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Alison Stewart: This is All Of It. I'm Alison Stewart. We're wrapping up our National Poetry Month show with words from a celebrated writer, Sandra Cisneros. In one of the final poems in her latest collection, she writes, artistry at 65 convinced, just getting started. The collection titled Woman Without Shame is her First in 28 years. Well, many know Sandra best as a novelist, especially her modern classic, The House on Mango Street.

Sandra Cisneros began her career as a poet studying at the Iowa Writer's Workshop and publishing her chapbook, Bad Boys, before her first novel. Woman Without Shame features poems in English and Spanish. Parts almost read like diary entries with specific dates and locations. There are stories of loves found and lost. The work tackles the politics of the United States where Sandra was born, and Mexico, where she now calls home.

They contain valuable lessons such as life is not worth living without salami. Above all, they celebrate the life of a woman in her 60s who does an end run around every societal expectation. This is part of my conversation with writer Sandra Cisneros about her collection, Woman Without Shame.

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Alison Stewart: Are these poems that you've been collecting over the past couple of decades, or is this recent work?

Sandra Cisneros: Well, I always write poetry, but I usually have a deadline for fiction, so that's what I finish. Like any writer, I finish what is called for first, and I just write poetry for myself behind the scenes when I need to. I never even knew I had these many poems stashed away.

Alison Stewart: When you feel the urge to write a poem, is it in response to something that's happened in your life or something you've observed or just does the spirit hit you when you must write?

Sandra Cisneros: Everybody has the urge to write poetry, they just don't know it. If you're walking down the street and you have a spiritual pebble in your shoe, something someone said, or something you saw that struck you, any way positively or negatively, something that's nagging at you, and you can't quite name it, but you can't keep walking with that little pebble in your shoe, you have to stop and take your heart and bang it around a couple of times till it pops out. Then you say, "That was it." That's what poetry is about. That's about doing some clearing out of your heart.

Alison Stewart: A less spiritual and romantic-level kind of question, what muscles do you get to flex as a writer of poetry, or what different muscles do you use as a writer of poetry than when you're writing novels?

Sandra Cisneros: Well, I'm not so seasoned a novelist as I could say. I am just a novelist. I do everything. I write essays and I write children's books. I generally know that a poem is coming when I don't have the words for it. When it's something blurry, some emotion that's out of focus and it's bothering me if I don't attend it, but I don't know what it is. That usually is a poem.

Alison Stewart: I would love if you would read one of your poems here, the one I picked out. If it's okay, we're going to have you read a couple, It Occurs to Me I Am The Creative/Destructive Goddess.

Sandra Cisneros: Do you have the page number so I don't have to waste your time?

Alison Stewart: Oh, sugar. I should have put a Post-it. Page 25. Thank you.

Sandra Cisneros: Thank you. I don't know my book by heart. It's [unintelligible 00:03:40], [laughter] but this is one that I wanted to write when I felt everybody was bothering me. I had painted my house a Mexican color. People would knock on the door to say, "I like that color," but I needed to write. I felt like posting this. I did not. Here's a poem about everyone bugging you. In pre-conquest Mexico, the Goddess Coatlicue was this furious-looking, spooky goddess made out of big stone column. That's all you need to know.

It Occurs To Me I Am The Creative/Destructive Goddess Coatlicue.

I deserve stones.

Better leave me the hell alone.

I am besieged.

I cannot feed you.

You may not souvenir my bones,

knock on my door, camp, come in,

telephone, take my Polaroid. I’m paranoid,

I tell you. Lárguense. Scram.

Go home.

I am anomaly.

Rare she who can’t stand kids and can’t stand you.

No excellent Cordelia cordiality have I.

No coffee served in tidy cups.

No groceries in the house.

I sleep to excess,

smoke cigars,

drink. Am at my best

wandering undressed,

my fingernails dirty,

my hair a mess.

Terribly sorry,

Madame isn’t feeling well today.

Must Greta Garbo.

Pull an Emily D,

the soul selects her own society

Royal like Rhys's Sargasso Sea

Abiquiu al a O'Keeffe

Throw a Maria Callas.

Shut myself like a shoe.

Christ almighty.

Stand back.

Warning.

Honey, this means you.

Well, it's a lucky thing I didn't put that on my door because people would have gotten the wrong idea. Sometimes when you're creating, that's how you feel.

Alison Stewart: You want to be like Garbo. You want to be alone. Sometimes you just need to be by yourself and let people know that.

Sandra Cisneros: Yes, absolutely. That's why I think the pandemic for writers wasn't a sacrifice. It made us feel guilty that we liked being alone, whereas everyone else was suffering from being alone. Whereas for me, it cleared my calendar. It allowed me to face myself, which is the bravest thing we can do is face ourselves, especially in a poem.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Sandra Cisneros. The name of the Book of Poetry is Woman Without Shame Poems. Woman Without Shame, the first poem is titled T-Dance Provincetown, 1982. You write about going to gay bars and lesbian bars and the difference, and then heading to the beach and going topless even though you might be fined. You write, "I was in training to be a woman without shame, not a shameless woman. [foreign language] Glorious in her skin."

Sandra Cisneros: I wasn't trying to shock people or anything, I just wanted to unchain myself. The only way I could do that was try to go topless in a gay beach where men wouldn't look at me, where I would feel myself and whole and nothing provocative. It was just about undoing a lot of shame I'd been born with.

Alison Stewart: Is there a difference for you between shameless and being without shame or for the person in this poem?

Sandra Cisneros: Yes. I think that we judge a lot people who own their own lives as being shameless rather than being a person without shame. To be shameless is to be judged by someone about not meeting a norm that society sets. I think we also have norms that we need to set for ourselves spiritually and socially and physically, and every which way, in ways that don't offend or hurt anyone, but that liberate ourselves sometimes from collective censure.

For me, as a daughter of a Mexican father and coming up in a very traditional culture, I wanted to do shameless things like become a writer. Now that's pretty shameless, and not get married. I couldn't afford to have children. I didn't want to feel guilty about that. What was shameless for me might not be shameless for you or any of our listeners. It was very personal. I'm still working at it. To me, in my family, we never said I love you. I'm still ashamed to say I love you to the people I love, but I'm in training. I'm only 67. I'm getting started.

Alison Stewart: What does it feel like when you do say I love you after having so many years of being trained not to?

Sandra Cisneros: Oh, it's a little spooky. I have to say it in Spanish, or I have to say, love you. [laughs] I'm working on it, baby steps like I said, but it's just something very hard for me to say in English to the people I care about deeply. I draw a little heart on a card. That means I love you. I'll get there by the time I'm 70, I'm sure.

Alison Stewart: One of the poems you're going to read for us is titled At 50 I Am Surprised To Find I Am In My Splendor.

Sandra Cisneros: Oh, I know where that one is. A lot of these, I wrote and I just threw in a file. I didn't look at them again, something I wrote. I didn't know they were done. I never know if they're done. When I was 50, I wrote this and put it away. I found it when I was putting this book together and I thought, "Oh, this is pretty good. I like it." I think we need to write a poem at every age we are and how we feel. This is at 50 I'm startled to find I am in my splendor.

These days I admit.

I am wide as a tule tree.

My underwear protests.

And yet,

I like myself best

without clothes when

I can admire myself

as God made me, still

divine as a Maja.

Wide as a fertility goddess,

though infertile. I am,

as they say, in decline. Teeth

worn down, eyes burning yellow. A belly bountiful and flesh beneficent I am.

I am silvering in crags of crotch and brow.

Amusing.

I am a spectator at my own sport.

I am Venetian, decaying splendidly.

I'm magnificent beyond measure.

Lady Pompadour roses exploding before death.

Not old.

Correction, aged.

Passé? I am but vintage.

I am a woman of a delightful season.

El Cantarito, little brown jug of la Lotería.

Solid, stout, bottom planted firmly

and without a doubt, filled to the brim, I am.

I said the brim.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Sandra Cisneros. She was reading from her new collection, Woman Without Shame. Were you someone who was always okay with the aging process, or is this something that came to you later?

Sandra Cisneros: I am the happiest on my birthday. I'm never ashamed of what year I am. I would never want to be young again because when you're a woman and you're young, people take advantage of you. I was the most innocent little lamb. I'm still the most innocent person I know. I do and say things like if I was 11 years old. I think that we get lodged in one age, and that's inside us, and people just see the outside years. Like outside I'm 67 and 66, and inside of that 65, 64, all the way to zero. Inside, I'm still a child, and I think I just think that way. I'm never ashamed of my birthdays. I'm very proud, happy. There's no one who likes celebrating their birthday more than me.

Alison Stewart: What is it about, you said, age 11, that really feels right to you?

Sandra Cisneros: I feel like when I was 11 I was invisible. I really felt no one pays attention to little girls. They talk around them and don't see them, or at least the way I looked. Nowadays, girls at 11 look like they're 18, but I looked like I was 9. I just had an invisibility that you get again. When you get older as a woman, you become invisible again, people don't see you, they don't help you, they don't ask if you need help.

Some of that is good because you become a spy and you get to watch everything. Some of it is bad, like no one helps you with your bags when you're getting off a plane or on a train, except other women. I tend to like the invisibility of being my age. It gives me a certain power that I'd forgotten about.

Alison Stewart: I like it. You describe it like an invisibility cloak, like a superpower.

Sandra Cisneros: Yes, like you're a superhero. You become invisible, and you can listen and just spy, just as a writer.

Alison Stewart: Oh, definitely. Observation. That's the best for writers. There's a very powerful poem in the collection called El Hombre, which takes on the current situation in Mexico, and you write about murder and drugs, poverty, poor relations with the US, American supplying weapons. You also write about forgiveness, and love, and interconnection. I'm going to read a little section about, Message from Mexico to the United States of America: When we are safe, you are safe. When you are safe, we are safe. Tell this to your politicians. Mantanos luz. Send us light."

Sandra Cisneros: Yes, because as the great spiritual teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh, quoted, I'm going to just quote him, paraphrase him, "We lost a big opportunity for spiritual connection after 9/11 by not asking the Muslim world, 'How can we make you feel safe?'" We lost an opportunity there of creating bridges of peace, and we still are losing that opportunity because we don't ask anyone, "How can we make you feel safe?" Whether they're our neighbor, or someone across town in another neighborhood, or someone globally, "How can we make you feel safe?" Especially, we don't ask that of people who share our borders south. If we asked each other that, once that other country feels safe, then we are safe.

Alison Stewart: I'd love to get you to read another poem. This one is titled Instructions for My Funeral, and it has a little asterisk that comes with it. If you explain--

Sandra Cisneros: Yes, because the poet, Javier Zamora, who is having a wonderful season with his book, Solito, which I adore, he wrote a poem with the same title, and I didn't know him. I wrote to him, and I said, "When did you write yours? I want you to know I wrote mine without seeing yours." We both have poems with the same title. Instructions for my funeral.

For good measure,

smoke me with copal.

Shroud me in my raggedy rebozo.

No jewelry. Give to friends.

No coffin. Instead petate.

Ignite to "Disco Inferno."

Allow no Christian rituals for this bitch,

but, if you like, you may invite

a homeless dog to sing,

or a witch woman to spit orange water

and chant an Otomí prayer.

Send no ashes north

of the Rio Bravo

on penalty of curse.

I belong here,

under Mexican maguey,

beneath a carved mesquite

bench that says Ni Modo.

Smoke a Havana

Music, Fellini-esque.

Above all, laugh.

And don't forget, spell my name with mezcal.

Alison Stewart: That is All Of It for today. Thank you for being with us. All Of It is produced by Andrea Duncan-Mao, Kate Hinds, Jordan Lauf, Simon Close, Zach Gottehrer-Cohen, L. Malik Anderson, and Luke Green. Katherine St. Martin is our intern. Megan Ryan is the Head of Live Radio. Our engineers are Juliana Fonda and Jason Isaac. Luscious Jackson does our music.

If you missed any segments this week, catch up by listening to our podcast, available on your platform of choice. If you like what you hear, please leave us a great rating. It helps people find the show. I'm Alison Stewart. I appreciate you listening and I appreciate you. I will meet you back here next time.

 

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