Can poetry reveal truths that change our past?
"I don’t lie...I just propose there might be more to something than what meets the eye." — MICAELA CAMACHO-TENREIRO, Poet of the Week
The inaugural $3600 ONLY POEMS PRIZE is open! Submit here.
Micaela Camacho-Tenreiro is a Venezuelan-American poet, dancer, and translator. Her work appears in the American Poetry Review and has been featured by Brooklyn Poets. She received a 2023 Finalist award from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts and holds a B.A. in Hispanic Studies from Brown University.
Meditations in an Emergency
after Frank O’Hara and June 24, 2022 It’s a beautiful day to be terrified, don’t you think? Everything outside looks more alive than usual. This morning, with the bird songs, people with ovaries call out to their own kind. They gather bluebells, poppies, daisies and baby’s breath - flowers that are equally beautiful in life and death. Am I the asshole for hating straight women who wish that they were gay? Or a hypocrite who secretly knows queerness is convenient, too. From the pendulum of my desire, honey drips like rays of sun. My hands are two insects in the resin of their lusts. Can we call it a shotgun wedding if what we’re expecting is an overruling? Where men make babies, I make music — deep in the bells of her body. Every longing takes its toll. Dear straight women, the terror will always lie in acting on what you want — it never matters what you want. *An earlier version of this poem appeared, in print, in the American Poetry Review (Vol. 52, No. 5, September/October 2023).
In my poems, I think I live at the edge of honesty. I don’t ever lie per se — I just propose that there might be more to something than what meets the eye.
I guess I tell stories about myself and about the world that can’t necessarily be proven. We don’t always need evidence to believe in something, anyway, which I think is simultaneously beautiful and scary.
…
Poetry gives me the space to experiment with new perspectives. Changing how I remember the past feels like a way in which I can change the past itself. A lot of it goes over my head, but I’m obsessed with the work of feminist physicist Karen Barad, who argues that the past — much like the future — is, on a quantum level, always being reworked. The idea moves me because, after all, my first touchpoint with my own history is memory, which is indeed fluid. If my understanding of the past shifts, then maybe its impact on me will shift, too.
Can poetry reveal truths that change our past?
You can catch up on some of the answers to last week’s question here:
This week, inspired by Micaela Camacho-Tenreiro’s interview, we invite you to reflect on whether poetry can reveal truths that alter our perception of the past, blending the universal with the deeply personal. Have you ever encountered a poem that changed how you view a past event or memory
Yes! Note the Tulsa Riot was rightfully re-named the Tulsa Massacre.
It brings a greater understanding of our past. It brought clarity to mine.