Literary El Paso

Benjamin Alire S

488 Benjamin Alire Sáenz Benjamin Alire Sáenz was born in the small farming village of Old Picacho outside of Las Cruces, New Mexico. He received a B.A. in humanities and philosophy from St. Thomas Seminary in Denver, Colorado, and an M.A. in theology at the University of Louvain in Louvain, Belgium. He earned an M.A. degree in creative writing from the University of Texas at El Paso and continued his studies at the University of Iowa on a fellowship. While at Iowa, he was awarded a Wallace E. Stegner fellowship in poetry from Stanford University, where he continued his coursework toward his Ph.D. in English and American literature. During his time at Stanford, Sáenz completed his first book of poetry, Calendar of Dust, which won the 1992 American Book Award. Sáenz returned to the border and began teaching in the bilingual M.F.A.program at the University of Texas at El Paso. He is the author of the critically acclaimed novels Carry Me Like Water, which was translated into Dutch and German; The House of Forgetting, translated into French and German; In Perfect Light; and Names on a Map. Sáenz is also the author of the poetry collections Dark and Perfect Angels; Elegies in Blue; and Dreaming the End of War. The young adult novel Sammy and Juliana in Hollywood won the Americas Book award, the Patterson Book Prize, the J. Hunt Award, was named one of the top ten books of the year in 2004 by the American Library Association, and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize of 2005 for the Best Book for Young Adults. He Forgot to Say Goodbye is another of Sáenz’s young adult titles. He is also the author of three bilingual children’s books, A Gift from Papa Diego; A Perfect Season for Dreaming; and Grandma Fina and Her Wonderful Umbrellas, recipient of the Texas Institute of Letters award for the best children’s book of 1999. He is the recipient of a Lannan Poetry Fellowship and is currently a professor in English and creative writing at the University of Texas at El Paso. 489 From Elegies in Blue: Poems: Elegy for Burciaga (Written in an undocumented language) O yes, Burciaga, fijate que I was listening to 93.9 “Caliente” and I thought of you. Porque las voces en ese radio station comienzan a decir algo en español and all of a sudden they’re speaking in English and, hombre, que te cuento, dicen unas cosas that would drive any monolingual person to question the meaning of language. Tanto a los Gringos como a esos Mexicanos orgullosos que también nos odian because we’re such pochos and have no real appreciation for the structure, beauty and grammatical nuances of the Spanish language. Nos tiran unas miradas como fueran balasos. So nice to be hated by both sides. Bueno, la Chicanada’s used to this.¿Y sabes qué? We may need papers to cross the river, but la cosa es que we don’t need papers to talk. And that’s a good thing, because if we needed papers to talk, the Migra would never give us those papers and the barrio would be as quiet as a twelfth century monastery which the gringos and the Republicans would like, because even though they love our food, chiles rellenos, enchiladas, arroz con pollo, they’re not so sure about the people who make it. It’s funny¿verdad? They like to name streets in Spanish, “Vista del Sol” y “Calle de Sueños” y que sé yo—no the moral is, it’s okay to have a Mexican surname if you’re a street. But if you’re a person, bueno, maybe that’s not so okay. Pero, tu ya sabes estas cosas and you’re resting now. You’ve earned your rest, I know. You were so tired before you left us. And I hate to bother you. Pero, hermano, your door was always open. And you and Cecilia, you were always muy listos para recibir a cualquiera que les caía alli en Casa Zapata. And I don’t forget. Bueno, I lock myself out of the house, because I forget the keys, and I forget where I’m going sometimes when I’m driving down the freeway. And I forget English Department meetings all the time. But, Burciaga, you, I don’t forget. Oyes, when...