Ruben Quesada is a poet and editor of the award-winning anthology Latinx Poetics: Essays on the Art of Poetry. His poetry and criticism have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Best American Poetry, The Believer, Harvard Review, and elsewhere. His recent collection of poetry, Brutal Companion, won the Barrow Street Editors Prize and will be released on October 15. Third Coast Review writer Binx Perino spoke with Quesada about his new collection and more.
I’m really curious about your process around this collection. When did it come to you, and how did it develop?
It took me 10 years to put this book together. I moved to Chicago in 2016. A few years earlier, I’d written a dissertation, which included poems influenced heavily by philosophy, essays, and poetry I’d been reading. I didn’t think I was going to do anything with it, and I put the poems away.
My transition to Chicago gave me time to write. The poetry in Brutal Companion that I’ve been writing is unlike anything I’ve produced before. A friend and extraordinary teacher, Gary Young, published my debut collection of poetry, Next Extinct Mammal. The book was published while I was in graduate school. The poetry is focused on my life in Los Angeles, with my family, and about my childhood. In 2018, after having lived in Chicago for a few years, most of the poems came together around central themes and concerns; I had been reading my poems to a friend and mentor, Spencer Reece, who helped me learn how to get out of my head while writing. In that year, those poems were published as a chapbook, Revelations.
It was the pandemic that gave me time to complete an anthology I had under contract. Latinx Poetics: Essays on the Art of Poetry is an anthology of essays from 24 contributors on poetic craft and process that was published at the end of 2022. Also, that time off allowed me to return and assemble the new poems I’d written over the past decade. I had the privilege to attend VCCA, an artist residency in Virginia, where I put a draft of the book together.
I sent the manuscript to as many contests as I could afford. I was thrilled when Barrow Street Press accepted it. I first learned about Barrow Street when a friend won the Barrow Street Poetry Prize for his collection Boy with Flowers. I knew this would be the right place for my book. Then, the editors asked for more poems. I turned to my dissertation. This was a full manuscript of poems that I’d put away for more than a decade. I chose about a dozen of my favorite poems and sent them off. The editors loved them. Finally, the book came together.
I’m glad you mentioned Revelations. I’m curious if you have any thoughts about the difference between a chapbook and a full-length book and what purposes they serve.
Putting together a chapbook feels like I’m moving toward a full-length collection; the semblance of an idea has come together in enough poems for a chapbook, but can it be an entire collection? It can be a sampler of sorts for what might be on the poet’s mind. I saw Revelations as a way to envision something larger. The poems in Revelations are far more personal than I’m used to. I attribute that vulnerability to Spencer. He’s a priest, and I felt comfortable confessing to him, which translated onto the page. The chapbook encapsulated a kernel of an idea that, in Brutal Companion, is further explored.
Also, the poems in Revelations are formatted in justified blocks. When I moved them into the bigger collection, the blocks didn’t seem dynamic enough for the collection. Those poems as a chapbook felt more like the start of something bigger.
With the formatting of the poems in Revelations, I assume the Bible informed them. I did notice in this, too, that you have passages from the Bible as epigraphs for sections.
I was raised Roman Catholic, so religion has always been a part of my life. I’m more of an agnostic now, though I try not to lean into religion. There are topics people want to explore about themselves, and they’re able to generate an entire book out of the experience. It’s not like that for me. When I reflect on a moment that is moving me, it’s like returning to a wound.
My work has been informed by religion. Though, I don’t know how much further I’ll turn to it to understand myself. In these poems, in Brutal Companion, religion is present, but its influence is secondary to the more intimate moments. The chapbook is heavier in tone to me; maybe it’s cast under the shadow of religion.
You mentioned your background in philosophy and the more abstract work that you did. I definitely noticed the abstract work in the collection, but some poems were more narrative-driven. There was a good balance between the two.
That’s good. I’m glad to hear that! Sometimes, I lean into a poem, and it’s all narrative, which is fine. I love a good story. When something is too abstract, it loses me. Some people are really great at writing very abstract work, though. The composition of its language can evoke a musical sensibility and make a clear-eyed narrative unnecessary. We are charmed into the journey alongside the poet. A book I read recently that exemplifies the more lyric nature is Granny Cloud by Farnoosh Fathi—it can be abstract and challenging, but once you get into the rhythm of it, it’s incredible. It needs to be reread, the way you listen to a song on repeat because you admire the rhythm of its sound and meaning. It’s one of the most beautiful books I’ve read recently.
Speaking of other books, was there anything speaking to you or inspiring you while you were putting this collection together?
As I revised, I found myself deeply considering the concept of the volta in every poem–not just as a turn but as a way of ending. For inspiration, I often turn to the works of James Wright and Philip Levine. These poets from America's working class have had a profound impact on my writing. Their progression from traditional forms to free verse that captures the cadences of ordinary speech has created a recognizable and meaningful literary vocabulary for me. As I worked on my collection, I strived to emulate their ability to use simple language to convey deep themes and to create poetry that resonates with the American experience in all its complexity.
Do you think that the music that you were listening to put you somewhere or someplace in the poems, in the narrative?
One artist I kept playing over and over again was Marvin Gaye (1939–84). When I was a kid, my older sisters would listen to him. They played a lot of Marvin Gaye and his story is so tragic. He was shot and killed by his father when he was at the height of his career. His songs are so soft and soulful. His music makes me nostalgic for my childhood. Even though my childhood isn’t the focus of the poems, I think I’m longing for something I don’t have anymore. The music reminds me of a desire to find something that is no longer present.
I want to talk about the organization of this. How did you think about sectioning? How did things fall into place?
A friend taught me to organize a poetry collection in a five-act structure—Freytag’s Pyramid offers a framework for writing a story. He learned it from a mutual teacher we had. A highly structured manuscript is useful in many ways. The book is in three sections; the first section is about familiar or intimate experiences and loss, whereas the second section is more abstract in its thinking about conflict and violence. The final section really comes to terms with the loss and mortality of someone you love. The book shaped itself this way.
What I love, and the editor noticed this, is that the final poem in the collection returns to my mother. That poem is called “The Fortune Teller,” and in the poem, a fortune teller tells me that my mother is going to die. I didn’t realize how it looped back to the first poem about my mother; it just felt right that way. That final poem, actually, was the first poem in Revelations.
I did like that the collection started and ended with your mother being mentioned, and the loss being mentioned. I feel like, even though the final section is reckoning with grief, the collection doesn’t have a tidy, neat ending. The final poem harkens back to the beginning, but it doesn’t give an impression of completion. It feels open to grief.
Sometimes, it’s nice to have a resolution when you can tie things up really well, but this has an openness that is real to the grieving process.
I have a question about the title of the collection. Where did it come from?
I write a lot of reviews, and I have been finding myself referencing “the title poem” because a lot of poets do that. Brutal Companion wasn’t the original title for this collection. It was the title that I gave the manuscript just before I sent it off. It had another title for a long time, Carpenter for the Resurrected. I took the title from two books: The Carpenter at the Asylum by Paul Monette and Music for the Dead and Resurrected by Valzhyna Mort. It had been under consideration at some places for a couple of years, and I started questioning whether or not that was the right title. I changed it, sent it off to a few more places, and it started getting finalist mentions. In late 2023, Brutal Companion was picked up by Barrow Street Press, and they loved the title. The title doesn’t exist anywhere in the manuscript. I was asking myself similar questions about the origins of this collection and what it means to me.
This book had a long sequence poem in it that was about a friend of mine who died mysteriously. When I was in Lubbock, I kept in touch with him after leaving. In 2019, he was supposed to visit. We talked in May or June about him visiting in the fall, and then I didn’t hear from him for a few weeks. I tried calling and texting but didn’t get any response. Later, I learned that he had gone to Austin on a business trip. He didn’t show up to any of the meetings. There was a wellness check. He had passed away in his sleep in his hotel room. I was thinking about that loss and that expectation of seeing someone again, and then they’re just gone. It’s haunting.
For years after, I thought about him. I had that long poem in the book about him, and I thought that book was going to be about him. I ended up realizing that the book was about what leads up to some of the best things and some of the worst things in our lives. We’re going to lose all of these people who we love and care for. It is a burden to carry that, and all the more reason to love and help each other.
Is there anything that you’re currently working on?
I’m currently at work on another manuscript of poems based on a Latin American myth about a cursed woman who wanders the night abducting men. It’s folklore from Costa Rica’s early colonial period. The myth was created to encourage segregation between the Spanish soldiers and the Indigenous women. My poems recast the central figure of the myth as a flight attendant in the mid-twentieth century.
What’s coming up for your book tour?
Brutal Companion is out on October 15. I’m giving a reading at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco with A. Van Jordan, Dorianne Laux, and Alice Templeton on October 23. I have two readings in New York City at BGSQD and KGB Bar. Locally, in Chicago on November 16, I’ll be reading at Volumes in Wicker Park with Carrie Olivia Adams and Leah Umansky. I plan to set up more reading around Illinois and surrounding states throughout 2025–2026.
Binx River Perino is a genderqueer poet from Texas with an MFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College. A participant in the Sundress Academy for the Arts’ 2024 Trans/Nonbinary Writers Retreat, their work has appeared and is forthcoming in Tyger Quarterly, Hooligan, Door is a Jar, Cold Mountain Review, and elsewhere. Based in Chicago, they are an occasional contributor to Third Coast Review.
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