In HEATHEN, R. Flowers Rivera remixes the classical and the Biblical, the usual and the typical until what we thought we knew of ourselves and others is new again. The mythic becomes particular; the particular becomes mythic in these fascinating poems of personalities and personas. Rivera’s work is rich in empathy and invention. Heathen is a book of psalms for the present day.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on how R. Flowers Rivera's poetry transforms our understanding of self and society through innovative remixes of classic and biblical themes.
Terrance Hayes describes R. Flowers Rivera's collection, 'Heathen', as a transformative work that revisits well-known narratives and archetypes, repurposing them to reveal fresh insights about identity and human connection. The fusion of mythic elements with particular experiences allows readers to perceive the commonalities of personal and collective existence in a new light, while Rivera's rich empathy infuses the poems with emotional depth and creativity, positioning them as a modern-day testament akin to psalms.
In practice
This quote can be used in a discussion about modern poetry and its cultural significance.
I'm chasing a kind of language that can be unburdened by people's expectations. I think music is the primary model-how close can you get this language to be like music and communicate feeling at the base level in the same way a composition with no words communicates meaning? It might be impossible. Language is always burdened by thought. I'm just trying to get it so it can be like feeling.
When I applied for grad school, I did not specify genre. I said I wanted an MFA in Creative Writing. I was so cute and stupid! The admissions committee at Pitt decided to put me in poetry.
So the best way to understand poetry, which is made by men, is to imitate, and that goes back to making work as a kind of doorway into new work, as opposed to making work as a mirror of the old work.
Art is not the kind of thing where you get what you put into it all the time. So I learned to not expect anything other than the sort of joy of having a poem in front of me.
Poems are a form of music, and language just happens to be our instrument - language and breath.
What could be more simple and more complex, more obvious and more profound than a portrait.
You need music, I don't know why. It's probably one of those Joe Campbell questions, why we need ritual. We need magic, and bliss, and power, myth, and celebration and religion in our lives, and music is a good way to encapsulate a lot of it.
Winning a competition in architecture is a ticket to oblivion. It's just an idea. Ninety-nine per cent never get built.
There's so much chaos in life, I think I make music to make things feel calm and sane, to define something, to bring some meaning into it - it's a real peaceful thing to me.
I never like to think that I design for a particular person. I design for the woman I wanted to be, the woman I used to be, and - to some degree - the woman I'm still a little piece of.
Memory exercised in a particular way is a natural gift of poetic genius. The poet above all else, is a person who never forgets certain sense impressions which he has experienced and which he can relive again as though with all their original freshness.
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