Distilling Life to its Essence: Poet Magdalena Gómez

In New York she had lived at the legendary Pen and Brush Club in Greenwich Village, which offered housing to women writers and artists.

“What a joy and privilege it was to live in that beautiful townhouse with other artists,” she recalls. “I was grandmothered in by the brilliant artist and innovative educator, Linda Rapuano, and I will always be grateful for the opportunity. The caretaker, the late Henry Buttfield, and I spent hours in the house kitchen drinking black coffee and listening to the magic of Muddy Waters and other blues greats spinning on Henry’s old player. Henry, an elder, was the heart of that place, where I thrived.”

But now Western Massachusetts. “There would be no more long talks in all night-diners, no Henry, no rooftop music parties. Nor would I have access to easily available public transportation; the arts; or diverse peoples, languages, cultures, and identities that enriched my life, constantly nurturing my soul and creativity,” she sighs.

Gómez grew up in New York City. Her father was Roma Spanish; her mother was Puerto Rican. “In my first 36 years in NYC, I straddled the Bronx, Manhattan, and Brooklyn,” she notes. “It’s the Bronx I still call home: first friends, first bicycle, first fist fight, first poems, first menstruation, first job, first love.”

Asked about her education, she demurs. “I am less interested in discussing the one I received than I am the one I continue to give myself,” she asserts. “My auto-didacticism began at a time when Kindergarten wasn’t mandatory; there was no ‘Head-Start’; and the lingering backwash of the Palmer Raids, along with McCarthyism, ensured that public schools, particularly in oppressed communities, were designed to build a compliant workforce, not critical thinkers, nor visionaries.

“What were called school bells were more like raging alarms that propelled us from one class to the next. We leapt from our seats with a simultaneous surge of relief and urgency. No time to think about the content of each class before sinking into the next. Rarely, if ever, did our teachers look or feel like us. We were often admonished for speaking our home language.”

In May, Heliotrope Books will publish Mi’ja, a book about her childhood that the publisher characterizes as a “memoir noir.” The book is part poetry and part prose; Gómez considers it a “lyrical narrative.” In many ways, it offers a frank description of an often difficult childhood. In other ways, the book hides as much as it reveals. Throughout the book, the reader senses a spirit that rebels, creates, and longs for love.

Gómez has received numerous awards. These include the Latina 50-Plus Award in Literature from Fordham University, the Massachusetts State House Latinx Excellence on the Hill Award, New England Public Media’s Arts and Humanities Award, and of course being named Poet Laureate of Springfield.

“Being a Poet Laureate is a great honor,” states Gómez, “but it is the experiences and relationships of my life that made me a poet. I am grateful for each and every one. I have learned and grown as much from insult as from love. The lessons are always there, when we dare to look.”

Magdalena Gómez is a passionate defender of her chosen profession. “Many have been saved by the pen,” she argues. “It is an art form of catharsis, intervention; a vessel to safely hold isolation, to express mental anguish, suffering, celebrations, observations, our relationship to Nature and each other. It can hold joy and despair simultaneously. It is prayer and praise, medicine and eulogy.”