Tedi López Mills’ poetrytranslated by Wendy Burkin this issue. ________Photo of Tedi López Millsby Alberto Tovalín ________ Contributor Notes

Tedi López Mills Interviewed by Rebecca Seiferle Tedi López Mills was born inMexico City in 1959. She studied philosophy at the Mexican National Universityand literature at the Sorbonne. She has published ten poetry books: Cincoestaciones,Un lugar ajeno,Segunda persona(Efraín Huerta National Poetry Award), Glosas, Horas, Luz por aire y agua, Un jardín, cinco noches(y otros poemas),Contracorriente(Premio de Literatura José Fuentes Mares), Parafrasear and Muerte en la rúa Augusta (Premio XavierVillaurrutia). In 1994 she won a poetry scholarship granted by the FondoNacional de la Cultura y las Artes; in 1995 the Mexico/US Fund for Culture gaveher a fellowship for the selection and translation of the poetry of theAmerican writer, Gustaf Sobin, and in 1998 she was granted the first OctavioPaz Poetry Scholarship. She has translated the work of numerous American,English and French poets and, very recently, Anne Carsons’ Autobiography ofRed.  A selection of her poems, While Lightis Built, translated by Wendy Burk,was published by Kore Press. Since 2009 she belongs to the Sistema Nacional deCreadores. *** Rebecca Seiferle: I’m very struck by the metaphysics of your work. For instance in “Postscript from a Friend in Hell” your lines “our lot as humanbeings isinconstancy, / perpetual change” could be written on the board in a philosophy class as apromptfor further thought, as for instance one might take a quote from Heraclitus. Does this strongmetaphysical inclination presentparticular challenges to your work; is it simply interwoven within you and your poetic process, ordoes it present a kind of other question that you engage with at the same time engaging with thepoem as poem? Tedi López Mills: Before the two lines you quote, there is one thatsays: “cannibalism of a dogma”, which gives to what comes next a sense of irony; I hopethis isperceived when reading the poem.It wouldn’t be easy to define this metaphysical streak or inclination. At times it belongsmore tothe language than to the intentions of the poem. In many cases ­as in the one you quoted­ it isironical, a way of making fun of one’s most cherished generalizations. Poetry and metaphysics lead a perpetual fight; it’s part of a tradition, a strange battle forthereal truth. Rebecca Seiferle: I’m wondering where you would place your work,withinthe context of Mexican literature and culture, within the context of world literature? Tedi López Mills: That’s definitely not an easy question. Idon’tknow where I would place myself in Méxican literature, let alone in that of the world. Like itornot, one belongs to a context, writes with or against others. In that sense, I’m deeplyimmersed inMexican poetry and in the echoes of its influence: I grew up in Octavio Paz’s time, when hewas theundisputed authority in the politics of poetry. So I guess I must have picked on those remains. Rebecca Seiferle: What is your writing process like? Tedi López Mills: Whatever happens, I have to listen to choralmusic, with earphones. That is my only chance of getting away. The poem itself may begin before,while I’m drinking coffee and reading or while I’m making breakfast. It can begin withthe memoryof something seen or heard; also, of something that hurts, that reminds me of a distant or not sodistant pain; of something glimpsed at in the newspaper or listened to on the radio. Each poemseems to have its own origin, its own genealogical tree.But the balance, the equilibrium, is extremely fragile for me. I never know if I will be able tocarry it through. And I’m always surprised and grateful when I do. Rebecca Seiferle: How do you view American poetry and your work’spreoccupations as distinct from American poetry? For instance, to me, your work seems much less’personal’ than most American poetry, the speaker is a kind of representative andquestioningvoice? Tedi López Mills: I’m always in touch with American poetry; infact,I would say that American poetry is very present in the Mexican canon: there are countlesstranslations, from Emily Dickinson to Robert Hass to Louise Glück, etcetera. And there is a difference. I don’t know if it pertains to the more “personal” streakin Americanpoetry or rather to concretion, to direct experience. Our tradition, which comes to us in part byway of France, is more abstract: fixed metaphor, understanding through analogies. Does this makeany sense? It’s a subject I’ve always wanted to write about, but haven’t really hadthe time or thechance to do it. Rebecca Seiferle: Yes, that does make sense, and I hope at some pointyou do have the chance to write about this subject. Theearliest poems in this chapbook date from Horas in2000 to Parafrasear (2008). How do you perceive the evolution of your work’s concernswithin thisbody of work; what currents remain constant? Tedi López Mills: I think the concerns have changed, although theremust be habits one acquires since the beginning and that are difficult to shake off. I see moremovement, more disbelief, more tearing apart in my latest work; a certain rebellion againstpoetry’s sublime endeavors. Rebecca Seiferle: Yes, I can hear that “disbelief, more tearing apart”in the gaps, ellisions; every breach seems haunted byvoices which carry on a Socratic questioning about being. I notice that in the later poems in thechapbook, the metaphysical currents are broken as it were by voices, that seemboth internal and external. These voices often speak to one another, obliquely, as if connected bymemory and consciousness, and as if replying to a question that is located but hidden in theconsciousness of another. As if replying to that question, while not always replying to the obviouscontent? Tedi López Mills: Yes: a kind of mise en scène. One is alwayshearing voices, inside and outside. The questions interest me more than the answers. Memory pointsto forgetting; consciousness to unconsciousness, so each part, each voice has two sides, likerecords used to have: the literal one and the ironic one. It’s a way of disordering content,ofputting it in danger. And also of creating dialogue inside the poem. Rebecca Seiferle: Your work is often preoccupied with cosmologicalarguments for and with and against God, or perhaps more precisely preoccupied with the ontology ofbeing where “the sea is my own,” where there is a search for the reality of things in a flux oftime. Do you begin with the question, the metaphysical, or the concrete realities and intersectionsthat provoke it? Tedi López Mills: I begin here, in a strange and concrete reality:a room, a desk and then whatever comes to mind. I’m not sure about God, about how present thatpresence is in my work.I think poetry, at least certain traditions, has used the word God almost as a joker; so in a wayI’m questioning that false cosmology. Rebecca Seiferle: Yes, that questioning is much a part of your work, and the questionis often used as a structural device for the development of the poem. I’m reminded of skepticism, of howdoubt becomes the method of exploration. These are the human questions, the questions of humanexistence:are they what drives the poem into existence for you? Is everyone here? The shes and hes, the curs and Fates? The creatures and the castes? The believers, the grievers, the good and bad? Are the flies here? Are the rodents, the plastic gaiters, and the slick, rosy puddles? Do we have the dumb-show silhouettes, the one-armed man’s introspective fingers, the shoes lost one step at a time? Do we have the world, humanity, you and I? What’s missing? Mercy? Shall we share it? Divide it?                                    XVI. [General Hospital] Tedi López Mills: Questions work differently in each poem. Sometimesthey state an answer just by asking. It’s difficult to know exactly what drives the poem intoexistence: noise, another poem, a face, a bird, the shadow of a tree. A lot and very little. Rebecca Seiferle: A number of these poems seem to question “the wise man,” orby implication, “God.” Is the voice in the following quote both ‘the wise man’ that you questionelsewhere, and God, traditionally anyway, the ultimate ‘wise man”? I feel we are meant to hear how anyauthority is questioned? Today he’s going to tell us about the monsters that sun makes that love makes that lasting makes that sorrow makes that memory makes that idleness makes Tedi López Mills: It’s not God, it’s a politician; we havemany inMexico. Even poet-politicians. The ’monsters that sun makes” is a quote from Wallace Stevens. I do think one must beware of wise men or wise women. And I also think poetry, or rather poetics,has an authoritarian streak. But may be this comes from my own paranoia. Rebecca Seiferle: . I particularly like the way your work takes on anever greater capacity for chaos, the flux of voices in the current of time, and the way a poem cantake on that chaos as this one does and yet find a harmony of “someone small against the openair…” Is that perhaps what poetry does, how it can answer this profoundest of questionings? If you could see what I saw… quick glance at a gull pecking saltpeter entrails… Is it possible? That first day words trumped realities… I have to go. The things I’ve seen when I imagine seeing them, nothing compares… Stay… I’ll be quiet… False preexistent places, names, lie within… the chair drops anchor, come this way, touch the air… if you were I, for love, your face would be the gentlest diagonal, soft face of someone without refuge… losing gravity… someone small against the open air… Tedi López Mills: I think of poetry in terms of individuality: whateach poem does. And I would say poetry not only might create answers, but will especially provokequestions, like an exercise in doubt, an anxiety transformed into method.