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Poetry can be a broad categorization but also an incredibly limiting one, and no one knows that better than April Hernandez. Genre-bending and experimental style challenges the conventions of the form, and that has become her specialty and her goal as a poet and creative.

While she has completed professional literary work before, such as a personal essay in The Wire’s Dream Magazine, Hernandez’s first published piece of poetry appeared in Lucky Jefferson’s Introspection issue this fall.

“Dementia” explores the intersection between form and image while hypothesizing over this fear of losing one’s identity. The mental disintegration, the fading of memories and lives, is visually represented — as the poem progresses, the words lose potency, becoming lighter and lighter until they almost disappear. But the word “forget” is highlighted black — the only word that visually pervades the poem.

For Hernandez, “Dementia” has personal and layered meaning. Many of the specific anecdotes and detailed descriptions she shares are ones between her and her grandmother, who has dementia. Other reflections in the work are memories between her and her mother as well, which continues this cyclical questioning about forgetting and eventually losing more loved ones on a generational scale.

By depicting these serious scenes of reflection, Hernandez said tackling dementia is important given the illness’s absence from much of the writing community.

“Part of it was to pay homage to my grandma, but in a larger setting, I guess just bringing more attention to dementia,” Hernandez said. “It’s something we all hear about, but it isn’t something that I feel like is really reflected as much in literature or even just writing in general.”

The Introspection issue, Lucky Jefferson’s fourth edition, whose theme is authenticity and the often difficult search for meaning and understanding.

While scrolling through Submittable, Hernandez found LJ’s open call for poetry entries and decided to try poetry again. In high school, she had written for literary magazines, but ventured into other writing territories once she entered Portland State University, where she majored in Creative Writing — Nonfiction.

From there, her works became more “hybrid,” branching out from the conventions that poetry  — or even nonfiction — can place on writers. But by using personal memories and cultural significance, Hernandez finds her comfort zone.

While “Dementia” deals with her relationship with her grandma, Hernadez’s piece for The Wire’s Dream Magazine, titled “Speaking Spanish,” involves unboxing her late uncle’s belongings and the psychological connection she has to him without ever meeting him.

Her writing inspiration also stems from other authors and writers and timeliness of their stories — Hernandez recently read Elizabeth Acevedo’s “The Poet X” for Hispanic Heritage Month.

When she does seek out poetry, Hernandez said she gravitates towards local Portland authors, such as her former college professors Emily Kendal Frey and Justin Hocking.

But like everything she writes, Hernandez loves reading works that blend genre and play with the medium.

“What’s important to me is having an open mind when it comes to writing and reading,” Hernandez said. “Not everything has to fit in a specific definition or a specific genre, and I know for me personally, letting my mind expand and see poetry can be nonfiction, nonfiction can be poetry, poetry and fiction. There’s some really great examples out there and I just want to see more.”

Hernandez, in another exploration of genre and style, has also been collaborating on her boyfriend Greg’s screenplay for a film, which he said is a “psycho-anti-comea-dramaler.” In every aspect of Hernandez’s writing career, defying tradition is key.

She said she is easing back into writing, during a tumultuous year that has not given her “reprieve enough” to launch back into creating. Once she does, Hernandez said her foray into poetry in her adult life is far from over, and she hopes other publications prioritize “inclusivity” and are receptive and responsive to her work by offering “more opportunities for feedback.”

“Giving opportunities to newer writers, as well as people from different backgrounds,” Hernandez said in reference to Lucky Jefferson, “and I was like, ‘I mean, I’ve never published a poem before, so maybe I might have a chance.’”

In the weeks after I was sent home from college last Spring, I found myself staring into the mirror hanging on the ivory wall of my kid bedroom, searching for the answers to my childhood, my solitude, my future, my grief – compositions of my identity that could only be realized in an isolated retreat inward, a quarantine. 

Amidst the existentialism of the last six months—conclusions drawn from which oscillate between evolutions and crises—while I’ve often felt lonely, I haven’t been alone. In fact, much of my cohort is navigating a similar path to self-discovery as a result of being forced to surrender our yearnings for the places we’ll go and, instead, return to the places we’re from. In this new reality, I along with many young writers are using the page as a tool for reconciliation. 

One such young writer is Gabe Sherman, a peer who I met in an introductory creative writing course. As a person and a writer, Gabe is thoughtful and deeply sincere – when we were asked to write a piece of creative nonfiction, he wrote about his dad and the Blues. This Fall, Gabe is dedicated to writing – both for our college newspaper and as a music reviewer for The Arts Fuse. However, during this time Gabe is also reshaping his relationship with writing and its freedoms. 

Over the phone, Gabe explained to me that although he began to think of himself as “someone who liked to write” when he left for college, in the years since he’s continued to struggle with what he’s identified as a “self-confidence issue” one which results in equating prestige and audience with good writing. Sometimes, he even disallows himself from being inspired by a novel, remembering “I could never think of that […] I’m not a writing prodigy.” At times, this cycle is responsible for convincing Gabe he’s not a writer, rather just someone who might like to write. 

However, during the past six months – perhaps at his most vulnerable, navigating both a breakup and the death of a friend all from inside a house with his two parents, in a city wrecked by COVID-19 – Gabe has managed to write freely, independent from self-doubt and critique. On our call, he disclosed to me one of these moments: 

“I was feeling shitty and did a very coming of age teen drama thing. I got my drawstring bag and notebook and sat under a tree and just wrote, three or four pages full. I let my brain go […] It felt like the greatest release of uninhibited thought that I had ever had […] It felt nice to write something where I really didn’t care about being true to anything besides the exact moment.” 

It is this indulgence in the personal catharsis of writing during this time that most resonates with me. Gabe and I agree that, outside of escaping prisms of insecurity, reading literature that inspires you is likely the best primer for your own scribblings. At the beginning of quarantine, I read Sally Rooney for the first time, both of her novels, as well as a few of her short stories. Rooney’s world exists far from the fantastical – instead, it’s flush with real people (nuanced, autonomous, young, female characters, to be precise) who endure the feats and pains of their emotional worlds. This focus on the universal complexities of human feelings made me feel like I could be a writer – I too have the lived experience of being a young woman and have, at times – during this time – felt profound pain. There is quite a lot of catharsis in feeling like you can talk, and believing in what you have to say. 

It turns out that Gabe and I had read the same novel, and that he too saw himself reflected in the text, the protagonist’s inner dialogue mirroring that of his own “overactive brain.” I asked Gabe if he too felt the urge to create after reading, to which he replied, “releasing something personal and creative would signify really believing in my writing, and that would be really cool.”

Since the turn of the century, over 7,000 migrants have died on their journey from Mexico to the United States, and thousands more have attempted the crossing with varied success. As immigration becomes increasingly politicized and border control increases across the Southern states, by the president’s orders, many immigrants have stories to tell and lives worth documenting.

At the beginning of this year, novelist Jeanine Cummins published “American Dirt” — a fictional story surrounding a Mexican family who flees north to the United States to avoid the wrath of a drug cartel. But what intended to be a commentary on very real current political issues became an immense controversy. With a plethora of real life experiences, from countless people, past and present, crossing into the country, the novel was deemed untimely, inappropriate, and unrepresentative.

Journalism is about people, it is always human-driven and human-minded. Thinking about politics and human rights — the many lives at risk because of geographic border policies — it’s only right for journalists to share immigrants’ stories, conveying a real truth. Cummins sought to fictionalize an experience without lending readers the power of authenticity that a migrant could share.

Let’s discuss trauma porn and its implications in journalism and advocacy. “American Dirt” reviews accused Cummins of exploiting immigration and inaccurately portraying what illegal immigration looks like — what began as a quest to further her narrative and support Mexican migrants became a breeding ground for misinformation, a disenfranchisement of those she was attempting to uplift.

In terms of social injustice, journalism has a long-standing tradition of advocating for equality. Look at Ida Wells, Jacob Riis, Upton Sinclair, Nellie Bly, and the “muckrakers” who were emboldened by harsh, glaring societal ills, motivated to write and lead audiences to truth. Their work patched holes in the cracks of the political United States, and gave voice to the voiceless.

Journalism, in this case, is always advocacy, because there is always a spotlight on the victim and an unending connection with truth, and that’s powerful. Wells informed readers of rampanent lynchings in the South during Reconstruction. Riis photographed New York City tenement dwellers and their deplorable conditions. Sinclair published a gruesome account of the meat-packing industry in cities across the country and its dangerous policies. And Bly courageously institutionalized herself in a mental hospital to unearth the painful, questionable treatment of patients there.

First-hand accounts are sincere, and many journalists seek to experience these events themselves and live to tell the talel. But what would a journalist do in Cummins’ place? What could change when the subject of the story is in the hands of a stranger, a journalist with the authority to pillage for personal accounts and steal them for a byline? Could that happen?

Cummins committed an act of trauma porn — a phrase becoming more common in the last decade. People become encapsulated by scenes of violence or brutality, and the news media pushes those stories on viewers constantly. This consumption is harmful and addictive. We seek out videos of protests and insurrection, with photos displayed on our social media feed now more than ever.
“American Dirt” proves to us that journalism requires commitment and vigor, and that the world itself requires journalists — why fictionalize a traumatic experience when there are thousands who lived it, thousands who will live and die with their stories without a platform to pass it to. Journalists are responsible for propping up survivors and sharing their stories exactly how those individuals want to be heard. It’s a conversation about honesty and life, not about the violence itself. It’s about people, not trauma.

Art is a manifestation of identity. This is understood in the themes and styles that writers express and readers recognize. Race, culture, gender, desires, ability, geography, and language are all aspects of identity that people gravitate towards when analyzing the communication between writer and reader through the text. This post will analyze four poems in the 365 Collection, and highlight themes that are common among poets living in the South and the Midwest. These poems were randomly selected by looking at the commonplaces in the poets’ biographies before reading the poems. 

Midwest: 

1. “Train Town” by Michael Hill

“Train Town” shares the narrator’s delight in listening to the sounds of the trains traveling because they produce a sense of home. A major theme in this poem is movement; this is expressed through imagery of a train moving through a town and the sounds that it makes. This is interesting because the poem seems to describe the 19th-century movement of westward expansion—an expansion that allowed technological advancements in transportation. It was once important for goods but was later essential for community-building, another theme in this poem. Community is expressed through the description of the people in the town and people who traveled through it. The images of community solidify the interpretation of the Midwest that emphasizes togetherness in order to reach progress. 

2. “Where the Next Meal is” by M. Nasorri Pavone

The narrator in this poem recalls their encounter with an insect that fascinates and frightens them. An important theme of this work dissects humanity and connections to nature. The insect invades the narrator’s space, creating a unity between the human and their environment. Anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss would view that unity as an expression of the human being both a biological being and a cultural being. This connection of identities delineates the ecology of the world including the human even if the human creates spaces to separate themselves from the outside world. The bug that entered the narrator’s space, subsequently touching the narrator’s belongings, bridges this gap between humans and their environment. Another principal theme, similar to the one in “Train Town,” is movement. The bug’s movement through the narrator’s space mirrors the same westward expansion that was evident in the Hill’s poem. 

After observingwork written by authors in the Midwest, common themes of exploration and movement in mid-western poetry are even clearer. Movement may be an influence for these writers because of the historical context behind it or perhaps there is another motivator for writing about movement that has not been explored. 

South: 

1. “Battlefield” by C.L. Butler

The narrator in “Battlefield” uses nature and a critical lens of community to convey their feelings in a war. Nature was addressed in the description of the temperature and the landscape. What this does for the reader is it shows us what a narrator draws attention to in their observations. Their descriptions of the climate seem to oppose the climate of a southern climate. These observations also connect with the secondary theme of community because it affected the way that the narrator viewed community. Their view seems to be empathetic and sorrowful because the members of their community and extended community are in despair. That expression of emotion mirrors the description of the climate. 

2. “This Way or That” by Dan Mallette 

“This Way or That” focuses on a chilling character outside of the narrator who starts a fire. The fire not only sets the scene, but it also used to convey the theme of curiosity. The character outside of the narrator is curious about the movement of the fire, but the narrator is curious of the intentions and actions of the character. This connects to “Battlefield” because it also touches on empathy as the narrator places themselves in a position to share a curiosity with the figure they are not connected to.

What the reader could gather from these poems is that there is a common theme of empathy. That empathy supports the positive stereotypes of people in the south as being hospitable. 

 It is important to consider the multitude of identities that writers bring to art. The consideration of identities helps define what motivates writers to choose themes because their decisions affect the understanding and affectability of art. While the exploration of themes in this post were limited in the number of poems that were analyzed, it is a starting point in understanding the author perspective and its impact on art.