Could a book really save a life? Poet Aaron Abeyta is living proof. In this episode of Emerging Form, part of our miniseries about creativity and COVID-19, we talk with him about how Truman Capote helped transform him from trying to get kicked out of school to being the MFA Poetry Director at Western Colorado University. We also talk about his work as mayor in Antonito, Colorado, and how the pandemic is affecting the small town. We talk about his goal to give voice to others who don’t have one, how Pablo Neruda inspired him to be both poetic and political, and how a story from the Bible has helped guide him in the most difficult times.
Show notes:
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
Antonito, Colorado
untitled or breathing in a time of covid
--aaron a. abeyta
dust veils the valley like dust in spring
every day wind
every day this place a personification
of ache aching that is a falling
from this horizon into another
poverty does not create character
this the myth of some false
lying book whose mirrors do not
shine back at us nor for us
in a denver hospital Robert Limon cleaves
at life this breath then another
breath his lonely isolation
the machine a dire metronome
perhaps one day we will
all point back to this isolation
the aloneness that wrought this line
or that line into air and by air
i mean human hearts this is a prayer
for change for life and breath
for loved ones to recover to breathe
without laboring or without thought
i am reading Auden cross of the moment
he does not include in his collected the line
we must love one another or die the poem
absent altogether this wind
isn’t a lie what seems broken is
lies are less expensive
than anything we have saved
here among our hats and buttons
gathered then shelved toward what we
know will always come for us
we survive our ancestors have made it so
their voices you hear them too
they ring of fidelity live
endure be persist return
breathe yes fill your lungs
let the wind breathe may dust
swing from cottonwoods to water
to meadow may we be
lifted from our veils all of them
let too the broken
those walking toward home
in their swollen and inebriated day
may they too here in this isolation
serve as an aspect of truth
why did he write these lines
he wrote them in isolation
in the days where the dead multiplied
beyond the wars of books and story
the dead the dying the swollen
the broken and the barely breathing
they are a form of truth the living
ache of this place yes
the wind too brief breaths
that fluttered then flew
as if being alone was a
breath which formed itself
out of our requisite and stored faith
into song
Episode 22: Aaron Abeyta on small town life during the pandemic