One of my favorite quotes to go back to when talking about poetry is W. H. Auden’s idea that a poem is an individual’s version of reality. He said this specifically in terms of poets dealing with rejection; whereas the novelist may have a set of characters, a plot, and a whole world of complex narrative between themselves and the reader, the poet has only the scaffolding of a few lines, an image, perhaps a wisp of memory, all to evoke a feeling and experience. While rejection is felt strongly by all writers, for poets the experience is especially jarring; it is, in Auden’s mind, a rejection of their sense of reality.

I mention this notion of “poems-as-individual-versions-of-reality” because the work of this week’s featured poet – German Dario – carries itself into a reader’s reality in an undeniable way.

The first poem “Pan y Vino” has a speaker detailing childhood memories of a religious grandmother. The narrative develops first through the senses: the smell of “cigarettes, / coffee, / her” leads into a “Bible / size of a minivan.” These larger-than-life impressions help develop a logic founded on childhood memory and imagination, marking a distinction between the two. This distinction is experienced in the flow of lines from “With her voice / she painted / childhood pictures” to the ending’s admission of the speaker’s imagination helping to stray from the hold of these “pictures.” This break in affection and memory is subtle but powerful; it is not rebellion, but rather the inevitable break of an identity forming itself.

This attention to emotional nuances can be found in the second poem below, “evanescent.” Here, the speaker’s meditation on two separate memories, one of watching fireworks and one of a watching a comet, presents a parallel set of images. Fleeting light and fire pass through lines working to evoke memory; as the images pass, so does the gravity of the following moment during the fireworks memory:

that night my Dad said
“you know where you are
exactly
in the world right now”
Mom agreed
I
was never
so grounded again
none of us were

This moment mid-poem has a two-fold effect: it first presents the speaker’s realization after the fact of what was actually happening during the fireworks. There’s the awe of the fireworks; but also the awe (tinged with wonder and sadness) of what was said. This awe resonates further as the comet imagery develops later in the poem.

In a way, the passage of time between memories becomes a third passing of light and fire; we realize along with the speaker that what strikes awe in us in moments like these is not the sights alone, but the fact of these sights, which is the fact of our lives essentially.

Dario’s poems, in this way, evoke reality’s ephemeral nature – something we try to reject, but also something that poems like these teach us to accept.

Pan y Vino – German Dario

Abuela’s religion was good,

It smelled of cigarettes,
coffee,
her.

Bible
size of a minivan,
an opened
flower garden,
Abuela led me
by the hand
of spoken word,
weaving story,
parable, fantasy,
real life.

We only judged
Abuelo’s religion,
she joked.
While he
manned the store
we ate pork.

With her voice
she painted
childhood pictures
so vivid,

I wanted to be a priest,

until my imagination
began to paint,
other pictures.

*

evanescent – German Dario

it happened
on a fourth of july
three lost souls
sitting
alone
on the hood of a car
watching fireworks

shooting up
whole
together
burning bright
breaking up
the brightest transient life

that night my Dad said
“you know where you are
exactly
in the world right now”
Mom agreed
I
was never
so grounded again
none of us were

in the arms of a lover
in a rainy day
under a favorite blanket

never again

maybe
close
when three of us
a different three of us
sat on the hood
of another car
under the same stars
watching a comet
fly by in a hurry

to our human eyes
with our mortal time
it sat still
in the black
star littered canvas
so we could marvel
at our insignificance

the tips of our cigarettes
lit up the empty desert night
like the stars above
watching us
ash falling off
like the pieces
of the comet
marking its tail
leaving its trail

why was it always
three of us
together
right before
we broke apart

all we have left
are memories
folded petals
in long lost books
good enough to hoard

*

*

German Dario resides in Tempe, Arizona with wife, two sons, two dogs and sometimes a fish. His poems are about everyday life moments through the eye of an immigrant. Earlier poems were published in the 1990’s in Anthology magazine. More recently published in the Blue Collar Review Summer 2017 issue.

Follow German on Twitter: @German_Colores
(photo credit: Amanda Nelson)