Podraig Toma (0:00)

Hi friends, Podraig here. I hope you've been enjoying season nine of Poetry Unbound. We're going to take a break for the rest of the year, so our next episode after today's will be on Monday, January 13th. Something slightly different for the rest of the season is that we're only going to be releasing episodes on Monday, so we're with you until early March. Every Monday onto today's episode. My name is Padre Go Toma and I spend a fair amount of my time doing workshops with groups of people where we look at a poem or we write poems together. And sometimes it happens where we look at a poem and somebody, seamlessly, without any sense of self consciousness, moves from speaking about the poem into speaking about their own life. The poem changes or invites or opens something up, unfolds some dynamic of themself, and suddenly they have changed that poem too, because the poem has been desiring somebody to read it like that, not the original author, but this stranger who's come to it and is reading themselves in companionship with the po Inheritance by Diego Baez when my child came into this world, she didn't rock mine or turn it upside down, but flipped it inside out. It felt not like a burning fire but like a new chamber opening in my heart, a fourth dimension unbending between sternum and spine. Surely it had lived there all along, huddled with the Spanish I hadn't spoken in ages. Before I was born, my father bought a 57 Chevy, bright green gas cap. Inside, one silver tail fin ran like shit, poured smoke, no seatbelts. My father drove me home from hospital in that thing. We sideswiped another car on Camelback Bridge in normal. Years later, I never learn which party was drunk driving. I imagine my Spanish is like that green Chevy, busted, barely runs, a rickety gift. But that doesn't mean it's not mine to share. At first, simple whispers suffice, words for love en guarani y espanol. How those early endless hours, then days and weeks balloon uninvited to encompass the story I tell myself of her genus, the way a point turns to line, a line to surface, surface to volume, until all that's left is time, that first long year when we moved so seldom estacionados and la mesadora. Like a landslide, these evening rocks roll into crawling, a crawl to first steps, her carriage precarious, until the wild grinning child turns to run and I see her already moving through timelines I no longer recognize an anchor point or past tangent. I'm already a bystander in the green blaze of her ascendant arc. She has changed so much, so much of me already. She fills space and grows and will not stop growing. God willing, with hope, Hashem, she'll continue to move in pursuit of her futures, not anyone in pursu particular, but all of them simultaneously unfolding like tesseracts outside the quickly shrinking cage of a father's captive heart. Because wasn't it just yesterday her breath first rounded into syllables, syllabus into word and words into song, Was it not just yesterday she fit inside the makeshift cradle of my arms, not yet so far removed from this vast world she'd cracked wide open, it's certain only to quicken. I see her climb into that bright green Bel Air, destined to face whatever fate alights, to swerve away or embrace, to box, to bridge the distance between her now and future self, to mind the road for other lives unwinding. Of course, all this unfolds in the time it takes to fall asleep, to sway in the morning sun after a restless night, her head on my shoulder, something with rhythm on the radio. I imagine if there's an afterlife worth living for, it's probably this. Just like this, forever. This is a beautiful poem by Diego Baez that is a love poem, really, to his daughter. It is held together by a few images, that terrible green car that his father bought, that he's not entirely sure how it runs and how it got through. But then that green car becomes a metaphor for speaking about his own daughter's journey through life. She's asleep. It's been a restless night. He's rocking her, there's some rhythm on the radio, but he's also thinking about the time when his daughter will go future into a life that he will find strange, or that he may not be part of. Diego Baez has clearly heard the story of him coming home from the hospital as a newborn, from some adult that was around there, and the story of that car and the story of the accident and not being entirely sure who was drunk. And later on, what we hear is that while he's holding his daughter, he's also clear that there's going to be a story about herself that she'll tell, some of which he might contribute but he won't be in complete control of. At first, simple whispers suffice, words for love in Guarani y Espanol, how those early, endless hours, then days and weeks balloon uninvited to encompass the story I tell myself of her Genesis. He's kind of highlighting that simple words are Good at the start, but words are going to evolve. A person is going to have the capacity to narrate their own past, to narrate their own genesis, to have their own point of view. She's grown up already, even though she's just been born. Born. The first time I had a friend who became a father, I was 20. And he said to me, the day she was born, I began freaking out because I realized I wouldn't be able to pay for her further education. She's finished her further education now. I'm assuming they figured it all out. But there's a sense that things change, of course, when you become a parent. But time changes too. The way that you think of the function of time, the purpose of time, and also the centrality of time. So it isn't only that time moves fast or slow. And of course, when you've got a newborn, time moves both fast and slow. But it's also that your experience of time, your deep engagement with time, the way that you think about your end and the way that you dream about the life that your kids will live after you're gone, that also changes. So it isn't only that circumstances change. Becoming a parent means that your disposition on the world and on temporal activity and on life and death changes. I don't think it's only becoming a parent that does that. I think any huge way within which we attach one life to another can create that. But certainly it's something you hear all the time from people who've become parents that their world turned inside out. And Diego Baez speaks about this so beautifully at the beginning of the poem. But these negations. When my child came into this world, she didn't rock mine or turn it upside down, but flipped it inside out. It felt not like a burning fire. There's a negation again, but like a new chamber opening in my heart, a fourth dimension unbending between sternum and spine. This is the prefiguring, in a certain sense, of the tesseract that is mentioned deliberately toward the end of the poem. And I did have to look this up. A tesseract is a four dimensional hypercube. And you find it in all kinds of references in mathematics and literature and video games. Salvador Dali used the shape of for his image of the crucifixion. And in Thor it holds the Infinity Stone that allows interdimensional travel. And in all of them, the tesseract contains some kind of unfolding, some place where entering and leaving occurs simultaneously. Something where time falls in on itself. And you can see past, present and future altogether being held. This poem is so much about containers, you know, the world, the container of us all. It was flipped inside out at the birth of his daughter. And then the heart, you know, he describes it as a new chamber opening in my heart. A fourth dimension. There's the 57 Chevy. There's language as well. Words for love and Guarani y Espanol. And then there's the story that he tells himself for Genesis. And he goes back to talking about his own heart too. And there's pain in his prediction of the fact that he's got a daughter whose very purpose in life is to outgrow being a child and to grow into an adult. The quickly shrinking cage of a father's captive heart. What gorgeous language there. And what painful and beautiful and musical language that he holds together. Time changes early endless hours and days and weeks. And then the rocking chair. Estacionados en la mesodora. Stationed in the rocking. There is a rocking chair that holds you and you're stationed in it, but you're also moving. The child is going from crawling to running to driving to going into a future that he won't comprehend. And then his own body too. He's looking at how his experience of his own body has been changed. Was it not just yesterday she fit inside the makeshift cradle of my arms? And then lastly, the question of the afterlife. The container of the afterlife. Maybe for some that's a container for hope. But he is not looking to the future now. Ironically, in a poem that is thinking all about the future, he's thinking that perfection would be to return to this moment. It's probably this. Just like this forever. A beautiful poem that looks at how a container is holding so much more than itself that you can go deeper and deeper and deeper into it. That the container will change. And also that there's something eternal by being present in the particular moment. Diego Baez's poetry explores Paraguayan American experience enormously and the history of Paraguay. From indigenous language Guarani, his father's Guaranee speaker. And thinking about how he is American and Paraguayan and speaks some Guaranee, but not as much as other people. The containers about how it is that identity says who we are and not. And the changing nature of that is evident throughout this poem too. Again, like one of those four dimensional hypercubes that keeps on changing and changing. The title of this poem by Diego Baez, inheritance, makes us wonder. Whose inheritance is he talking about? The inheritance that he has from his own childhood, the inheritance of language from his parents background and the various places his parents are from the inheritance that his children will have. Is it a sense of self? Is it a sense of wanting to change? Is it a terrible car that runs like shit? It's all of those things, limitations, the complications, the beauties. What is so interesting is that there is so much resistance in this poem to the idea that things stay static. They don't. There is the dream, of course, the fantasy that the afterlife could be the static moment of this beautiful calm morning with rhythm on the radio. But of course he knows that that's not going to be the way. Of course he knows. He both longs for, and in a certain sense has some anxiety too, about the future that is unfolding before him and his beloved daughter. Inheritance by Diego Baez when my child came into this world, she didn't rock mine or turn it upside down, but flipped it inside out. It felt not like a burning fire but like a new chamber opening in my heart, a fourth dimension unbending between sternum and spine. Surely it had lived there all along, huddled with the Spanish I hadn't spoken in ages. Before I was born, my father bought a 57 Chevy, bright green gas cap inside, one silver tail fin ran like shit, poured smoke, no seatbelts. My father drove me home from hospital in that thing. We sideswiped another car on Camelback Bridge in normal. Years later, I never learn which party was drunk driving. I imagine my Spanish is like that green Chevy, busted, barely runs, a rickety gift. But that doesn't mean it's not mine to share. At first, simple whispers suffice, words for love in guarani y espanol, how those early endless hours, then days and weeks, balloon uninvited to encompass the story I tell myself of her Genesis, the way a point turns to line, a line to surface, surface to volume, until all that's left is time, that first long year when we moved so seldom estacionados in La Mesadora. Like a landslide those evening rocks roll into crawling, a crawl to first steps, her carriage precarious until the wild grinning child turns to run and I see her already moving through timelines I no longer recognize an anchor point or past tangent. I am already a bystander in the green blaze of her ascendant arc. She has changed so much, so much of me already. She fills space and grows and will not stop growing. God willing, with hope, hashem, she'll continue to move in pursuit of her futures, not anyone in particular, but all of them simultaneously unfolding like tesseracts outside the quickly shrinking cage of a father's captive heart. Because wasn't it just yesterday her breath first rounded into syllables, syllabus into word and words into song, Was it not just yesterday she fit inside the makeshift cradle of my arms, not yet so far removed from this vast world she'd cracked wide open, it's certain only to quicken. I see her climb into that bright green Bel Air, destined to face whatever fate alights, to swerve away or embrace, to box, to bridge the distance between her now and future self, to mind the road for other lives unwinding. Of course, all this unfolds in the time it takes to fall asleep, to sway in the morning sun after a restless night, her head on my shoulder, something with rhythm on the radio. I imagine if there's an afterlife worth living for, it's probably this. Just like this forever.