Tag creative writing

* rochelle hurt’s The Rusted City

José Angel Araguz Leave a comment

BELT: Your poems do a wonderful job of transforming a city’s decay into beauty without romanticizing the image of America’s failed industrialism. How does The Rusted City set itself apart from other works that exploit or generalize the Rust Belt experience? 

Hurt: I felt it was important to write about a Rust Belt city without glorifying urban ruin or falling into nostalgia for the good old days of industry. I was born into decline, so those days were never a part of my life. In the book, I wanted to imagine a world in a miraculous return to the past wasn’t even an option — a world already made from the rust . . . The metaphoric mergers between the characters and the city’s decay prevent the Rust Belt setting from being reduced to a romantic or dramatic backdrop; these characters are their city.*

* rust in time *

* rust in time *

Reading through fellow UC colleague and friend Rochelle Hurt’s The Rusted City recently, I found myself marveling much at the ambition of the book’s central metaphor, each poem adding to the logic and myth of a world not parallel but more chipped and glinted from ours.

I include the interview excerpt above because it describes aptly what I mean by “central metaphor.” Already an engaging concept, the book’s most pleasurable moments for me are when the metaphor of a decaying city permeate into human experience.

In the poem below, one can see the unique tension of Hurt’s city-mythology at work: a childhood scene is complicated by the metaphor of the rusted city, and vice versa, in a confluence that makes for a captivating reading experience.

The Quiet Mother Cups the Favorite Father’s Ear – Rochelle Hurt

with her lip. It quivers on her tongue like a lump of pudding, a tapioca earlobe. The smallest sister is behind the wall, watching through a termite hole. She sees their hands and legs tangle into a knot of twine on the bed. When one of the hands reaches up and ties itself to the chain in the ceiling, black spills into the room. The smallest sister gasps and shreds of rust flutter from the peephole into her mouth. They snag their way down, crumpling like foil in her throat.

**

Happy rusting!

Jose

* The rest of the BELT magazine interview with Rochelle can be read here.

For more on this poet’s work, check out her site here.

* charting the world with rafael campo

José Angel Araguz Leave a comment

In searching for images to accompany this week’s poem, I came across the photo below. The photo is from 1933 and is of the Metropolitan nurses home at Roosevelt Island, part of the Renwick Smallpox Hospital complex.

The image below stayed with me for the way it captured what might have been part of someone’s daily commute or walk, a scene that may have been overlooked in day to day life. The image is almost without center, or rather, the center is active, keeping the viewer staring off into the detailed distance as one would be able to should they be turning this particular corner.

This week’s poem – “Chart” by Rafael Campo (pulled from the latest issue of Poetry*) – takes on the idea of people being overlooked in a doctor’s work life. Through the detailing of the particular corners of the people that he knows, Campo keeps the reader looking into the very active center of his poem.

* look over *

* look over *

The Chart – Rafael Campo

Says fifty-four-year-old obese Hispanic
female — I wonder if they mean the one
with long black braids, Peruvian, who sells
tamales at the farmers’ market, tells
me I’m too thin, I better eat; or is
she the Dominican with too much rouge
and almond eyes at the dry cleaner’s who
must have been so beautiful in her youth;
or maybe she’s the Cuban lady drunk
on grief who I’ve seen half-asleep, alone
as if that bench were only hers, the park
her home at last; or else the Mexican
who hoards the littered papers she collects
and says they are her “documents”; if not,
it could be that Colombian drug addict
whose Spanish, even when she’s high, is perfect;
or maybe it’s the one who never says
exactly where she’s from, but who reminds
me of my grandmother, poor but refined,
lace handkerchief balled up in her plump hand,
who died too young from a condition that
some doctor, nose in her chart, overlooked.

***

Happy nosing!

Jose

* p.s. Read the rest of this month’s issue of Poetry here.