Juan Felipe Herrera

“I used to stand on the corner in San Diego with poems sticking out of my hip pocket, asking people if there was a place where I could read poems. The audience is half of the poem.”

“In my writing, I want to address all communities, you know. I've spent many years talking about Chicano culture, Chicano history, and at the same time, I've also been in many communities and presented my work in many communities, in many classrooms, and that's where my vision is and my delight is and my heart is.”

“The goal for me is to be as expansive as possible, and the Library of Congress offers so many resources.”

“If I can only be known as one thing, then, well, I guess it would be poet and performer and teacher.”

“By middle school, I said to myself that it's time I begin to speak. I joined the choir, not because I wanted to. I forced myself.”

“San Diego shaped me a lot. The visual landscapes, the emotional panoramas, the teachers and mentors I had from the third grade through San Diego High - it's all a big part of the poetry fountain that I continue to drink from.”

“Poetry, as odd as it is, and as hard to figure out as it is, many times, it's almost something that we're used to. It's kind of like a dream language that we had centuries ago, so that when we speak poetically or write a poem about what's going on, a real difficult issue that's facing our communities, people listen.”

“I like marketplaces. I like train stations; I like being in trains. I like airports. I like walking down the street with a pen in my hand, writing, writing, writing.”

“The banner of the project is 'Casa de Colores.' Under that banner, I'm going to invite people to do a lot of good things. Perhaps working in groups, working on poetry.”

“I am representing California, and all of California, definitely as a Mexicano, a Chicano, a Latino.”

“Let's detox our cluttered academic brain. That's what the poet does. People call it daydreaming, detoxing our minds and taking care of that clutter. It's being able to let in call letters from the poetry universe.”

“I want our young Latinos and Latinas to write their hearts out and express their hearts out and let us all listen to each other.”

“What I really had was stories, the oral traditions of my parents. We moved so much that that was really our encyclopedia. A dream world told to me from my parents in the living room.”

“Sometimes it's like that. I go, 'You know what? I'm going to just change scales. I'm going to even change instruments. And I'm going to go into the chromatics of the Spanish language,' and I do. You know, the poem is totally different. It's like a lunar voice versus a day voice, a solar voice.”

“Poetry is a call to action, and it also is action.”

“My mother was a washerwoman - or a woman that cleaned houses in Texas... in Plano, Texas - who always loved poetry and always loved stories.”

“Sometimes I have a very fleeting emotional dance with a fleeting phrase, like 'half-Mexican.'”

“My parents moved from ranch to ranch, valley to valley, town to town, but our roots in Fowler never really faded. For me, it's a place of history, stories and songs, not just facts and figures.”

“All voices are important, and yet it seems that people of color have a lot to say, particularly if you look through the poetry of young people - a lot of questions and a lot of concerns about immigration and security issues, you name it - big questions.”

“First grade was - I spoke only Spanish, and second grade - probably a bit more English. And by the time I hit third grade, I was learning, of course, much, much more English.”