Poet To Watch: Javier Zamora
Javier Zamora was born in La Herradura, El Salvador. At the age of nine he immigrated to the “Yunaited Estais.” He is a CantoMundo fellow and a Breadloaf scholarship recipient whose work was selected for inclusion in Best New Poets 2013.
His chapbook, Nine Immigrant Years, is the winner of the 2011 Organic Weapon Arts Contest. Zamora’s poems appear or are forthcoming in New Border, Ostrich Review, OmniVerse, Ploughshares, Poet Lore, and elsewhere.
“Zamora’s work is real life turned into myth and myth made real life.”
He has a way of turning darker emotions and the political cesspools of (non) immigration reform into intricate weaves of family and self, exploring what it means to be a citizen not only in the legal sense, but on the sense of empathetic connection with even the surrounding landscape. From his poem, “I Have Not Been Back“, Zamora writes:
“I have not been back to my terra-
cotta roof. Abuelo built a skylight
of sand-blasted glass. So I dream, he said.
I connected stars, measured just how far
north was. If I return, constellations
of herons would signal my storm-past.”
We get an intimate look at how changing one’s living environment changes the people who dwell there. How easy is it to dream when the sky is readily available to you? What does place mean when place, location itself, has a personality of its own with which we can build a type of friendship or rivalry? I enjoy how the poet thinks of himself as an omen that herons auger. That’s real life becoming myth but no less real.
There is always something tangible about the seemingly intangible in Zamora’s work. When one object becomes another, the suspense of disbelief is real for the occasion that is the poem has earned itself the right to move into the surreal:
“this has to do with the between one leaf and another
with our holiday that’s a footprint cypress carnations jasmine
night is our skin shut with wax a rabid dog is our mouths”
from the poem “[Rake Our Wreaths]“
“Hold it to your ear. I’m tired
of my children leaving. My love for you shatters windows
with birds. Javiercito, let your shadow return,
alone, or with sons, but soon.”
from the poem “The Shatter of Birds“
When reality disappoints us and the ones we love, how do we transform reality to fit the void it causes? Zamora has figured out that the real has no space for the subjective, which outgrows and outlives physical reality, memory frequently having a shelf life long past the survival of the objects–that surely have changed if even a little–within memory–which fails the universal and in its failure succeeds the personal.
I admire the plainspoken nature of these poems. They are direct with little room to play with ornamentation that fills in the gaps of failed craftsmanship. I am also fond of the mixture of Spanish and English in many of his poems, the poems living two lives at once. Language for Zamora is more than tricks of meter and baroque demonstrations of images. These poems live as people do: complicated, rich, and bare.
For more information on Javier Zamora, please check out his short interview at the Best New Poets blog. Be sure to purchase his chapbook Nine Immigrant Years here.
~Phillip
Glappitnova unites influencers and talent from different industries through storytelling, performances, classes, and events for one crazy 8 day experience in Chicago.The opinions expressed here by Glappitnova.com contributors are their own, not those of Glappitnova.com.
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