Q&A with Breakout 8 Winner Andres Cordoba

Andres Cordoba is a Massachusetts born writer and graduate of SUNY Purchase’s creative writing and literature programs. He has received honors such as the Ginny Wray Poetry prize, Thayer Fellowship for the Arts, and Patricia Kerr Ross Award. His work has appeared in Italics Mine, The Gandy Dancer, and Gravitas. Never been the type of guy to ruin a sleek futon, he’s your dad’s problematic fav.

Andres is one of eight winners of the 2019 Breakout 8 Prize, co-sponsored by Epiphany and The Authors Guild. Read his prizewinning poem “Those Wistful Sundays” (a section of which is excerpted below) in the Fall/Winter 2019 Issue of Epiphany.

From the Fall/Winter 2019 print issue of Epiphany.

How did you first come up with your winning piece?

My poem, “Those Wistful Sundays,” takes its title from Robert Hayden's masterful poem, "Those Winter Sundays." For many years I only viewed the poem through Hayden's young eyes — running to the comforts of my own innocence — but as I got older, the poem began to shift every time I’d revisit it. The day I submitted to this contest I awoke to a phone call from my sister regarding our own father, and as if fate, I hung up to find that I’d apparently been reading the poem the night before while out with some friends and left it open on my phone. It was a summer morning, my mouth was dry, my sister was sad, a poem was staring me down, and I didn’t know how to respond to the emotions in the moment. So I wrote.

Growing up in Massachusetts with cold winters, long spells of early darkness, Catholicism, whiteness — it’s kinda like living in a racist snowglobe stuck in a haunted attic — I felt a deep loneliness that always seemed to reflect the landscape. The memory that stuck out from these time was of my father — a fervently religious immigrant — beginning every Sunday by waking me up at dawn for service in our all-white parish. I hated this tradition with a passion, and I know he knew that, but in hindsight this small act of assimilation meant the world to him — his scant fifty seven minutes of righteous invisibility. Feeling self-centered in my work, I wanted to write the opening section from the perspective of him waking up on these days. My goal was to capture a feeling of otherness, that surrealism one feels when exhausted, the internal alienation that springs from double-consciousness; what it means to speak when you’re learning your language with each passing sentence.

What do you hope to gain from the year ahead?

Another year of growing passion? I am an incredibly fortunate person that has been given a lot of opportunities in the arts, and I know it’s my privilege to give back and support my peers.

I’m looking for work? Could really use something a little steadier than writing college essays for kids– I’m sorry, ahem, “editing.”

I would love to get any of my writing out into the world, but I’d especially like to get my fiction more out there. I feel relatively confident in my voice as a poet, but find myself constantly battling myself to a standstill when I try to carve out a story. I feel myself writing like a fucking maven, thinking some insipid and vain bullshit like, “Good golly, is this what Miles Davis felt like when he was grrrrrooving?” only to read back my work and puke in my mouth a bit. It always reminds me of that line in “Homeward Bound” by my boys Simon and Garfunkel — performed impeccably by Justin Thoreoux in The Leftovers as well! — where Paul Simon sighs, “But all my words come back to me in shades of mediocrity.” Sometimes, reading my prose feels like what I imagine it’s like what happens when you’re a parent and your babies come home and they’re all annoying and nerdy and well to-do and have cars they think can be a substitute for personality, and it’s like, “Well, I know I was trying something good with them? Does that count? Huh, could it have been the font? Maybe if I look at them all in Garamond it’ll make them palatable as creatures.”

I guess this is a long winded way of saying, I’d love to get better as a person, friend, lover, and — if I’m lucky — writer. Might get a cat.

What, for you, is the most exciting development in contemporary literature?

The sudden explosion of self-publishing! Gatekeeping is dumb, and seeing people excited and proud of their writing is cool. But Amazon sucks. Fuck Amazon. Bezos is a fuckin' ghoul.

What resources are most valuable for writers just breaking into publication territory?

Submit a lot? Lol. As a very young writer, this is not a question I feel like I can provide a solid and not dickish-sounding answer for.

Who is your favorite underappreciated author we should all be reading?

This is so hard. I wanna say some lyricists because that's the most immediate place my mind went when I thought, 'under appreciated.' The work of rappers Chester Watson, billy woods, Quelle Chris, JPEGMAFIA, and Rory Ferreira are incredibly influential to my own work and philosophy regarding language. RIP to David Berman, too.

Do you have a memorable experience of an influential teacher you’d like to share?

I’ve always been the cliché sad bookworm who clings too hard to his teachers. The list is long of the professors I’ve had over the years who have provided me with anything ranging from emotional support to line edits to simply conversation. David Leonardis and Francis Kirby — two of my high school professors — were two of the first people to foster a belief in my writing talents in me, and I would be remiss not to mention them here.

At SUNY Purchase I was privileged to meet not just some of the most passionate professors, but some of the most passionate people I have ever gotten to discuss literature with. People such as Monica Ferrell, Mehdi Okasi, Catherine Lewis, Lee Schlesinger, Mariel Rodney, Usha Rungoo, Kathleen McCormick…. I could truly list people all day and I feel awful knowing that I’m not listing every incredibly inspiring human I’ve met over the course of my education. I can’t single out a singular memory, but I can say that my studies in literature and writing have fueled an excitement for life that I don’t know if I possess otherwise.

It’s been said we write what we obsess over. What themes do you find keep cropping up in your writing again and again?

I used to answer this question with ‘Massachusetts,’ but as of late– especially in my poetry– it seems to have evolved into something a little more abstract. I keep seeing references to the cold, snow, the brisk white of exhales. My sister and I have talked about this phenomenon on multiple occasions. The seasonal darkness that fell over Massachusetts during our childhoods always felt a little more permanent than the last one– a little chiller, heavier, lonesome; my family all bundled and scrambling around our house like squirrels in an oak, never chattering to one another — and I presumed this would be a forever kind of solitary that simply would have to exist in my life. However, thanks to global warming and healthy coping mechanisms, winter has lost a lot of its bite in the years since.

That being said, I’ve been reading a lot of Tomas Tranströmer as of late, and those feelings that once felt so unique and singular have been reaffirmed. He writes about the cold with such a keen eye towards the personal nuances and psychological reactions it elicits. One of my favorite lines by him reads:

I am the Only One
The vacancy that rode me I have thrown
This is my stable. I am growing slowly.
And I eat the silence here.

Such a haunting line that touches upon the solipsistic nature a cold home can yank from deep within. How a long silence can evolve into a hardness, a hardness that can turn you inside out.

What was your favorite book growing up?

I read Lemony Snicket a ton as a kid. All the ghoulish humor has really stuck with me over the years. Flannery O'Connor definitely filled a similar need for chaos and nihilism when I was an angry high schooler. A Good Man is Hard to Find blew my skull open when I was thirteen. Couldn't believe you could write brutality and evils with such charisma in "high literature."

Any writer that was funny, honestly. It blew my mind that writers could be funny. It's just words? What, you gonna laugh at some vowels? Snicker at a syllable? Pretty wild if you ask me.

If the pursuit of writing is a quiet solo one, what are some ways you connect with other writers?

You gotta read your peers. Just gotta read ‘em and you gotta support ‘em. Literary journals, Twitter, zines, Instagram, that mopey shit your little cousin writes, anything! We’re all struggling and we’re all poor and it’s so fucking stupid and naive to think, ‘but maybe I can be rich?’ Art is great and art probably won’t pay the bills and that doesn’t make it not art. It’s important and good to read established people, but it’s just as necessary to see how mediums are evolving from the dirt up. I’m not perfect, and I definitely don’t do this enough, but if I find myself reading something that’s moving me, I try to let the person know. I’m constantly stunned by the breath of the talent that encircles me and exists in the same moment I do! We’re only allowed so many seconds of light before the longest of winters, so ya better off tellin’ someone you love their work rather than sitting around moping because you didn’t write it.

What’s one bit of advice you wish you’d have gotten early on?

Cops are not your friend and they don’t just “wanna check your bag for a sec, dude. No worries, just keeping the city safe.” They smell you, bro! You’re loud as hell! That’s something I’d want perpetually on repeat — even still today — just a little voice that waits for me to think as I head out the door, ‘Huh, wonder if I’m smelly,’ then booms back, “Yeah, my dude! Burn some incense or something!! Buy a cologné!”

On a real note, I have a little sister — shouts to Katgang (the artist formerly known as Kat*orn) — and it’s so weird to see how the insecurity just leaps out when you’re young. How easy it is to confuse your empathy for weakness. She’s one of those people that’s just good at everything she does — she can draw, played soccer for her high school team, freestyles better than anyone I know — and is always so terrified that she’s some alien because she feels deeply. I really wish I had better models for what it means to be an adult when I was growing up because the years I spent twisted up over how I held my hands, or the Charlie Day like high pitch register my voice hits when I get excited, or simply what I loved about being a being, were such a waste. Masculinity is a prison, empathy is a gift, and your dad only yells at you because he doesn’t have the guts to yell at himself. Love yourself and your poems even if you’re the only one reading them! Yeah, that sums it up. That, and cops only know as much as you tell them.