Poetry Connection: El Salvador Edition

Poet Alexandra Lytton Regalado gave a salon-style reading and discussion last Sunday at the Ridley-Tree House, where she is in residence for the week, thanks to a collaboration with Santa Barbara City College and the Santa Barbara Museum of Art. I’ve had the opportunity to connect with Regalado over the years, first at a writing conference and later through Swwim Every Day, an online journal for women-identifying poets where she is an editor.

It is no coincidence that her last name sounds like the Spanish word for gift: regalo. As much as she is honored to reside in a home overlooking the mountains, during one of Santa Barbara’s many good weather weeks, she is a gift to the city. Don’t miss her free workshop on Thursday, December 7 (see full information below). I didn’t have much advance notice, either, or else I would have talked up her reading in previous columns. On Sunday, the salon’s intimate setting allowed the poet to speak to us candidly with what she called confianza, or to confide among friends. She said Sunday’s event was like a gathering with friends.

Regalado describes herself as a double agent because she was born in El Salvador, left for Miami as a child during the country’s civil war, and moved back to El Salvador as an adult. She has spent 24 years in Miami and 23 years in El Salvador. Now, she finds herself the matriarch of her family. As the adult in charge, she says she is comfortable being displaced.

Alexandra Lytton Regalado | Photo: Melinda Palacio

Her words carry the weight of being the matriarch of her family as well as the eldest sister. With this responsibility comes a grit that Regalado says is natural for Salvadoran women who must have the quality to aguantar (to withstand). She says being the keeper of memory is the hardest. When her sisters want to throw away old photographs of unknown people, Regalado feels compelled to dig into her memory and name those unknown faces. She says she has rescued many photographic memories from the garbage. As the matriarch of her family, she is sensitive to the fact that those saved photographs represent grief for those who are only with us in photographs. For Regalado, grief is always expected. She describes grief as a way of life, an inheritance.

Photography and the visual arts are dear to Regalado. She has a degree in visual art and photography. She is still fascinated by visiting museums. I loved the way in which she discussed how we translate a poem or song in the same way we might ascribe meaning to a painting in a museum. The idea of honoring personal interpretation makes poetry more accessible to people, yet another form of poetry connection.

Regalado said this isn’t her first residency, but her third; however, it is her first in California. “The house is full of light and has amazing views of mountains I can see from my desk window,” she said. It also helps that the Ridley-Tree House is in the same neighborhood as her sister-in-poetry, Emma Trelles, previous Poet Laureate of Santa Barbara. Regalado has had a long-standing connection to Santa Barbara via Trelles and the Mission Poetry Series, offering translations for the winning chapbooks for the Alta California chapbook prize, and this year she has served as judge for the chapbook contest. “I’m honored that three Santa Barbara poet laureates attended the reading,” Regalado said. “I’m looking forward to Thursday’s free workshop at SBCC from 3 to 5 p.m. at the Multimodal Lab — I’ve developed writing exercises centered around wonder and loss and a great reading packet of poems to share with the group.“

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 Upcoming Poetry Events:

Wednesday, December 6: Hospice Light Up a Life. I will be sharing a poem at the Light Up a Life Ceremony in Montecito, 4:30 p.m. in the Upper Village Green (1504 E. Valley Rd.).

Thursday, December 7: Poetry Workshop with Alexandra Lytton Regalado, 3-5 p.m. at SBCC’s Multimodal Lab, BC 102 West Campus. Free, no RSVP needed, open to all.

Saturday, December 9: Hospice Light Up a Life. Carpinteria, 5:30 p.m., at the Seal Fountain (884 Linden Ave.). 

Sunday, December 10: Hospice Light Up a Life. Goleta, Camino Real Marketplace, Storke & Marketplace, 5 p.m.

Sunday, December 10: The Poetry Zone will honor our dear Sojourner Kincaid Rolle at 1:30 p.m. at the Karpeles Manuscript Museum (23 W. Anapamu St., Santa Barbara). Open mic to follow.

Thursday, December 21: Writing in the Galleries at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art (1130 State St.) with Poet Laureate Emerita Emma Trelles, 5:30-7 p.m.

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This week’s poems feature Alexandra Lytton Regalado.

EL PUENTE QUE NOS UNE

by Alexandra Lytton Regalado

I left red gladiolas on the altar.

Patrón Santiago Apostól, your horse is spattered with mud.

San Alejo, your shoes are worn.

Acompáñanos y líbranos de todo mal.

This bridge is long and rickety.

Rotten planks, rusted nails moan every step.

Who built this?

We’ve had to leap across all that collapsed.

I have no choice.

Can’t stop to ask why.

Can’t rest.

There are people in front of us and people behind us.

The way back would be just as long.

Best to keep going.

We must get to the other side.

Con cada paso mi sombra pierde color.

The dark water offers my face and I say to it:

This is my one and only life.

Already others are pressing up behind me.

And others have moved too far ahead.

When someone falls I cannot stop to help.

Even though some look like papá, but younger.

Mamá, but mixed with my daughter’s face.

An old friend who died long ago.

Patrón, who will save us?

Will I turn into a fish if I fall?

Will I be jolted awake?

THE GIANTESS

by Alexandra Lytton Regalado

After Leonora Carrington’s painting

After Tracy K. Smith

Daughter, you need to grow into your body,

understand its dimensions,

how to move in this world.

I tell her this as she mops up water

from a glass she’s knocked over.

She is constantly bumping, tripping,

leaving frames askew.

She hides in hoodies & sweats,

but the girl is all legs, taller than me

at thirteen. I want her to live in her body,

not padded in layers of fabric, shoulders

hunched, veiled in long hair, behind

glasses. Push it back, I tell her,

I want to see your pretty face,

in the voice of all women, telling all

other women how to be seen.

She talks of feminism, tells her brothers

Mami will disown you if you are not

a feminist; quick to bark, quick to snap,

to claw, to sink in a tooth.

Arrows & daggers at her feet

& her moon head overcast, as she watches

wide-winged geese circle her body. A family

takes refuge between her ankles,

us or her future family. A lumen cape

hangs from her shoulders, but the egg—

all sun—she holds close to her chest.

How to be a tower, a pillar

of confidence, to inhabit that body

at thirteen, still surprised to be on this earth—

how is it that things work? Do you want to play

a game with me? She wants to skate on smooth

streets, go out into the world without someone

shadowing her. She wants to live in her skin.

I bite back my anger at her awkwardness,

show tenderness for the fawn stumbling

to find its legs, mewling kitten. She is far from

these helpless animals. Wolf at the foot

of her bed, she draws or reads, curtains drawn

in a freezing room. She doesn’t belong to me

as much as her body belongs to her.

I look up to her, rising stories

above me, rising above her own body

&—haven’t I seen her

elsewhere & before—she

is what waits to be said.

Alexandra Lytton Regalado is a Salvadoran-American author, editor, and translator. She is the author of Relinquenda, winner of the National Poetry Series (Beacon Press, 2022); the chapbook Piedra (La Chifurnia, 2022); and the poetry collection Matria, the winner of the St. Lawrence Book Award (Black Lawrence Press, 2017).