Read Like A Poet
Featuring Jimmy Santiago Baca
Hello and welcome to Office Hours. My name is José Olivarez. If you’re new here, this series is Read Like A Poet. It’s an invitation to read and think together. I started this series because I believe reading is the most important part of writing. I don’t know if “You are what you eat” is true or not, but I believe that “You write what you read.”
Before I get into today’s poem by Jimmy Santiago Baca, I want to offer an apology. This newsletter is late. I’m in Tennessee at the Shakerag Workshop working with an awesome group of students alongside painter, Elsa Muñoz. The days are long with teaching and artist talks and I haven’t had the opportunity to write.
Here is today’s poem:
Who Understands Me but Me BY JIMMY SANTIAGO BACA They turn the water off, so I live without water, they build walls higher, so I live without treetops, they paint the windows black, so I live without sunshine, they lock my cage, so I live without going anywhere, they take each last tear I have, I live without tears, they take my heart and rip it open, I live without heart, they take my life and crush it, so I live without a future, they say I am beastly and fiendish, so I have no friends, they stop up each hope, so I have no passage out of hell, they give me pain, so I live with pain, they give me hate, so I live with my hate, they have changed me, and I am not the same man, they give me no shower, so I live with my smell, they separate me from my brothers, so I live without brothers, who understands me when I say this is beautiful? who understands me when I say I have found other freedoms? I cannot fly or make something appear in my hand, I cannot make the heavens open or the earth tremble, I can live with myself, and I am amazed at myself, my love, my beauty, I am taken by my failures, astounded by my fears, I am stubborn and childish, in the midst of this wreckage of life they incurred, I practice being myself, and I have found parts of myself never dreamed of by me, they were goaded out from under rocks in my heart when the walls were built higher, when the water was turned off and the windows painted black. I followed these signs like an old tracker and followed the tracks deep into myself, followed the blood-spotted path, deeper into dangerous regions, and found so many parts of myself, who taught me water is not everything, and gave me new eyes to see through walls, and when they spoke, sunlight came out of their mouths, and I was laughing at me with them, we laughed like children and made pacts to always be loyal, who understands me when I say this is beautiful?
The poem opens with “They turn the water off, so I live without water,/ they build walls higher, so I live without without treetops,” The imagery is brutal. Immediately, I want to respond and offer that no one should live under these circumstances. Maybe you agree with me. It doesn’t matter because the poem does not need our agreement. Underneath the harshness of living without water and with higher walls is an insistence: “so I live” is right there. This poem is not a beached fish flopping asking for help. It rises up. It insists. It lives.
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“I cannot make the heavens open or the earth tremble,/ I can live with myself, and I am amazed at myself, my love, my beauty,” –I love this moment because of the switch from “I cannot” to “I can.” The poet has already been insisting on life while documenting the brutality he is facing. Here, the move becomes bolder. The rhetorical change feels like a spiritual shift. A refusal to turn towards what is denied to us and a deliberate choosing of our own innate beauty and life. The poem continues: “I am taken by my failures, astounded by my fears,/ I am stubborn and childish,”—this is not about being perfect. There are no perfect people here. The speaker admits to being human: imperfect: faulty—and still deserving of beauty, life, protection.
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I love this poem. Structurally, I love the second halves of the lines: the responses to the lines that begin with: they turn, they paint, they lock, they take, they take, they take… The response always begins with “I live, I live, I live.” And here we meet, Substack reader. You and I. If you believe that in this poem, you are a neutral observer, it is too late. If you believe that your positionality in this poem is as an internally guilty bystander, it is too late. Let me break the news to you. You already have less rights today than you did three months ago. Saul Williams and Suheir Hammad said that during their concert together at the end of May, and they are right. You and I both and everyone we know has more in common with the speaker of this poem than anyone else. They will shut off our water. They will shut off our internet. They will lock us up. Some of us—perhaps a great many of us—will die. Some have already died. We are living in this poem. And we must figure out how we are going to protect each other. How we are going to insist on living for and with one another.
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See you next week.
"You and I both and everyone we know has more in common with the speaker of this poem than anyone else. They will shut off our water. They will shut off our internet. They will lock us up. Some of us—perhaps a great many of us—will die. Some have already died. We are living in this poem. And we must figure out how we are going to protect each other. How we are going to insist on living for and with one another." Posting this here for the chance to read it again.
I have loved your takes and gut reactions to this type of explicit poetry. I wonder if you ever deconstruct classical ambiguous themes. Lately I have found such at ange connection between every work I read (any genre and any author). Would you perhaps make a post about something to do with intertextual influences. Or have you already?