— They’re not deceiving, my darling, they’re confusing. If I say — here, pretzels, here, porn films, here, sexy bodies — then they will flock to me looking for cheap thrills, thinking I am another Madonna, but in the middle of my show, I’ll play a trick on them, as they have been playing tricks on me. Saying it’s great, when it tastes like shit. I’ll do the opposite. I’ll dress like a slutty punk, but I’ll give them the real thing, and I don’t mean Coke. I’ll give them poetry.
— What kind of poetry do you write?
— What do you mean?
— I write sonnets, and you?
— I can’t fit life into rhyme scheme. It would be a strait-jacket. Rhythm is free. How can I accept rhythms of ancient ages when I’m feeling my own rhythm? The velocity of cars — the engines of our time — concords, faxes, guns, and subways. The way we talk and the way we commute. Do we have time to write novels? What is immortal in a novel is not the form, which is long dead, but the context. And the same with poetry — what is said — that remains, but the way we say things, changes.
— Which means, you write blank verse like Neruda.
— No verse.
— Like Rimbaud or Baudelaire — little prose poems?
— I do not write little poems. I write big books. Which is not to imply that I like everything in them.
— Then why do you publish them?
— Because it’s not a matter of liking. Because to tell you the truth, many times, I don’t like myself. What am I going to do? Kill myself because I don’t like myself? No, I exist. Those poems I do not like function in the whole work. And they work well. So, it’s not a matter of liking. I don’t like my nose, but it exists and it works well.
— You could also get a nose job.
— Why, I can breathe.
— Do you write every day?
— I don’t have something to say every day.
— I always find something to say. I have the feeling we are very different poets.
— I’m sure Suzana told you that I won a poetry contest at the Poetry Society of America. It had an environmental theme. What do you write about?
— I don’t have themes. I have flavors like Bazooka. My favorite is the pink one. I love to suck all the sugar out of the pink one.
— Flavors don’t last, especially Bazooka. Poetry has a mission, and I take my role very seriously.
— So do I. I want poetry to be a fashion show — to have a taste of frivolity — savoir faire — a taste of time at its peak — Kenzo, Gigli, and Gaultier. I’m more excited by Bergdorf’s windows than the contemporary poetry I’ve read.
— Who have you read?
— I don’t read any of them.
— It shows. You must realize you’re limiting your audience by writing in both languages. To know a language is to know a culture. You neither respect one nor the other.
— If I respected languages like you do, I wouldn’t write at all. The Berlin Wall came down. Why can’t I do the same? Since the Tower of Babel, languages have always divorced us from the rest of humanity. Poetry must find ways of breaking distance. I’m not reducing my audience. On the contrary, I’m going to have a bigger audience with the common markets — in Europe — in America. And besides, all languages are dialects that are made to break new grounds. I feel like Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio, and I even feel like Garcilaso forging a new language. I welcome the new century, the century of the new American language, and wave farewell to all the separatist rhetoric and atavisms.
Welcome the sun, spider,
Don’t be so spiteful.
A kiss,
Giannina Braschi.
— How do you sleep at night?
— I snuggle with the dead when I go to bed.
— You feel colonized.
— Totally colonized.
— You don’t feel cosmopolitan.
— Totally cosmopolitan.
— That’s a contradiction in terms.
— My confusion is my statement of clarity. I live with plenty of identities within myself. And I want all of them to work. Poetry has been the useless art for too long. It’s been absent from life, history making, and the Daily News. It doesn’t matter how political it strives to be. To make a political statement is not to be politically alive. Poetry should jump out of the system like Tinguely’s machines out of good and bad, beauty and ugliness, right and wrong. Poetry is fun. Poetry hasn’t been fun for ages. It should give pleasure. We’ve grown accustomed to unhappy poetry. My poetry is happy not to be sad. I steal pleasure from toys, movies, television, videos, machines, games — and put the fun back in function so the work runs like an engine that clinks and clanks, tingles and tangles, whirs and buzzes, grinds and creaks, whistles and pops itself into a catabolic dämmerung of junk and scrap.
— Which one is the poet?
— They both are.
— Who’s reading tonight?
— The Rican.
— Poetry is a dead art, long dead. I want the here and now, Coke and pretzels, junk food, fast food. I have to ask myself what I am doing here, listening to a Rican who can’t speak English or Spanish.
— I can understand Spanish, but I can’t understand Puerto Ricans.
— We have a similar problem. I can understand English, but I cannot understand Americans.
— Scum of the earth. Banish them from the Republic. Sponges. Chameleons.
— So what. Zelig is a chameleon.
— Zelig is Woody Allen, and Woody Allen is a filmmaker, and filmmakers count and poets don’t.
— When do we eat?
— I’m nervous. Did you see him? Over there.
— Who?
— Scorsese. What is he doing here?
— Wassila invited him.
— I should have known. I would have worn my Armani suit. Why did you made me wear this Mao Tse-tung outfit? It doesn’t fit me. I don’t belong here. I’m scared. Why did you take me out of my closet? I’m going to be so famous I don’t even want to think about it. But I’m not ready to expose myself. How dreadful to be somebody. To know that I was nobody. To feel so hurt inside — knowing that I was somebody — inside. To know I was so shy — nobody knew I was somebody — except some nobodies. To know that I was neglected, unwanted, and to be here in front of Scorsese, who’ll recognize my talent and make me a movie star.
— We’ll worry about it after it happens. In the meantime, try to shine.
— I’m not Madonna. I want my closet back. Close my doors. Do you think they really want to know who I am?
— Of course not. Some are here for a taste of Suzana’s salmon mousse and high art. Others want her movie contacts and coconut rice.
— Oh, my God. Let’s go home. Robert De Niro. What am I doing here? With all these mafiosos. Al Pacino. I’m gonna die. The Godfather himself.
— Whatever you do, don’t sound lyrical. Grumble guttural, sardonic threats. I’m gonna crack ya mudda fuckin’ head open. Smash ya goddamn teef in. Mafia talk.
— Deny my culture.
— Mock it. Roll your r’s rougher like you’re mad.
— I am mad. What am I doing here?
— Shhh. Remember, bring out the killer inside you.