EVERY DAY WE GET MORE ILLEGAL
BY JUAN FELIPE HERRERA
City Lights Publishers
America We Talk About
It
Summer Journals – August 8, 2017
....I had to gain, pebble by pebble, seashell by seashell, the
Courage to listen to
my self. My true inner self. For that I had to
Push you aside. It was
not easy I had pushed aside my mother
My father my self in
that artificial stairway of becoming you to
Be inside of you –
after years I realized perhaps too late there
Was no way I could
bring them back I could not rewind the
Clock. But I did – I could
do one thing. I could care. Now we
--are here. –Juan Felipe
Herrera
Passionate. Insightful. Unforgettable.
The Wanderer. For two years, U.S. Poet Laureate Juan Felipe Herrera traveled the nation observing, reflecting, and recording.
Summary: In his new collection of poems, EVERY DAY WE GET MORE ILLEGAL, Juan Felipe reports back on his travels through contemporary America. Poems written in the heat of witness, and later, in quiet moments of reflection, coalesce into an urgent, trenchant, and yet hope-filled portrait. The struggle and pain of those pushed to the edges, the shootings and assaults and injustices of our streets, the lethal border game that separates and divides, and then: a shift of register, a leap for peace and a view onto the possibility of unity.
About the
Author: The son of migrant farm
workers, Juan Felipe Herrera was educated at UCLA and Stanford University, and
he earned his MFA from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. His numerous
poetry collections include 187 Reasons Mexicanos Can’t Cross
the Border: Undocuments 1971-2007, Half of the World in Light: New
and Selected Poems (2008), and Border-Crosser with a
Lamborghini Dream (1999). In addition to publishing more than
a dozen collections of poetry, Herrera has written short stories, young adult
novels, and children’s literature. His most recent works for young people include
Imagine (2018) and Jabberwalking (2018). In 2015, Herrera was named Poet
Laureate of the United States, for which he launched the project La Casa de
Colores, which invites citizens to contribute to an epic
poem. Herrera is Professor Emeritus at California State University, Fresno and
UC Riverside. He also holds honorary degrees from California State University,
Fresno, Skidmore College, and Oregon State University. He served as a Chancellor
of the Academy of American Poets from 2011 to 2016.