14)
"Those Winter Sundays" by Robert Hayden (Day 15)
"Luck" by Langston Hughes (Day 16)
"0˚" by Elizabeth Spires (Day 17 - part 1)
"I Finally Managed to Speak with Her" by Hal 
Sirowitz (Day 17 - part 2)
"Window" by Carl Sandburg (Day 18)
" 'Hope' is the thing with feathers" by Emily 
Dickinson (Day 19)
from "Watch Repair" by Charles Simic (Day 20)
"Thank You, My Dear" by Sappho (Mary Barnard, 
trans.) (Day 21)
"A Piece of the Storm" and "Keeping Things Whole"  by 
Mark Strand (Day 22)
"Lullaby for a Daughter" by Mary Jo Salter (Day 23)
"I Ask My Mother to Sing" by Li-Young Lee (Day 24)
"Let Me Think" by Faiz Ahmed Faiz (Agha Shahid 
Ali, trans.) (Day 25)
from "Riding ona Railway Train" by Ogden Nash,
AND from "Antigone (lines 879-886)" by Sophocles,
translated by Robert Fagles AND "Quies, or Rest,"
by Allen Grossman (Day 26, "Three for Thursday").
"Exile" by Ellen Bryant Voigt (Day 27)
"We Join Spokes Together in a Wheel" by Lao-tzu (Day 28)