Quotes by Juan Felipe Herrera - Page 1

A poem is a flexible thing, and a poem is a poem.
Juan Felipe Herrera / Poet
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Poetry is a call to action, and it also is action.
Juan Felipe Herrera / Poet
Poetry
Action
Also
Call
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As a boy, I felt ashamed of being Mexican. I'd say I was Hawaiian.
Juan Felipe Herrera / Poet
Ashamed
Mexican
Hawaiian
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Sometimes I have a very fleeting emotional dance with a fleeting phrase, like 'half-Mexican.'
Juan Felipe Herrera / Poet
Fleeting
Phrase
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Sometimes you can do things with Spanish - like verbs and genders - easier than you can in English.
Juan Felipe Herrera / Poet
Verbs
Spanish
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I am representing California, and all of California, definitely as a Mexicano, a Chicano, a Latino.
Juan Felipe Herrera / Poet
California
Latino
Representing
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If I can only be known as one thing, then, well, I guess it would be poet and performer and teacher.
Juan Felipe Herrera / Poet
Performer
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Just like my parents immigrated from ranch to ranch picking crops, I have migrated from city to city.
Juan Felipe Herrera / Poet
Crops
Picking
Ranch
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I write while I'm walking, on little scraps of paper. If I have a melody going, I can feel it for days.
Juan Felipe Herrera / Poet
Melody
Scraps
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The goal for me is to be as expansive as possible, and the Library of Congress offers so many resources.
Juan Felipe Herrera / Poet
Offers
Expansive
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Do not wait for a poem; a poem is too fast for you. Do not wait for the poem; run with the poem and then write the poem.
Juan Felipe Herrera / Poet
Run
Fast
Wait
Poem
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We went from crop to crop, field to field. And my father had that army truck, a 1940s army truck from Fort Bliss, El Paso.
Juan Felipe Herrera / Poet
Army
Bliss
El Paso
Truck
Crop
Fort
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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.
Juan Felipe Herrera / Poet
Hearts
Latinos
Let Us
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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.
Juan Felipe Herrera / Poet
Choir
Middle School
Time Myself School
Forced
Joined
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Migrants all over the world are pushed and pulled across borders by hunger, terror and climate change. It happened to my own family.
Juan Felipe Herrera / Poet
Borders
Climate
Climate Change
Hunger
Terror
Change Family World
Pulled
Pushed
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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.
Juan Felipe Herrera / Poet
Representing
Latinos
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My mother was a washerwoman - or a woman that cleaned houses in Texas... in Plano, Texas - who always loved poetry and always loved stories.
Juan Felipe Herrera / Poet
Texas
Cleaned
Houses
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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.
Juan Felipe Herrera / Poet
Grateful
Philip
Myself Me People
Poets
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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.
Juan Felipe Herrera / Poet
Latino
Poet
Poet Laureate
Voices
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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.
Juan Felipe Herrera / Poet
Engage
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Perhaps, like the way these leaves spread out and the way they curl in many directions and how they have many features, I think that's how my road has been.
Juan Felipe Herrera / Poet
Features
Spread
Curl
Directions
Leaves
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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.
Juan Felipe Herrera / Poet
Stations
Airport
Street
Street Walking Down
Hand
Trains
Pen
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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.
Juan Felipe Herrera / Poet
Banner
Good Things
Groups
Invite
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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.
Juan Felipe Herrera / Poet
Firsts
Secret
Way
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I'm usually writing in English, and then I'll get the hankering to change channels. And usually I'll do that when I want to try a whole new set of keys, like musical keys.
Juan Felipe Herrera / Poet
Hankering
Channels
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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.
Juan Felipe Herrera / Poet
By The Time
First Grade
Grade
Spanish
Spoke
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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.
Juan Felipe Herrera / Poet
Becoming
Diversity
Human Beings
Missing
Stage
Need
Beings
Less
Complete
Each
Human
Means
Learn
Other
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I'm a political poet - let us say a 'human' poet, a poet that's concerned with the plight of people who suffer. If words can be of assistance, then that's what I'm going to use.
Juan Felipe Herrera / Poet
Assistance
Plight
Let Us
Suffer
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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.
Juan Felipe Herrera / Poet
San Diego
Corner
Diego
Hip
Pocket
San
Sticking
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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.
Juan Felipe Herrera / Poet
Dream World
Encyclopedia
Living Room
World Me Parents
Oral
Traditions
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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.
Juan Felipe Herrera / Poet
California
Camps
Continuation
Gifted
Halls
Juvenile
Poet
Worker
Classrooms
Colleges
High Schools
Migrant
Offices
Prisons
Universities
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We can understand poetry from a billion - in a billion styles, experiment, tradition, combination, spice, meter, image. It's all there for the poet and for the listener and for all of us.
Juan Felipe Herrera / Poet
Spices
Style
Tradition
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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.
Juan Felipe Herrera / Poet
Faded
Figures
Moved
Roots
Stories
Ranch
Valley
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Marvin Bell always looked very closely at how lines could break, how you could put over one line into the second line. How you could stop the line two or three times within the line: You could make it stop.
Juan Felipe Herrera / Poet
One Line
Bell
Closely
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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.
Juan Felipe Herrera / Poet
Academic
Clutter
Daydreaming
Letters
Detox
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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.
Juan Felipe Herrera / Poet
Fountain
San Diego
Visual
Teachers
Big Part
Diego
Grade
Landscapes
Mentors
Shaped
San
Third
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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.
Juan Felipe Herrera / Poet
Guidance
Staff
Departments
Launch
Merge
Weave
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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.'
Juan Felipe Herrera / Poet
Choreography
Sculpting
Crafting
Workshop
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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.
Juan Felipe Herrera / Poet
Chaos
Excitement
Frenzy
Historian
Mexican
Mexico
Mexico City
Revolution
Turmoil
Grade
Tail
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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.
Juan Felipe Herrera / Poet
Aunt
Decades
Latin America
Mexico
Mexico City
Largest
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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.
Juan Felipe Herrera / Poet
Big Questions
Immigration
Concerns
Voices
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I remember looking at James Joyce's journals. It was just amazing - it looked like ants had written on the page. So much writing on one page, every corner of the page was filled. Some of the lines were underlined in yellow or blue or red. A lot of color, intense writing.
Juan Felipe Herrera / Poet
Ants
Blue
Color
Filled
Intense
Lines
Red
Yellow
Corner
James
Journals
Looked
Page
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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.
Juan Felipe Herrera / Poet
Closing
Hearing
Latino
Assist
Communities
Conversations
Gap
Historically
Nationwide
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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.
Juan Felipe Herrera / Poet
Do You Know
Instruments
Scales
Versus
Poem
Solar
Spanish
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A pen is different from the pad, the key, moving your fingers across a screen. I like both. I like to work on sketchbooks, big old white sketch paper. I like how that feels, and I like to put different media on it. Then there's the phone, smartphone, iPad: It's the new page, and it's not the same page anymore.
Juan Felipe Herrera / Poet
Fingers
Work Your New
Ipad
Pad
Page
Pen
Same Page
Sketch
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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.
Juan Felipe Herrera / Poet
Delight
Time Work History
Classrooms
Communities
Work Time History
Presented
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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.
Juan Felipe Herrera / Poet
Odd
Centuries
Communities
Facing
Poem
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Juan Felipe Herrera Quotes - Page 1

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