Distinct Voices in Literature- Benjamin Garcia

The event attended was a Distinguished Voices in Literature Event. The speaker of this event was Benjamin Garcia. He shared many of his poems with us in the Corey Union Fireplace Lounge. He is a writer, in particular a poet. The book that he was sharing with us was Thrown in the Throat. This is an award winning book that won the National Poetry Series and the Eugene Paul Nassar Poetry Prize. He prefaced his reading by letting us all know that the thing most important to him in poetry is fun and enjoyment. He let us know that there would be things from his poetry that we would most likely not understand, but he hoped that we could at least enjoy it. I definitely enjoyed all of the poems he shared, even the most complex and complicated poems. He showed great emotion while sharing his poems and made you care deeply about what he was saying, even when you didn’t fully understand it. My favorite poem of his was the last one that he shared which is a newer poem and not a part of Thrown in the Throat. This was “the Taco Poem”. It was so fascinating to me how he could take such a simple thing, a taco, and create such a deep story surrounding it. He uses mundane words and creates such beauty out of it. 

One theme from all of his works centered around language. You could tell listening to his poems that every single word he spoke had a deep meaning behind it. Many of his poems centered around language which is also something that we talk about in class. In both works that we have read so far, it is very important to understand the language that the author is using to fully understand the meaning of the text and this was reinforced in his reading. Garcia is an immigrant which influenced some of the poems that he shared. This became a parallel to me with Maxine Kingston’s memoir The Woman Warrior. Kingston is also an immigrant, from China, and this is a big part of her life and shapes her memoir. Garcia shared with us that most of his poems are not non-fiction, they are shaped by his life experiences but are not fully factual which also relates to Kingston’s memoir. A memoir is not an autobiography, it is not fully factual, it is Kingston using her life experiences and can be subjective. I thought that this was an important parallel between the two pieces of work. Another connection that I drew was to A Raisin in the Sun when he mentioned that he grew up very poor and his living space was very compact with too many people in it. This was a lot like how the Youngers were living and I thought that was also an interesting parallel. 

I think that the Q and A at the end of the event was very insightful. He gave a lot of advice to writers but could also just be life lessons for everyone. He told us that we cannot be afraid to make mistakes and that mistakes can lead to beautiful things. I think this is important in writing where the first draft of a piece is never to its fullest potential. This is also insightful to life in general. We should not be afraid to make mistakes, we never know what is going to come out of mistakes. He shared with us that many mistakes that he made in his writing actually make his writing better and stronger. He also shared with us that we need to give ourselves permission. Permission to write what we want, but also to be who we are, like what we like, and dislike what we dislike. I loved that I attended a poetry event but left with valuable life lessons as well.