What if the cards in a game of chance–la lotería–came alive? A traditional game of chance popular in Mexico and in Mexican American culture, lotería is poetically rendered in Esteban Rodríguez’s eighth collection, with each poem revolving around one of its fifty-four cards. The cards range from el gallo (“The rooster”) to la rana (“the frog”) and include terse descriptions like “The hand of a criminal” for La mano (“the hand”) or “The street lamp of lovers” for La luna (“The moon”). Indeed, “how could you not personify” the emotions symbolized by these cards?
Lotería by Esteban Rodriguez brings these cards to life through personifications-the indifferent moon, the scorching sun, “la pera” (“the pear”) that makes your mother’s front tooth crack-that constitute a vision of yearning, mourning, and resilience. He imagines seeing anew: his parents struggling with perpetual work, his family sharing tall-tales over dinner, and the hope with which they dashed across the desert expanse into this country, where God is prone “to make what [you] owned disappear”?
Beneath the destruction of “what you thought you’d always love” is Rodríguez’s firm faith “that someone would create a story/ around it, that its myth would make anyone/ proud to call this place home.”
Esteban Rodríguez is the author of eight poetry collections, most recently Lotería (Texas Review Press 2023), and the essay collection Before the Earth Devours Us (Split/Lip Press 2021). He is the interviews editor for the EcoTheo Review, senior book review editor for Tupelo Quarterly, and associate poetry editor for AGNI. He lives in south Texas.
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Tiffany Troy: How does the opening poem “El diablito” set the reader up for what follows? You begin “When you imagine your father/ in the desert.” How does this retelling of a father’s story, and the recognition that the retelling is just the speaker’s version of his father’s story, in this reimagined desert (both real and surreal) ground the stories that unfold across Lotería?
ER: Tiffany, thank you immensely for your time. So glad to be speaking with you. Even before I had completed the poems for Lotería, I knew that I wanted “El diablito” to be the first poem in the collection. It was surreal and provocative, and I wanted it to form the basis of what you point out is this retelling of narratives that bridge the real and the imagined together. The narrator has limited knowledge of his parents’ crossing from Mexico to the United States, and who they were before their lives in the States is shrouded in mystery. So, like any curious child, he invents narratives to fill in the gaps. I thought, what better way to show the danger and absurdity of his father’s border crossing than imagining that the devil is playing games with his father as he traverses a purgatorial landscape to arrive in a new country? This unfolded throughout the rest of the collection, and in poems like “El arpa” and “La mano,” readers see how the narrator is attempting to create a more complete picture of his parents. In turn, I thought this would add more nuance to a journey that centers on learning more about one’s past and where one comes from. Hopefully, I succeeded.
TT: Yes, the narrator definitely makes the metaphors in the lotería literal. In “La mano,”’for instance, the mom is literally digging for “la mano” (the hand) to take off the diamond ring, but in the end, nothing has changed: “the more the sun boils her flesh, / the closer she is to something she can hold, / something that no longer feels out of her grasp.”
Can you speak about your process for writing your eighth poetry collection? I am particularly curious about the cards of loteria as a lens through which you investigate the origin stories of your family.
ER: You would think that after seven poetry collections, I would have had a solid understanding of each book’s trajectory going into each of them, but the fact is that the books I wrote before Lotería were scraped together from a variety of different projects I was working on at various times. In Bloom, for example, arose when I discovered a handful of poems in an old email folder. The Valley has a number of poems with the title “Recuerdo,” which are really just poems that didn’t make the cut from my second collection, Crash Course. All of them came together at the end, but Lotería was the first collection where I knew how everything was going to play out from start to finish.
Part of the reason this worked so well was because I knew I only had to write 54 poems, so the end goal was already there, but I was aware that the variation of things I could write about that centered on my family had to be different from what I had already published. The image of each card became the focal point, and then I decided whether I was going to take a more narrative or surreal approach to each, or do a combination of the two. I wrote the book over the course of six months (from June 2020 to December 2020), and that was my only focus during that time, which I found to be quite cathartic. For me, every poem is like a puzzle, and it’s my job to figure out how the pieces fit together. The collection itself became a kind of puzzle, too. I knew what the image of the book was going to look like, I just had to ensure that I placed every facet of it in its correct spot.
TT: Lotería is like an intricate puzzle, where you never know how each poem’s story is going to end, or even if it is the story the poem is about. While the first poem begins with the narrator trying to piece together his father’s journey across the desert to the United States, the poem also ends (as with all poems in the collection) with what is learned from the journey, like a sort of epiphany. How do you craft different registers and different degrees of prescience about the past versus the present?
ER: I love that you mention these poems as stories, because that’s exactly how I approached them: as narratives that contained plot, characters, and emotional depth infused with lyrical and rhythmic attributes. I knew that the speaker needed to learn something, either about himself or about others that he didn’t know at the beginning of the poem, so I wrote with the idea that there would be some sort of revelation happening. I’m not sure if I was really conscientious about writing toward the past or the present. I think I just let the poem take its course, depending on the card and the subject.
TT: I definitely felt the arc of the speaker’s coming of age within each poem and across the collection as he comes to understand himself and his community anew. In Lotería, you point to the chasm between what actually happened and stories passed down about what happened. Storytelling often embellishes and distorts what happens, but the meaning of what happened is created by this kind of myth-making your hope to “make anyone/ proud to call this place home.”
So writing a poem seems to be like drawing a card in Loteria: How do you choose which of the versions to emphasize and to tell? Do you start with the image, the character, or something else?
ER: I think it really depends on a variety of factors, from my mood to my personal relationships to the books that I’m reading at the time. The same subjects that have occupied my younger self come out totally different now. For example, I’m obsessed with teeth, specifically the image of them rotting. From high school to my early 30s, I had a recurring dream of my teeth either being dislodged from my gums or rotting away completely. The dreams varied, but in almost all of the versions I was in someone else’s house, usually at a party, walking from room to room until I would come upon a mirror, which was either stained or shattered in some way. I’d stare at my face for a few seconds before opening my mouth and seeing the chaos of my teeth. I’d try to scream but everything was muted, and I was left to look at my fragmented teeth and gums, wondering how they arrived at such a condition.
These dreams virtually went away when my mother began having issues with her teeth. One of her front teeth became dead, and her premolars and molars accumulated a lot of plaque and cavities. My mother neglected her oral health for a number of reasons, but this image stayed with me and inevitably started appearing in my poetry. One of the first renditions of this image was a poem titled “Rot,” and years later, I wrote “Teeth.” Now, the image/subject is essentially the same, but my approach to them was different. My younger self (in “Rot”) was concerned with being more jarring, with relating my mother’s personal strife with that of others, while my more recent self (in “Teeth”) was more concerned with the backstory behind her condition and with how it related to who the speaker was as an individual.
I’ve always liked the idea of a song having an alternate acoustic version because sometimes the acoustic piece offers something that the studio version doesn’t, and vice versa. My wife and I have had a vigorous debate about the studio and acoustic versions of the song “10 Minutes 10 Years” by Tennis. I maintain that the Audiotree Live version contains a certain sadness yet feeling of acceptance that isn’t found in the studio version. But my wife sees it differently, and it’s quite awesome to engage in this discussion because even though we are really just hearing the same song, each version speaks in a unique way. So, all this is to say that if I were given a card of chance today, I would write it in one way, but if I were to draw that same card five or ten years down the road, it would be rendered differently.
TT: I am very curious about how the form of the poem (essentially one page-long stanza) affects your writing or revision process. In particular, I am thinking of the difference between the version of “Teeth” published in Variant Lit (featuring the poem in three-line stanzas, or triplets) versus its appearance as a single stanza in the book. Does thinking about it as a Loteria card change the poem? Does the size of the page shape your writing as well?
ER: I might have said in previous interviews that I had grown a bit disenchanted with stanzaic gimmickry in poetry, but looking back at some of my comments, I think I meant to say that I am more focused on the substance of my work rather than the style. But choosing to not have a style is a stylistic choice as well, so the choice to have all of these poems in a single blocked stanza was really just accepting that I didn’t want to do more than I thought was necessary, hence the reason all the poems are only a page long. Additionally, I couldn’t see a scenario where breaking up the poems in couplets or tercets or spacing out the lines of the poem would have worked, mainly because I focused on the narrative unfolding as is. This in turn eliminated any obvious suggestions to the reader of how a poem should be read, and I admire when poetry does that, when it lays bare its heart for all to see.
TT: Can you speak about the distinction between prose poetry versus the one-stanza per page that you adopted for Lotería? I felt the density of each narrative, but I also felt the poetic turn through your line breaks as well!
ER: Yes, so for a second I thought about making these poems into prose poems, mainly because when I wrote them on the Notes app on my phone, that’s how they appeared, as one big block. But whenever I think of prose poetry, I always think of the late James Tate and the way in which his poetry (especially the latter half of it) contained characters and dialogue and that narrative twist that read like a story. I knew almost immediately that the poems weren’t following that trajectory, so when I was done with one, I’d begin the process of breaking it up into lines. I’m glad that you pointed out the enjambments because they were purposeful and I did spend some time trying out different line lengths with each poem. I tried to look for natural pauses and words that really stood out, that would propel the narrative without exhausting the reader’s attention. No offense to any poet who does this, but personally, I’m not a fan of lines ending with “the” or “a” or “of.” I know, I know. But for me, it just doesn’t feel right for a reader to have a determiner or preposition as the last word in a line, at least not all the time. So, naturally, I avoided that and tried to end with something more sonically memorable.
TT: I love that we get to look behind the curtain of your writing process. I feel like technology (pen and paper, typewriter, computer, phone) acts as a form of sorts by dictating the line length, the number of lines, etc. I never would’ve guessed it was so crucial to your process!
For poets who want to write about family in all its complexities, what tips or advice would you give them?
I was so moved by the poems “La corona” and “La bandera.” Both complicate the idea of unconditional love by showing how the now-adult speaker-son is an object of parental envy and condescension. The father figure, especially, in “La corona” lives vicariously through their son, but feels conflicted at his son’s academic success, a marker of his assimilation into North American culture. Similarly, the father feels less pride than scorn toward his son’s cheering for his country’s soccer team. How do you find the speaker in la mezcla of languages, cultures, and values?
Finally, does writing on your phone in different settings (like that initial prose format before it’s revised on a computer) influence this process?
ER: So, as far as advice goes, the one tip I always give is to read as much and as widely as possible. As a young writer, it’s important to have an understanding of the literary landscape, and it’s quite amazing that we live in a time where there are so many great works available. I’m a huge admirer of the late Dean Young, and while his poetry was completely different from mine, it taught me a lot about what was possible on the page. Reading other writers who have a different approach and style to yours can open up doors you didn’t even know needed to be opened, and it makes a world of difference when you begin to put pen to paper.
I definitely try to incorporate myself in my work as much as possible, but I will be honest in saying that there are many places where I have to stretch and invent a new truth to fit in with images and narratives I’m creating. When speaking about her poem “Scary Movies,” Kim Addonizio once said that poets often have to lie in poetry in order to get an intended result (in her poem, her parents are dead but they weren’t dead in real life at the time). I think the general public and even poets and writers themselves are still very hung up on the idea that the speaker of a poem is a direct reflection of the poet, and this is definitely true in some cases. But it’s not in all, and I absolutely love that about poetry. The genre is so adaptable and it has so much to offer current and future readers.
Lastly, how I write, like the logistical and physical aspect of it, has changed quite a bit over the years. When I first started writing, I’d use a notebook to scribble ideas and phrases, which would eventually morph into poems. And then I found that writing on the Notes app on my phone was the best way to jot down my thoughts. My phone was always with me, so instead of sitting down and pulling out a notebook, I could write from my bed, or in between meetings at work. While I still write poetry on my phone, prose, which I’ve recently started writing again after a long hiatus, is an entirely different story. I use a combination of notebooks and Google docs, and I’ve found that this allows me to think about the story or narrative piece a bit more. I can flush out the ideas in my head before I put them on paper, and then when they’re transferred to the Google doc, I can refine the characters, dialogue, and images further.
TT: Poetry can be a mezcla of fiction and nonfiction, couldn’t it? It allows imagination to give shape to what’s important in our memories and experiences.
Can you speak to the narrative trajectory of the text? Do you see the sections like a Loteria tabla or grid, or more like an arc? I noticed a narrative shift from “El diablito” to “El gallo” and to “El árbol” where the doe-eyed narrator comes to a deeper understanding of his family through this game, despite having a God-like omniscience (or la luna or el sol) in other ways.
ER: Throughout the course of writing the poems, I didn’t think of what the narrative trajectory of the book would be once I was done. When I was getting close to finishing, I realized that there wouldn’t be an overall arc in the way that one sees in a novel, for example. There would be lessons learned, questions asked, answers given, but regardless of what knowledge the speaker gains after each poem, there are still experiences that don’t provide the clarity the speaker might have hoped for. And that is alright. I don’t know to what extent poetry needs to answer everything about our lives or the world.
Nevertheless, despite not aiming for an overall narrative in the collection, I did want to provide some narrative throughout each section, mainly because I did see each section as a type of “round,” if you will. The speaker is playing three games and these are the cards he is dealt, and with each card, an association is made. On the backend of things, I wanted to separate any poems that centered on the same subject, spread them out so they weren’t all cluttered in any of the three sections. If I spoke about the speaker’s father in one section, I wanted to be sure that the same father appeared later on, in a different situation/context. The variety was essential to understanding the speaker’s newfound perspective on his family, his life, and the world at large.
TT: The concept of the “round,” as you describe, definitely brings additional clarity to Lotería, in that the readers should read it less as an arc, than as shuffled cards in a round of game of chance. To conclude, what are you working on today and do you have any closing thoughts for your readers?
ER: Over the past few months, I’ve started venturing more seriously into fiction, so poetry has been put on pause for the moment. I wrote about a dozen or so stories a decade ago, but they never went anywhere, and I left them to collect digital dust in computer files and old Gmail folders. Exhuming them was enlightening because I finally felt that I had found my voice and could now replicate what I had done with poetry in prose. I’m happy to say that I have a few stories coming out in journals in the next few months (“Rooster” in Midway Journal and “Twinkie” in Gordon Square Review), and through this editing, I’ve composed two short story collections that I’m currently shopping around at some presses. No doubt I’ll still have a few poetry collections in me, but I’m not sure what the future holds beyond that. Yes, I’ll still be reading poetry and editing with AGNI, but it seems as though prose is letting me see the world in a perspective that I want and need more of.
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Tiffany Troy is author of Dominus (BlazeVOX [books]) and co-translator of Santiago Acosta’s The Coming Desert /El próximo desierto (forthcoming, Alliteration Publishing House), in collaboration with Acosta and the 4W International Women Collective Translation Project at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is Managing Editor at Tupelo Quarterly, Associate Editor of Tupelo Press, Book Review Co-Editor at The Los Angeles Review, and Assistant Poetry Editor of Asymptote.