Riehlife Poem of the Day: Victor Hernandez Cruz “Problems with Hurricanes,” from “Maraca”
If you are going out
Beware of mangoes
And all such beautiful
sweet things.
---Victor Hernandez Cruz
Click here to read an EXCELLENT interview with Victor Hernandeze Cruz on The Poetry Foundation site. Here are some excerpts of questions to whet your appetite:
You don’t write what many would call autobiographical lyric poems. Was this a conscious decision?
Well, the poetry’s not really mine. The poetry’s not really about myself, it’s all about my culture There are things I can extract from my personal life, but I use them as stepping-stones or a springboard toward other things.
Do you think it’s possible to write a good poem about anything? A doorknob . . . a sewer system . . . anything?
I stopped writing about things that just kind of pop out at random. The mind has to be edited....Literature has everything in it because literature is about life; it’s got to be about everything that’s within life, and nothing can be edited out of it. You can have a poem about shoestrings, or you can have a poem about Venus. Something very small and something very big, and in between, everything. Now, it’s up to the individual poet to use some discernment, some judgment, to be selective; and you begin to see how each poet and each writer has an area of concern.
Problems with Hurricanes
by Victor Hernandez Cruz
from Maraca: New and Selected Poems 1965-2000
A campesino looked at the air
and told me:
With hurricanes it’s not the wind
or the noise or the water.
I’ll tell you he said:
it’s the mangoes, avocados
Green plantains and bananas
flying into town like projectiles.
How would your family
feel if they had to tell
The generations that you
got killed by a flying
Banana.
Death by drowning has honor
If the wind picked you up
and slammed you
against a mountain boulder
This would not carry shame
But
to suffer a mango smashing
your skull
or a plantain hitting your
Temple at 70 miles per hour
is the ultimate disgrace.
The campesino takes off his hat—
as a sign of respect
toward the fury of the wind
And says:
Don’t worry about the noise
Don’t worry about the water
Don’t worry about the wind—
If you are going out
Beware of mangoes
And all such beautiful
sweet things.
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