Why Oaxaca?
It's a family affair
los cambios
we call the casita
the country
as though it distills
into its small, unrolling green
every rural place
we’ve ever loved
and Centro, Oaxaca,
we call Brooklyn
because 3000 miles south, west
it contains in itself
a Brooklyn self, a Brooklyn soul
my mother said
you sound happy there
at the casita with
its mountains and valley
made of wood and adobe
and green cantera stone
my mother is old, she’s sick
she forgets but her radar works
her sword outwearing her sheath
happy
happy
happy
how not
in the long unfolding suddenness
of knowing where you’re
supposed to be
—Mark Statman, from Exile Home (Lavender Ink/díalogos, 2019)
los cambios
llamamos “casita”
al campo
como si en él se destilara
en su pequeño y extendido verde
cada paisaje
que alguna vez amamos
y al Centro de Oaxaca,
le llamamos “Brooklyn”
porque a 3,000 millas al suroeste
contiene un Brooklyn
en sí mismo
un “alma-Brooklyn”
mi madre dijo
te oyes feliz allá
en “casita” con
sus montañas y valle
de madera y adobe
y aquella piedra verde
mi madre es grande, está enferma
algunos días olvida cosas, pero su radar aún funciona
feliz, dijo
feliz
¿Cómo no serlo
en esa larga inmediatez desplegada
en la que uno debe de estar?
—Mark Statman, versión al español Efraín Velasco, Chicatanas: Breve Antología (Subpress International, 2023)
cover art: Boat Pond (2022), Katherine Koch
Why Oaxaca?
Yes. Why? Over the past few days, I spent a lot of time writing about this. Because it’s a question I’ve been asked a lot and I thought for this edition of Poet in Mexico it might be interesting to answer.
Why Oaxaca? Why Oaxaca specifically? Why a city in southern Mexico so far from home?
So I thought and I wrote. I wrote and wrote and wrote. I wrote about my first time here in 1986, and then Katherine’s in 1987. I wrote about coming to this old colonial city in the state of the same name and our trips coming back here over the years. How each time we would think, maybe one day, and then how that one day happened.
I wrote about Brooklyn and NYC. About my love for that borough of churches and our changing lives there. And I wrote too about Oaxaca changing, from a sleepy town, its markets and ruins, and the dramatic growth in the last decade or so. How it went from a place whose name no one could pronounce to a top tourist destination.
I didn’t discuss the effects of those changes on Oaxaca. What tourism can create, destroy. That’s for a future Substack.
Instead I wrote about leaving and arriving. The physical, emotional, and spiritual effects of it. How it’s now even a family affair: our son, Jesse, known to most of the world as antifolk musician Cannonball Statman, cheered us on, helped us move, took off for Europe and Asia to tour (for years), and how even he’s here (for right now), and with resident status.
Of course, I brought up bringing our Labrador Retrievers, the black Cannonball—yes, Jesse took his stage name from the family dog—and the chocolate Apollo. Cannonball passed in 2017 and last year we added the black Xochipilli to the family. Xochipilli is the mexica god of poetry, painting, music, dance, and flowers. He’s a goofball—our puppy that is, I’m not sure about the god—enthusiastic about everything, and perfect for this family. Apollo likes him a lot.
I wrote all this stuff In great detail. And then I thought, is this that important? Is it really Poet in Mexico material?
Yes.
No.
Okay.
Why Oaxaca? Ruben Blades sings, “Todos vuelven a la tierra en que nacieron.” Everyone returns to the place they were born. Obviously I wasn’t born here. But, in so many ways, each time I’ve come to Oaxaca I’ve felt a kind of renewal: emotional, intellectual, physical, and, even spiritual. It has to do with the landscape and history. With the people, the food, music, dance, art, and poetry. It’s in the city center and the surrounding Zapotec, Mixtec, Mexica ruins, the mountains, plains, the flora, fauna.
It’s in a silence that permeates everything and is a kind of underlying, constant presence. The silence fills the air even as that same air fills with sounds of trucks and roosters, barking dogs, complaining sheep, goats, and oxen. Sounds of street and traffic, car horns, engines, human voices.
Sometimes I go to different ruins, not the big ones, the attractions like Mitla and Monte Alban, though those are wonderful. I go to the small ones, ruins still being recovered, like Dainzu and Yagul. I’ll find a good place to sit, usually on a rock in the shade and look out across the Oaxaca valley. I’ll sit with a notebook and, more often than not, caught up in the silence of land and sky, I won’t write a word.
So, why Oaxaca? Like that.
Sale vale. Let’s go.
Good Links:
Ruben Blades: Todos Vuelven
Cannonball Statman, Live at Tiehua Music Village, Taitung, Taiwan
Claudia Watch (Presidenta Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo): Plan Mexico:
Trump Watch (That guy): (available in English on the site):
David Lynch: Surrealist, Eccentric, Visionary:
https://www.npr.org/2025/01/16/nx-s1-5065737/david-lynch-dead
Because Baseball Has Character(s): Bob Uecker, His Memory a Blessing:
https://www.mlb.com/news/bob-uecker-dies
I look forward to visiting you and the family, very much. ♥️
Thanks for this. It's been a 50+ year minute since I've visited Oaxaca. You make me want to return, even though I'm sure not to recognize the physical place.