"Making Yourself Known: An Interview with Richard Garcia" by Owen Roberts

When examining certain poets or authors, it is hard not to get the feeling that writing is the core of their very essence. In the case of Richard Garcia, I get the feeling that without the outlet of writing, he would not live as full a life. In fact, some authors possess a style and a confidence that give the impression to the reader that they have an authority about what is being written; each word is chosen with conviction and purpose. The feeling that I get when I read Garcia’s work reminds me of a favorite quote of mine by Isaac Asimov: “I write for the same reason I breathe – because if I didn’t, I would die.”

Garcia’s poetry holds a mystique that keeps the attention of the audience. He writes from the heart and from a perspective of experience that leaves no room for doubt. This is undeniably the result of Garcia’s long career as a writer, stemming back to his elementary school days. I asked him if there was any influence he had as a younger author that inspired him to start writing. He responded by saying,

My first writing may have been a story I was asked in the third grade to make up on the spot. It was a long tale of cowboys and Indians. I started it out by saying, “I was born very young . . . ”

Garcia has a way of finding the light-hearted and humorous moments, both in his writing and in correspondence. He continues by adding, 

Or it may be the poem I wrote to a girlfriend in the 9th grade. It even rhymed. I don’t know where it came from, I just wrote it while playing with a typewriter.

I particularly appreciate this aspect of his work, as it becomes very easy to get overly-involved and stuck in the content of a piece that is intense and dark. Even contacting him through email allowed me a glimpse into this side of Garcia, providing a deeper understanding of his poetic perspective and background.

Garcia, who was born in San Francisco and now lives in South Carolina, is the author of several full-length collections of poems, including The Other Odyssey, from Dream Horse Press, The Chair from BOA, and Porridge from Press 53. His poems appear in many journals and anthologies, including Crazyhorse, Georgia Review, Poetry, and Best American Poetry. He has received a fellowship from the National Endowment of the Arts, a Cohen Award from Ploughshares, a Pushcart Prize, and the Georgetown Review Poetry Prize. A former instructor at the College of Charleston, Garcia also taught creative writing in the Antioch University Los Angeles MFA program, as Poet-in-Residence at the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles, at the Long Beach Museum of Art, and at the Gibbes Museum of Art. In fact, Nobel Prize winner Octavio Paz has praised Garcia for his “emotion . . . verbal economy [and] tone (the words react—the images are seen).”

While reading his work, I became curious about the process that Garcia goes through in order to transform his personal experiences and memories into poems. I made a point to ask him about this, as I could tell that many of his published pieces are experiential in nature. He responded by saying, 

[M]ostly I tell the truth, but it sounds fantastic. I do best when I write at the same place and time every day, which I seldom do. I evoke the muse and sometimes she comes.

I was honestly very surprised when I received this response, as it often feels that professional writers do not fall into the same pits as less-experienced writers. At least when it comes to my own experience writing poetry, I find that writer’s block is something I get caught up in frequently. Hearing that an author, who is much more skilled than I am, has the same difficulty translating their experiences and emotions into an eloquent line is heartening. Garcia further explains this phenomena in his writing life by giving one of his potential solutions:

One method is to put yourself in a place where there is nothing else to do. Like a doctor’s office. I even went to offices when neither my wife or I had appointments.

Again, I was not expecting to hear this sort of struggle, but nonetheless Garcia provided a valuable insight into the often unorthodox ways that poets craft their work. Never before have I thought of taking my act of writing a poem into a place where there is little to no distraction; doctors’ offices are not normal places I would typically think of continuing my work. 

Some part of Garcia’s unique writing style must be explained by his charm, as the descriptions he employs are creative and fresh. In “The Hotel,” a prose poem about Los Angeles that Garcia co-wrote with Carol Potter and published in MORIA’s fourth issue last fall, these co-authors let loose with the amount of fantastical descriptions that they offer the reader:

And if the camera of our lives pulled back to an aerial view, we would see that we are surrounded by the real estate of cemeteries, outnumbered by the dead. But there is hope, and at dinner in the lobby I look just behind my friend and smile. I say, There are angels behind you.

Each time I read one of Garcia’s poems, I find myself stuck imagining the details and nuances of the magical realism that he shapes. It is hard to describe how these types of descriptions impact the audience; nonetheless, their effect transfixes and holds the reader close. Despite revisiting these descriptions numerous times, their influence and vibrance remains unchanged. 

Because Garcia has been an author for many years, I was also interested to hear how his experiences have impacted his perspective as a poet over time. I asked him if there was any advice that he wished he could give himself as a younger writer, to which he responded, 

For most of us, good poetry news will come because of something you did. Apply, write a letter, talk to someone, use the media to make yourself known. 

Hearing this advice from Garcia was probably the most insightful part of my interview, even if his response does not disclose the secret to becoming an excellent poet. In a way, his answer to the question tells me a lot about him. He is a writer who is not afraid to put himself in the middle of a project that means he must extend himself. Garcia strikes me as an incredibly inquisitive writer who is constantly looking for the next experience to document. Anyone with a passion and drive to write would benefit by adopting a worldview and mindset similar to his.

Owen Roberts

Owen Roberts is a 21-year-old student and freelance photographer. He is currently in his third year of college and attends Woodbury University in Burbank, CA. Owen has a passion for observing and documenting the world around him, which is why he is majoring in professional writing. Whenever he is not shooting or editing photos, he can be found reading and writing about what has caught his interest at the time. In addition to writing and photography, Owen also served as an editor for the fourth issue of MORIA Literary Magazine.