Tag reading

vital signs + upcoming event

José Angel Araguz Leave a comment

Happy to report that I’m still coming through on that “100% survival rate” I spoke of in my last post. Since then, I’ve experienced some further personal struggles that have laid me unexpectedly bare (read: there’s been lots of self-help books and big talks about health, finances, etc.).

In a way, what I’ve been feeling has felt like truly learning the cost of what it takes to write the books I do. Books that are equal parts lyric nerve, formal curiosity, and trauma. That last ingredient lives outside the books as well as in them, and is something that’s been running my life for a while. I’m catching up with it, helping it unpack. After so many years, it should sit a spell.

Whether poetry or creative nonfiction. I’m often asked some version of the question: How are you able to write the things you write? The raw, often personal nature of my work is often what is meant. The truth is, I don’t know. I don’t know how I am able to write the things I write, I just know I have to write them. I just know that the languages I’ve been gifted in this life have provided some stability in a life otherwise run solely by survival and overwork. I just know that sharing the gift of words with others has meant so much to me, which is why my absence from this space has been tough.

As I learn what this all means moving forward, I’ll be sharing here when appropriate. I’m also hoping to reclaim this space, to get back to sharing and celebrating the writers and art that influence my writing life. Hence some of the changes to the appearance of the site.

How am I able to write the things I write?

Come find out with me.

UPCOMING EVENT

Next week, I will be the special guest reader at the latest installment of Tell-All Boston‘s reading series: “Life on the Margins.” I’ll be reading from my memoir, Ruin & Want (Sundress Publications), and sharing the stage with other writers from the area. This reading has a virtual attendance option if folks aren’t in the area but want to tune in.

Here are the complete deets:

WHAT: Tell-All Boston presents: “Life on the Margins” with special guest José Angel Araguz
WHEN: Thursday, June 13th: 7PM EST
WHERE: in person & virtual
IN-PERSON INFO & RSVP LINK: Porter Square Books, 25 White St., Cambridge, MA; RSVP at this link.
VIRTUAL INFO & REGISTRATION LINK: Register to attend this event virtually at this link.

Happy reclaiming & influencing, y’all!

Abrazos,

= José =

Ruin & Want interview excerpts, final part

José Angel Araguz Leave a comment

Here’s the final excerpt from my Sundress Publications interview with Izzy Astuto. Thank you to everyone who took the time to read some of these. Had one friend refer to them as part craft talk which means so much. These words, in the book, on slides, here between us, matter so much. 

Thanks to those of you who have pre-ordered Ruin & Want and who are considering doing so and/or requesting the book at your public library!

Izzy Astuto: Some final questions, specifically about the close of the book: Why did you name the last section “epilogue,” rather than an eighth chapter? Also, how did you decide to end the book with another poet’s words? In this case, with Yeats? , Sundress Publications

José: In regard to the “epilogue,” I wanted to mark a shift in tone and perspective, that the narrative whirlwind was dying down and some sense of closure for the reader (if not the speaker) was in sight. Also, I feel like the I in this section is more assertive, doing the work to make clear connections across narratives, less of letting the reader do the work.

As for the ending image and words, I have Samantha Edmonds (Associate Prose Editor at Sundress Publications) to thank for that ending. In some of the later drafts, the epilogue section was a little too on the nose, a lot of underscoring my intentions in the book rather than letting them ring and resonate. When she pointed out the image in the Yeats reference as a possible ending, it felt right. The Yeats poem is central to the manuscript and the experience. 

There’s also that quote about all of us being in the gutter only some of us are looking at the stars—there’s some of that in that last line. Also the feeling that the reading experience of this book is a “blur” of memory and narrative that leaves us looking at the “stars.” That starts are things romanticized but also, as the devil tells us in the book, they are things that are “dead inside” as well. That mix of darkness and light, hope and nihilism, pues, that’s where I live.

More Ruin-related content soon 🙂

José