Episode #048 Emplumada - Lorna Dee Cervantes

In this episode, Connor and Jack explore an the poem “Emplumada,” by Lorna Dee Cervantes. They discuss the poem’s ending, its ambiguity and beauty; how the poem might fit into a three-act structure; the poem’s negotiation with an oppressive history; the poem’s tonal distance between quiet and intensity; and, finally, hummingbirds and their possible mating practices?

Read the poem below or here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/50119/emplumada

More on Cervantes: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/lorna-dee-cervantes

Check out Cervantes’ collection, Emplumada, where this poem comes from: https://www.upress.pitt.edu/BookDetails.aspx?bookId=34371

Check out the referenced interview with Cervantes: http://opencourses.uoa.gr/modules/document/file.php/ENL9/Instructional%20Package/Texts//Readings/Chicana%20Movement-%20Further%20Reading/An%20Interview%20with%20Lorna%20Dee%20Cervantes.pdf

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Emplumada

by Lorna Dee Cervantes

When summer ended

the leaves of snapdragons withered

taking their shrill-colored mouths with them.

They were still, so quiet. They were

violet where umber now is. She hated

and she hated to see

them go. Flowers

born when the weather was good - this

she thinks of, watching the branch of peaches

daring their ways above the fence, and further,

two hummingbirds, hovering, stuck to each other,

arcing their bodies in grim determination

to find what is good, what is

given them to find. These are warriors

distancing themselves from history.

They find peace

in the way they contain the wind

and are gone.