Juan Felipe Herrera Quotes

Diversity really means becoming complete as human beings - all of us. We learn from each other. If you're missing on that stage, we learn less. We all need to be on that stage.

If I can only be known as one thing, then, well, I guess it would be poet and performer and teacher.

San Diego shaped me a lot. The visual landscapes, the emotional panoramas, the teachers and mentors I had from the third grade through San Diego High - it's all a big part of the poetry fountain that I continue to drink from.

Sometimes you can do things with Spanish - like verbs and genders - easier than you can in English.

Just like my parents immigrated from ranch to ranch picking crops, I have migrated from city to city.

I am representing California, and all of California, definitely as a Mexicano, a Chicano, a Latino.

Sometimes it's like that. I go, 'You know what? I'm going to just change scales. I'm going to even change instruments. And I'm going to go into the chromatics of the Spanish language,' and I do. You know, the poem is totally different. It's like a lunar voice versus a day voice, a solar voice.

I want to take everything I have in me, weave it, merge it with the beauty that is in the Library of Congress, all the resources, the guidance of the staff and departments, and launch it with the heart-shaped dreams of the people.

Let's detox our cluttered academic brain. That's what the poet does. People call it daydreaming, detoxing our minds and taking care of that clutter. It's being able to let in call letters from the poetry universe.

My parents moved from ranch to ranch, valley to valley, town to town, but our roots in Fowler never really faded. For me, it's a place of history, stories and songs, not just facts and figures.

I gave my voice to poetry.

By middle school, I said to myself that it's time I begin to speak. I joined the choir, not because I wanted to. I forced myself.

I tell my workshop students, 'I want you to think of yourselves as artists. Then, when you're writing, you're painting, you're crafting, you're making a design, you're sculpting, you're creating choreography, sound, a sound script.'

The banner of the project is 'Casa de Colores.' Under that banner, I'm going to invite people to do a lot of good things. Perhaps working in groups, working on poetry.

I used to stand on the corner in San Diego with poems sticking out of my hip pocket, asking people if there was a place where I could read poems. The audience is half of the poem.

Let Us Gather In A Flourishing Way

Let us gather in a flourishing way
opening with sun light grains songs
we carry every day
I pasture the young body
happy to give and give pearls pearls
of corn flowing tree of life at the four corners
let us gather in a flourishing way
happy life full of strength to
giving birth to fragrant rivers
Fresh sweet green turquoise strong
rainbows flesh of our children
let us gather in a flourishing way
in the light and in the flesh of our heart to toil
quiet in fields of blossoms
together to stretch the arms
With the quiet rain in the morning
Early on our forehead star
Heat sky and wisdom to meet us
Where we toil always
in the garden of our Struggle and joy
let us offer our hearts to greet our eagle rising
freedom
woven branches celebrate arms branches
nopales stones feathers bursting piercing
figs and avocados
Butterfly ripe fields and clear seas
of our face
to breathe all the way in blessing
to give seeds to grow maiztlán
in the hands of our love.

What I really had was stories, the oral traditions of my parents. We moved so much that that was really our encyclopedia. A dream world told to me from my parents in the living room.

I want our young Latinos and Latinas to write their hearts out and express their hearts out and let us all listen to each other.

We speak about understanding each other, having those conversations nationwide - culturally, historically - and yet there's a lot of gaps. So I want to assist with closing the gap of knowing about and hearing about our Latino communities in terms of literature, in terms of writing.

My grandmother and my mom and my aunt Aurelia, my grandmother Juanita, my mom Lucia - we lived on the outskirts of a barrio in Mexico City called Tepito, and Tepito for many, many decades was the largest barrio in Mexico and perhaps even Latin America.

I know I'm representing the Library of Congress, all the people of the United States and, of course, the Latinos and Latinas as well.

The more we engage in society, the more firsts we have, then there will be a moment when we have no more firsts. Or maybe there will always be new firsts.

I like marketplaces. I like train stations; I like being in trains. I like airports. I like walking down the street with a pen in my hand, writing, writing, writing.

My mother was a washerwoman - or a woman that cleaned houses in Texas ... in Plano, Texas - who always loved poetry and always loved stories.

I'm very grateful to all the people of Fresno, to Philip Levine and all the poets before me, and all the farmworkers. I didn't get here by myself.

In my writing, I want to address all communities, you know. I've spent many years talking about Chicano culture, Chicano history, and at the same time, I've also been in many communities and presented my work in many communities, in many classrooms, and that's where my vision is and my delight is and my heart is.

Poetry, as odd as it is, and as hard to figure out as it is, many times, it's almost something that we're used to. It's kind of like a dream language that we had centuries ago, so that when we speak poetically or write a poem about what's going on, a real difficult issue that's facing our communities, people listen.

Yes, I am the first Latino poet laureate in the United States. But I'm also here for everyone and from everyone. My voice is made by everyone's voices.

I've worked throughout California as a poet: in colleges, universities, worker camps, migrant education offices, continuation high schools, juvenile halls, prisons, and gifted classrooms.

Before you go further,
let me tell you what a poem brings,
first, you must know the secret, there is no poem
to speak of, it is a way to attain a life without boundaries ...

As a boy, I felt ashamed of being Mexican. I'd say I was Hawaiian.

First grade was - I spoke only Spanish, and second grade - probably a bit more English. And by the time I hit third grade, I was learning, of course, much, much more English.

All voices are important, and yet it seems that people of color have a lot to say, particularly if you look through the poetry of young people - a lot of questions and a lot of concerns about immigration and security issues, you name it - big questions.

Your friends, and your associates, and the people around you, and the environment that you live in, and the speakers around you - the speakers around you - and the communicators around you, are the poetry makers.
If your mother tells you stories, she is a poetry maker.
If your father says stories, he is a poetry maker.
If your grandma tells you stories, she is a poetry maker.
And that's who forms our poetics.

A poem is a flexible thing, and a poem is a poem.

My mother was a great storyteller and a great historian in her own way. She only made it to third grade. She came from Mexico City at the tail end of the Mexican Revolution and that kind of turmoil and chaos and frenzy and also excitement.