Karen Kevorkian Discusses Her Third Book of Poems, Quivira, at Los Angeles Review of Books

Ramón García interviews Los Angeles poet Karen Kevorkian, whose third book, Quivira (3: A Taos Press), "is her most experimental in language and the most deeply grounded in Southwestern social space." Quivira might be, writes García at LARB, a "city that never existed, but whose unattainable promises are recovered — through a glass darkly — in the imagination." From their conversation:

Were you playing with the contrasts and ironies of myth and historical reality in the made-up city of Quivira?

Sure. The contrasts are right on the surface and the gaps between them contain deadly ironies. The destruction of the people and culture of the Pueblos contrasted with the grand scale and staggering hubris of the expeditions. Marching under the banners of king and Christianity, the fortune hunters felt free to demand whatever they could from the Pueblos, and to do whatever it took to bring the original peoples of the Americas to Christianity, which notoriously did not rule out their brutal domination. But isn’t there always a gap between how a thing is represented and its fact? It depends on who tells the story, and why. To use a Southwestern example, Santa Fe for many years put on a civic fiesta that included a reenactment of the 17th-century Spanish re-entry of New Mexico, an event following their expulsion after the 1680 Pueblo Rebellion. According to news stories, many saw the reenactment as inappropriate glorification of a bloody past, and two years ago that portion of the fiesta was canceled.

In this case it seems like it goes further. It seems like fantasy, almost a fantasy that entered history for a while.

Yes, some portions of the population definitely liked dressing up in conquistador costumes and riding into town on horseback. The past is always romanticized, as has been the antebellum plantation culture of the Old South. But you always ask who an accepted history serves…

Read on at Los Angeles Review of Books.