Poet Octavio Quintanilla has published two volumes of poetry, but he has a message: Language is not enough.
“All the words you know in this world, all the language that you have in your body … it’s not enough to reconstruct memory, to tell how you really felt, to tell how you really suffered,” he said.
But Quintanilla’s search for ways to acknowledge loss has been productive and powerful enough to draw the attention of the National Book Foundation, which selected his latest collection of poetry, The Book of Wounded Sparrows, for its National Book Award longlist.
Quintanilla’s second volume of poetry was among only five poetry books selected from among 300 submissions from around the U.S.
The former San Antonio poet laureate and professor of English at Our Lady of the Lake University (OLLU) said that, though it was not among the five poetry books ultimately selected to win the prestigious award, “all my poetry friends tell me that just being longlisted is a win in itself.”
Poetry as medicine
Several of those friends were in attendance at an early October event held at OLLU for an audience of 100 colleagues, students, fellow poets and family members gathered to celebrate Quintanilla’s achievement.
During the event, several notable poets read his poems aloud as Quintanilla sat in rapt attention in the front row.
Northwest Vista College English professor Natalia Treviño gave felicidades to her colleague and praised his “bravery as a human being and as a poet.” She read the poem entitled “Desaparecer,” of which she said, “this poem is medicine.”
In it, Quintanilla writes:
… the word disappear disappears
in its Spanish translation: desaparecer.Can you hear the traces of what’s left,
of what’s carried over?
Throughout The Book of Wounded Sparrows, Quintanilla’s narrator struggles to reconcile the split in his identity that occurred when he and his younger brother were sent by their parents from their home in Magueyes, Tamaulipas to go to school in Weslaco and live with their grandmother.
The book opens with a childhood letter written to “Mamá y Papá,” with redacted lines revealing only two phrases saying that, though he is learning a little bit more English, he doesn’t want to be there.
In a phone interview from Lockhart where he stopped for a barbecue lunch on his way home from Dallas, Quintanilla explained that the book was 10 years in the making, but has essentially been in development since the 51-year-old poet was nine years old.
Earlier, he said, he did not have the language to describe the persistent sense of being ungrounded that has haunted him since that initial dislocation. Now, with a poet’s eye for metaphor, he said the two persons — adult poet and “orphaned” child — remain distinct and separate in his mind, like the electric wires running between telephone poles.
“Two wires that never touch, they just keep going and both carry energy. That little boy still has energy for me. He gave me that book,” Quintanilla said.
Seeing a future self
Before reading Quintanilla’s poem “Fig of Unfolding,” former Texas State poet laureate ire’ne lara silva referenced the promotional blurb she wrote for the book.
Silva wrote that the book’s narrator “shatters himself into a hundred pieces” as he, presumably the present-day Quintanilla addressing his much younger self, seeks to reconcile various losses he has suffered throughout his life.
In “Fig of Unfolding,” Quintanilla writes of a memory of his father planting a fig tree in their Magueyes backyard.
The poem focuses on the themes of childhood loss and stubborn adulthood hope that undergird the book’s 84 written poems and 25 Frontextos, illustrations of visual art that Quintanilla considers a facet of his poetic project. Its verse culminates in an image of the boy dreaming of a more grounded future self:
… A day will come
when my body will no longer open like a suitcase
to take myself on a journey where I’ll dream
of never being found, where I’ll dream of never finding
what I’ve lost. …
Hope is represented paradoxically by the strikethrough of the title on the book’s cover, Quintanilla said, in that it takes away the wounds and brings forth healing in the form of the book itself.
Capital ‘T’ truth
Quintanilla’s editor and publisher J. Bruce Fuller of Texas Review Press chose to read the poem that he said made him know he wanted to publish what would become The Book of Wounded Sparrows.
In “Parting,” Quintanilla writes vexingly of having meanings but not the words to adequately describe them:
There was a time
I had no word for darkness,
and so, I said, darkness.I had no word to say devotion,
and so, I said, Two sons
grieving one mother.
That poem was also foundational for Quintanilla. “That’s the first poem that I wrote that I knew this was it. I knew I was beginning to find it,” he said of ways to finally address the lost child that still lived in him.
Fuller said he recognized the direct sincerity that characterizes Quintanilla’s poems. “That sincerity throughout the book is why it’s gotten so much attention and awards and recognition,” he said. “People can feel that truth with a capital ‘T.’”
Asked what receiving the rare honor of National Book Awards recognition has meant for him, Quintanilla answered in a surprising way, drawing from a long-ago memory of a neighbor recognizing the sadness in him and in his brother as they sat on the unfamiliar porch in Weslaco.
The neighbor brought them ice cream cones, an unexpected act that imprinted upon him what nurturing kindness can do.
“I felt that for the last 10 years, I have been doing the same thing for this story, being kind to it,” he said of letting the poems grow in him before attempting to write them down.
“Poetry prizes are fine, recognitions are cool. I mean, who doesn’t want them?” Quintanilla said. “But when I found out that I had been longlisted, I just felt that the kindness that I showed the story was worth it.”
Quintanilla will deliver the welcome and closing remarks for the VersoFrontera literary festival taking place Friday and Saturday at the Carver Branch Library and OLLU. He said copies of his book will be available there, as well as through local booksellers and online.
