Jesse G. Herrera: on poetry
and other happy disasters

By Randy Koch

He walks to the front of the room at El Café del Barrio, stands behind the mike, and faces the small crowd seated on colorful, wooden folding chairs. He wears a black beret with a red National Farm Workers pin attached to it, a dark short-sleeved shirt with a large image of the Virgin of Guadalupe emblazoned across the front, and blue jeans. He has the tree-trunk torso of a truck driver, and he grins back at the audience as he reaches into his back pocket. He pulls out a harmonica, holds it up to his mouth, and squawks out an awkward, high-pitched sound. He smiles again. "Haven’t learned how to play that end," he says and turns the harmonica end for end. He cranks out some blues and holds the last note until his face gets red. Then he stops and pushes the harmonica back in his pocket. "Howdy," he says. "Some call me the dude. Some call me a poet. I like el postino, but I have always been Jesse G. Herrera. Anything you might have heard about me is true. Only the names have been changed to protect the guilty." His voice gets progressively louder, and people’s faces grow dramatically brighter. "You have the right to remain smiling; anything you say may be used in a poem." By now people are grinning, shaking their heads, and laughing, and Jesse has them exactly where he wants them as he blasts into his first poem.
Jesse Herrera, a tractor-trailer driver for UPS, first started writing poetry in 1998. Since then he’s published three chapbooks and is one of the most popular performers at open-mike readings, primarily because his poems and delivery are not what people expect at a poetry reading. He’s read in Denver, Albuquerque, Austin, San Antonio, and the Valley and is regularly invited to read and talk to students at local high schools, LCC, and TAMIU. On a recent Saturday afternoon, he and I sat at a long table in the side room at Espumas, drank iced tea, and talked about writing. Two days earlier he had read to students in a composition class at TAMIU and described how he decided what to do when he walked in the door and stood in front of an audience that didn’t know him and wasn’t anxious to get acquainted with poetry:
Jesse Herrera: It depends on the energy that you feel, man, if they’re ready for it. Sometimes you need to prime them, prepare them for what’s coming. When I read "Those Jeans," the part that I could tell was gonna get them is where it says, "How the hell did she get into those jeans?" And, man, their eyes opened and they start to laugh. Then when they hear the description of the jeans -- "That denim fabric wraps tight around those calves and thighs, like skin on a grape" -- I can see they’re glued. Especially the guys, they’re laughing, man. And the girls are laughing, too. And then I get to the part, "Hail Mary, please don’t erase me from this place." Then, I say it really loud, "Hail gluteus maximus denimus." All the S’s -- "That’s not some far, far away universe." And then I come back at them again -- "Hail gluteus maximus." And they sense this, too, because they’re really laughing, man.
Randy Koch: Right.
JH: I don’t know if it’s a funny poem. I guess that’s the way I’m presenting it.
RK: Sometimes I’ve seen you read, and students don’t realize when you’ve switched from a funny poem to a serious poem. That happened at the Magnet School a little over a year ago. You read a couple of funny poems at the beginning, and then when you got to that serious one, the 9/11 poem --
JH: Yeah, the "Ground Zero" poem --
RK: Yeah, they were still laughing because you presented it in a similar way. Has that happened in other places, too, where you got similar reactions, like you’re reading a serious poem after a funny one, but they don’t realize it’s serious?
JH: When I’m reading the "Son of a Gun" poem, they’re laughing, especially when I get to the father’s part where he says, "Makes C’s and D’s, that’s my son." Then, when it gets to, "He’s brown. He’s white," they’re puzzled, like "What’s happening now?" You know, shocked, but the part where they’re aware that this is not a funny poem any more is where it says, "Son of a gun, Son of a bitch, He’s got a gun! That’s your son!" Then, they’re like, "Wow." "The Son of Man, The End of Man, He’s your son." And then it’s like in music where they stop abruptly. That’s the way that poem ends. And they’re just stunned. They don’t know what to do. That’s good.
RK: Yeah.
JH: I remember that time in San Angelo when I read those three poems in a row. That was so scary, man. They were like that.
RK: They didn’t know how to react?
JH: Well, you could tell, now what do they do? and what do I do? But you took them away, you know what I mean? They literally got blown away, man. That’s the power of the poetry. That’s so powerful, man. It’s like they’re hypnotized, that they were listening, that you could do that. That’s a lot of power, man. These people in San Angelo -- there were students, professors, you know, it’s a university, and they’re like academic dudes. I don’t know the type of poems that had gone before me, but up to that point I hadn’t seen them react like that. The quiet in there was just -- wow -- it was quiet. And when I told Trino [poet Trinidad Sanchez] about that, he said, "That’s how they were applauding -- by their silence." "Yeah, but what do I do, man? How do I bring ’em back? I mean, what if that ever happens again?" That time I didn’t know what to do. The mood was so serious, you know, so I just waited a little bit and let it sink in, and then I think I read a funny poem, a girl-guy poem.
RK: The way you read poetry is unlike the way anybody else locally and probably anywhere else reads poetry. When did that start? Why did you decide to read the way you do?
JH: I can’t help it. I couldn’t read like we’re talking right now. It doesn’t have the same impact.
RK: On the audience or on you?
JH: On me. It’s a thing of power, you know what I mean? Not that I become powerful. It’s the power that comes from the poem, you see. It doesn’t do justice to it if I just read it in a normal way. I can start out reading it like that, but by the end it’s not like that. It’s like a freight train that’s crashed into a wall, like the "Son of a Gun" poem. That’s the way that poem ends and even the funny poems like "Those Jeans" -- I mean, it’s "Hail gluteus maximus!" Man, they’re floored. And it’s the same approach, but the mood is different, you see. And the words are different, and the sounds are different, and the tone is different. But the ending is like a freight train that’s hit a wall, and there’s a disaster.
RK: [Laughs]
JH: There’s a happy disaster, and there’s the disaster of silence. That you are able to reach some part that they didn’t know that they had, too. And that’s the cool thing. That’s what it is right there -- that you took them some place that they didn’t know that they could go and that you didn’t know that you could go. And that’s a very personal thing, and everybody in that room went there for that second or until they come back and start putting on their faces again, these fronts, -- you know what I mean? -- like, "That doesn’t bother me."
RK: Right.
JH: That kind of attitude. But for a second at the end of that poem everybody in that room’s the same. That’s what’s cool. That’s what I feel: that the deliverer is the same as the audience. And no matter how many times I’ve read that poem, I always read it with the same amount of -- I don't know if the word is "enthusiasm." It’s a thing of power.
RK: You do some strange things sometimes just to get people’s attention, to get them to listen, right?
JH: I have to be creative for them to listen because they’re not going to listen if I just get up there and say, "Okay, I’m gonna read ‘Son of a Gun.’" You have to prime them; they have to be set up to do this. It doesn’t take long for people to know you. They don’t have to know you intimately, but they can sense something like, "Well, this is kind of a funny guy, you know. He seems kind of weird. The way he’s playing his harmonica -- I never saw anybody do that before. He says he doesn’t know how to play it." You have them puzzled, and they have all these questions, and you hit them with a poem. So it’s all these things coming at them. And I don’t even really have a plan. It’s just that I know what works, I guess, like a guy that directs a movie. I just have this feeling for what I need to do to get their attention without walking around nude --
RK: [Laughs]
JH: -- without having to go that far.
RK: But how far have you gone? You told me that when you were in Denver you did something you had never done before.
JH: I remember asking Trino, ’cause he introduced me, "Trino, when you get through introducing me, can you put the mike down as low as it’ll go and turn it so it’ll be pointing down?" He didn’t know what I was gonna do. So he said, "Okay, if that’s what you want." So he introduces me, and as I’m walking up there, he’s putting it down, just like I asked him. And I get up there and smile and put my poems on this bench and get my harmonica out, sit down, lay down, and then I’m on the floor looking up. And then I said, "I really feel stupid. Oh man, I don’t know what I’m doing. I really don’t know." And then I just started playing the harmonica as if I was standing up. And later on they told me that people were like, "Where did he go?" They were like that [he stands and stretches as if trying to see], you know, trying, "What is he doing?" [Laughs] You see, that’s what you gotta do.
It has to do with the unexpected, that’s the way I have to be, or that’s the way I choose to be when I present my poems. The readings are never the same. The people are different all the time, but they will respond. The destination is going to be the same, man. You know, you guys are all different, but when we get through, something’s gonna happen to you. And I don’t tell ’em ’cause you can’t. You show ’em. You take ’em and just blow ’em away.
RK: So you try to give the audience an experience as opposed to giving them the poem. But what are you hoping they understand or have experienced about poetry when you finish reading?
JH: I like what Trino told me a long time ago. He said, "With me just telling you that you can do it, that you’re a good writer, that I like your poems, I am empowering you." And that’s what I like to do, empower people to see that poetry is accessible, that you can do it. Write your poem. There’s some things that you need to learn if you’re going to read your poem in front of people. But don’t try to do it like me. This is my experience. I was talking with Carlos [Flores, local novelist and English professor] yesterday, and I don’t know what he asked me. I think it was something about drinking. I told him, "Sometimes I get this crazy idea, Carlos, that when I can’t write or nothing’s happening I think maybe I need to live my life like Charles Bukowski, you know, drinking and having women and all these things." But then I told him, "That’s an insane thought for me because I don’t need to be under the influence to write. If I wanted to live my life like Charles Bukowski, I would probably be more concerned with finding my next drink than writing a poem. Or the stuff that I would write wouldn’t be worth a crap. It’s under the influence. It’s a fake thing, you know, thinking that you’re this real deep dude, and the thing is, man, there’s only one Charles Bukowski, and that guy’s dead. There’s only one Jesse Herrera. This is my experience, my relationship. I have to go through it. It’s my life, man."
RK: I was looking again at some of your poems, and questions often appear, but you don’t always answer them. Why are there so many questions in your poems?
JH: Because I have a lot of questions. I like that. And the answer’s not important. The answer’s right here [points to himself]. The answer’s not over there. The answer’s here. It doesn’t come to you right away, but that doesn’t mean you aren’t gonna get an answer. You just wait. Do the next right thing. Hang on, you know.
RK: If you don’t have answers, why are the questions important?
JH: If I knew the answer, I would still keep asking, "Why?" As a little kid, you just say, "Why? Why is the world round?" "That’s just the way God made it." "But why? Why did He make it round?" "I don’t know. That’s the way God does things. There are eight other planets that are round, too." "But why are they round? How come there’s no square ones?" In doing that, in asking questions, you get to poems. You see what I mean? Why? and why? and why? and you keep asking why? and you’ll get to something that you hadn’t thought of before, that sounds pretty good. I like the craziness of that, man.
RK: One of the poems that got you started is Carolyn Forche’s "The Colonel," which is a very serious poem. You’ve written some political poems, too, but there’s such a contrast between that poem and the crazy ones that you often write. What happened between where you started and where you ended up?
JH: I like that poem because it has to do with what was going on or what is still going on so close to us, and we’re not even aware of it. This happened in El Salvador in 1978, and that stuff happens in Mexico all the time. I’ve seen houses like that in Mexico with the walls and the glass on the ledge. I’ve seen them. They break Coke bottles, and they put ’em up there like that. The jagged edges of the Coke bottle are pointing up. You can’t go over that wall ’cause you’re gonna get cut. They don’t want you to cross that wall. That poem says a lot, things like that -- they don’t want you to cross that wall. Just talking to you right now, I can see that there’s more things said in it than are said. I think that’s when I could sense it.
RK: You often told me that you want to keep a poem to one page. Can you talk about that, why you made that decision and to what degree you stuck to that?
JH: I wish I could write shorter poems.
RK: Shorter than a page?
JH: Well, I don’t know. Sometimes my poems take up a whole page, and I wish that I could be more concise. But maybe that’s not my style. Maybe that’s just not the way I am. I guess like you said a long time ago, for free verse the poet determines how long the poem is gonna be and the form of it, and I guess that would be my form -- sticking to one page. If it goes any further than that, I need to do some more work.
RK: The only time you wrote in forms was when I required it in creative writing classes. You’ve spent considerably more time in free verse. Talk about why you made that choice.
JH: Well, the first poem I wrote was that sonnet, "Lady Clairol." To me, to try to write a free verse poem was too simple. You know, you can’t just write a poem like that. It took me a long time to stay writing in the forms -- all the way to about August of ’98. August was about the last sonnet, and after that, in September, "I Ain’t Got No Period" was the last form I wrote. It’s pretty loosely based on a pantoum because the lines repeat, repeat. But that was the last one because I needed to say what I needed to say, and forms, like sonnets, are like tools, but I couldn’t use them anymore. And for what I wanted to do I needed to use my voice. I needed to hear myself, and I could not really hear myself with the sonnets that I was writing. Well, there’s the McDonald’s poem, and people --
RK: People love that one.
JH: And they liked things up to that, but I didn’t change for the audience. I changed because I got to the point where I needed to write. And another thing that affected me, too, was going and hearing other people and seeing that they weren’t using forms. When I’d go down to the Valley, to [the] Millenium [Bookstore], and read there, they liked what I had, but I started to hear what other people were writing, and they weren’t using forms. They were writing free verse. I guess it was just time to change, and I needed to use my voice, I needed to see what was going to happen if I wrote a real free verse poem.
RK: To see what would happen? To the audience?
JH: To see if they would respond. Yeah, because up to that point it was just sonnets, and I guess I felt safe because these things were tried and tested. I mean, you just use a form, but it’s hard writing in forms, and the thing is you can’t really say what you want to say. You can, but it doesn’t sound like you want to say it, so that’s another reason. I’m gonna leave the forms and see what happens. If it doesn’t work, well then I’ll go back to the forms, but the way that I’ve done it has worked. I guess it’s my presentation, that dimension they didn’t expect.
RK: You send your poems out on occasion, but you don’t do it very often. I don’t know if you’ve done it recently --
JH: [Laughs] It’s a waste of my time. I admire you for doing it. You got a lot of patience, man. You’d be a good POW. You’d probably be there writing on the walls, man, writing a novel on a brick or something.
[Laughter]
RK: Tell me about trying to publish. You’ve done it on occasion, but I’ve also seen your reaction to it. Just explain why you don’t waste your time on it anymore.
JH: I guess I’m a Las Vegas kind of guy, man. I’m waiting to hit the jackpot, man. Somebody’s gonna come up to me and say, "That’s some kick-ass stuff, man. I’m gonna publish it." I guess that’s the insane idea that I have. It’s like my poem "Why Do I Write?" When I sent off the stuff for the CD [to Calaca Press for their third Raza Spoken Here CD], that blew me away. I was very disappointed when that didn’t happen. I felt like not writing anymore. But when that happened -- nothing happens for nothing -- that made me look at "Well, why do you write?" I’m not writing to get published or to be famous. I write because it’s crazy, because it’s a passion I have no control over, because I like the reaction of the audience. I like to see them uneasy.
RK: Do you have goals -- do you want to go beyond Laredo and the border, or are you content living here and writing and reading on occasion at schools, at local readings? Is that enough or do you see yourself doing more than that?
JH: I have ambitions to gain more notoriety.
RK: [Laughs]
JH: I like that word. I would like to be more notorious, but that’s not why I write. When that happens, that’ll happen. It just has to do with "Do the next right thing." These times that I’ve been rejected or my work has not been accepted or I didn’t get to be part of the CD, that’s not why I write, but those negative things help me to see that that’s not my goal. If that was my goal, I would have already stopped writing. I guess I’m just lazy. But I would like to have all my poems published, like an anthology, at least those first three chapbooks -- maybe all those poems don’t need to be published, but a good majority of them could be. That would be my goal -- to get my work published as a book. Maybe I’m just playing it safe. Maybe I’m just protecting myself, man, ’cause I’m a sensitive guy.
RK: So put them all together in one collection, in one book.
JH: And that one collection would be the one that I would hope that someone would publish. But if somebody publishes it, they’re gonna be selling it for a lot of bread, and I’d rather do it myself and people buy it for five and get their hands on it than have it published for twenty and nobody would buy it. That’d be a drag.
RK: What do you think is your best poem? Or do you have a favorite?
JH: I don’t know. I like them all. I like that poem "You Are..." and the McDonald’s poem. I like the "Why Do I Write?" I like the "Sensitive Guy." I guess I like "Those Jeans" the best. I can’t remember when I wrote that poem. I think it was right before I went to Albuquerque. It must’ve been December of ’98.
RK: About four or five years ago when you were writing your first few poems, we talked about them, and you asked, at least on occasion, first, "Is this a poem?" But that often led to another question: "Am I a poet?" And we talked about that, but I’m wondering, "In your eyes, are you a poet now?"
JH: I like when people identify me as a poet, but I guess I would not say, "I am a poet." I would rather you or somebody else say that. It’s just that the poems are more important than me because the beauty of poetry or any work of art, if it has any substance, any worth, is like the stupid cliché -- the test of time -- because some of those poems that I wrote in the beginning are just as effective today as they were then. They don’t lose their power. But as far as me calling myself a poet, I’d rather somebody else do that, man. I remember that time when I read in Denver, and Trino said, "Man, they never did that for me," the way they applauded and asked me to come back and do another poem. He said, "They didn’t do it for these other two guys that came down and are nationally known. They didn’t do it for them, man." Maybe it’s just the way I am, and I think it’s a good way to be. I got a big ego, man, and if I don’t watch out, you know. . . . And that’s good that I get these negative things back sometimes because if something is going to happen, it’s going to happen. Just be cool. Don’t stop writing. It’s a very powerful experience, you know, and I don’t know how to tell you that without sounding like a dictator, a power-hungry person. It’s power in a good way, to have that ability that people will give you their time, and by the time it’s over, they weren’t disappointed. And that’s cool, man, that I always give ’em the deluxe, man, and I don’t hold back.
[Laughter]
JH: And I don’t hold back. They’re gonna get the same, too. Everybody’s equal, and it’s a democracy of poetry.
RK: One other thing -- we’re down here on the border, a long ways from the rest of the country. Has living on the border affected what you do, what you write?
JH: I think it’s important to be here because sometimes I get an idea, like maybe I should go live in New York or in LA and find out that experience. But this is my experience, this is where I am. I’m not gonna say I’m an expert about here, and I’m not gonna write poems just because I live here. I write poems because it’s what it tells me to do, man. Not like there’s a little man or something like that -- some evil thing, an angelic thing. It’s just the thing that says, "I think I can do this." There’s not been a lot of things that I’ve been able to do right in my life, and when I see the way the audience responds, I think I’ve done something right, that they weren’t disappointed. And that’s good. It’s just good.

(Randy Koch teaches English and directs the Writing Center at Texas A&M International University.)