Episode 22: Aaron Abeyta on small town life during the pandemic Emerging Form

Could a book really save a life? Poet Aaron Abeyta is living proof. In this episode of Emerging Form, part of our miniseries about creativity and COVID-19, we talk with him about how Truman Capote helped transform him from trying to get kicked out of school to being the MFA Poetry Director at Western Colorado University. We also talk about his work as mayor in Antonito, Colorado, and how the pandemic is affecting the small town. We talk about his goal to give voice to others who don’t have one, how Pablo Neruda inspired him to be both poetic and political, and how a story from the Bible has helped guide him in the most difficult times. 
Show notes:  
Aaron Abeyta
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
Pablo Neruda
Antonito, Colorado


untitled or breathing in a time of covid
--aaron a. abeyta
dust veils the valley like dust in spring
every day wind
every day this place a personification
of ache aching that is a falling
from this horizon into another
poverty does not create character
this   the myth of some false
lying book whose mirrors do not
shine back at us nor for us
in a denver hospital Robert Limon cleaves
at life this breath then another
breath     his lonely isolation
the machine a dire metronome
perhaps one day   we will
all point back to this isolation
the aloneness that wrought this line
or that line into air   and by air
i mean human hearts   this is a prayer
for change for life and breath
for loved ones to recover   to breathe
without laboring or without thought
i am reading Auden   cross of the moment
he does not include in his collected the line
we must love one another or die the poem
absent altogether this wind
isn’t a lie   what seems broken   is
lies are less expensive
than anything we have saved  
here among our hats and buttons  
gathered then shelved toward what we
know will always come for us  
we survive   our ancestors have made it so
their voices   you hear them too
they ring of fidelity   live
endure be    persist return
breathe yes fill your lungs
let the wind breathe may dust
swing from cottonwoods to water
to meadow   may we be
lifted from our veils   all of them
let   too   the broken
those walking toward home
in their swollen and inebriated day
may they   too here in this isolation
serve as an aspect of truth
why did he write these lines
he wrote them in isolation
in the days where the dead multiplied
beyond the wars of books and story
the dead   the dying the swollen
the broken and the barely breathing
they are a form of truth   the living
ache of this place   yes
the wind too brief breaths
that fluttered then flew
as if being alone was a
breath which formed itself  
out of our requisite and stored faith
into song


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