Interview & Article by J Clark Hubbard, Interview Editor
The Poet—Jose Hernandez Diaz—is sitting at one of those off-white circular picnic tables that haunt every American convention center. He’s the only AWP attendee in the break area who isn’t on a phone, reading, or writing. The tables around him are piled w/ promotional flyers, unwanted magazines, forgotten chapbooks, & coupons for every cuisine Seattle has to offer (see also: all of them) while the thousands of writers, editors, students, & other attendees are packing the air of the warehouse-esque convention center w/ conversation. His ability to find some semblance of calm amongst the chaos reminded me of his prose poems, many of which seek for a simple truth in a complex tapestry.
Diaz’ writing is unmistakable, recalling the works of James Tate, Frank O’Hara, & MF Doom. Re: Doom, Diaz says he’s always appreciated “the non-sequiturs in his work, the casual cadence, the everyday imagery,” markers that O’Hara & Tate often exemplify in their poems. Diaz’ pieces—esp. his prose poems—are wild, wandering meditations on humanity/earth, typically preferring colloquial language rather than the academic prose that tends to turn off the average poetry reader. For Diaz, these incredible landscapes & universes happen “in the initial burst, w/ the line that inspires it—the first line or the title.” Off the cuff, he estimates that 75% of his poems are done during the drafting process, while “editing is making it smoother, maybe adding transitions, & incorporating some more specific imagery.”
Diaz plays w/ repetitive language & structures in his work, esp. present in his prose poems. “It’s an organic, intuitive process” says Diaz, “it’s not necessarily mapped out or scientific.” Not for the last time, our conversation turned to music to better understand the art/process of poetry. “In music you need to have rhythm, strong imagery, & repetition” says Diaz. “Repetition can sorta lull the reader in, but also surprise them—a mixture of surprise & familiarity works well, sometimes you can be subtle, sometimes more striking & surreal.” These ideas are represented well in “Goblin with Hummingbird Mask,” which we had the pleasure to publish in an earlier issue of Beaver Magazine.
Even if you’ve never read a Diaz piece, you’ve undoubtedly bumped into him or his work on social media. He’s one of the more prolific poets of Twitter, partially due to the variety of workshops he leads. (Like any good teacher, he completes the assignments alongside his students, leading to an enviable output.) My biggest question coming into the conversation was simply: How? How can one person teach, write, read, & publish so much & still feel alive? Diaz has the answer, but it’s not one that either of us are particularly happy about. “Even on the weekends…” Diaz pauses, grinning & sighing before the big reveal: “I go to the library.”
Most artists (I didn’t want to commit to all artists, although I’m pretty sure that’s right) must sacrifice something to create—sleep, health, money, relationships, etc. “It’s always greener on the other side” says Diaz, “when you’re single you wanna be in a relationship, when you’re in a relationship you wish you had more time for writing, more freedom.” Every artist thrives in different circumstances at different points in their lives, but each artist is ultimately responsible for finding the right balance that allows them to live & create. “I don’t go out a lot in terms of partying,” says Diaz. “I did that a lot when I was younger. In high school, college I was partying all the time. I feel like I got it out of my system to the point where now I’m pretty focused.” Thus the weekend worship at his local library, the constant stream of workshops, & the terrifying productivity that’s made Jose Hernandez Diaz one of Poetry Twitter’s must-follows.
Outside of the connections one can make on socials, Diaz considers Twitter a sort of “second family,” one where he can be his “Poet Self.” Thanks to the stereotypical macho culture Diaz grew up in, he has often felt a divide between himself & family members: “My cousins & I are cool, we watch boxing & things like that, but you don’t really talk about poetry in a working-class type of environment in Southeast LA.” But on Twitter, Diaz knows that his art & his efforts won’t go unnoticed. Considering his everyday life, Diaz says “If I’m in The Southern Review? Who cares, the first question I always get is ‘how much does it pay?’ They don’t understand what it means, the prestige, or anything like that. That’s when I go to Twitter. It allows me to live in two worlds at once.”
Although AWP only allowed us 10 minutes of conversation—his panel on The Joy of Surprise in Generative Workshops was starting soon—we ended our conversation discussing MF Doom’s discography & making plans for our next conversation. As he walked away, I heard one line echoing from our earlier conversation on the prose of O’Hara & Tate—”I’ve always liked the casual writer.” Considering Diaz’ manuscripts, publishing record, & smorgasbord of workshops/lectures, I don’t think anyone would call him a “casual writer,” but for Diaz, it’s more of an aesthetic: “the appearance of the casual writer.”
The late Charles Simic zeroed in on this idea in a 2010 piece titled “Essay on the Prose Poem,” available thanks to Plume Poetry. Simic writes: “All poets do magic tricks. In prose poetry, pulling rabbits out of a hat is one of the primary impulses. This has to be done with spontaneity and nonchalance, concealing art and giving the impression that one writes without effort and almost without thinking − what Castiglione in his sixteenth-century Book of the Courtier called sprezzatura.” In the same way that a grumpy museum-goer might mutter about how the works of Janet Sobel or Barnett Newman are overly simple & childish, the prose poems of Diaz & Simic offer the world a clean, deceptively easy-to-grasp surface, containing complex multitudes that whisper secrets of the great beyond—but only if the audience spends time w/ the piece & is willing to wrestle w/ the art. It’s no coincidence that Diaz teaches this Simic essay in his workshops, encouraging younger artists to find their voice & aesthetic, esp. when the world deems a piece of writing “too casual” or “too easy.”
Jose Hernandez Diaz was born in Anaheim, CA (1984). He is a 2017 NEA Poetry Fellow. He is the author of a collection of prose poems: The Fire Eater (Texas Review Press, 2020). His work has appeared in The American Poetry Review, Boulevard, Cincinnati Review, Colorado Review, Georgia Review, Huizache, Iowa Review, The Nation, Poetry, POETS.org, The Southern Review, Yale Review, and in The Best American Nonrequired Reading. He has been a finalist for The Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize, The Colorado Prize, The Akron Prize, The Journal/Wheeler Prize, The Wisconsin Series, and The National Poetry Series. Additionally, he teaches creative writing for various organizations, including Beyond Baroque, Litro Magazine, The Writer’s Center, and elsewhere. Keep an eye out for Diaz’ first two full-length collections: Bad Mexican, Bad American will be published by Acre Books in 2024, & The Parachutist will be published by Sundress Publications in 2025.
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