![\"cristina-garcia.jpg\"](\"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/cristina-garcia.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
\nI know what you’re thinking.
\nThat I’d probably choose some badass king of the jungle.
\nBut you underestimate me.<\/p>\nI hate when you underestimate me.<\/p>\n
As a matter of fact, I’d choose a nightingale.
\nI’ve never heard one sing but I know they keep
\ninsomniacs company.<\/p>\nWhat do you know about me, anyway?<\/p>\n
If I tell you I’d be a nightingale, believe it.
\nI happen to know that only unpaired males sing at night
\nand that they’re iconic in Persian poetry.<\/p>\nYou gonna steal that?<\/p>\n
Don’t pretend like suddenly you’re this caring, concerned
\nperson when all you’re doing is using my shit.
\nLet me guess what you’d be, huh? A pirahna?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nThe Lesser Tragedy of Death<\/i><\/a> is the first collection of poems from Cristina García<\/a>, who has written several novels for adult and young adult readers. (In fact, Scribner has a new one, The Lady Matador’s Hotel<\/i>, coming out at the end of the summer.) The collection also includes “Twenty-Nine Palms<\/a>” (from García’s official website). In a 2007 interview with Chris Abani<\/a>, the curator of Akashic’s Black Goat poetry line, García describes her writing process:<\/p>\n
\n“I’m constantly sending tap roots into all sorts of unsavory places. That’s an essential part of the mystery and discovery for me. I expect to be disturbed. I hope to be discomfited. I want to be derailed from my suppositions. A lot happens before I even attempt to write the first word of a new novel. For me, it always begins with obsession. I start circling particular subject matter or terrains, reading voraciously, giving myself over to these interests… After the pre-novel saturation I described earlier, I surround myself with poetry books, a shifting array of them. Before I begin a writing day, I will immerse myself in them for an hour or two. Somewhere in that process, if you can call it that, I’ll randomly stumble across an idea, a fragment of language, a single word that will lead me to that day’s work. It’s that unpredictable, at least in writing my early drafts. Poetry is my daily bread.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I know what you’re thinking. That I’d probably choose some badass king of the jungle. But you underestimate me. I hate when you underestimate me. As a matter of fact, I’d choose a nightingale. I’ve never heard one sing but I know they keep insomniacs company. What do you know about me, anyway? If I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/650"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=650"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/650\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=650"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=650"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/beatrice.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=650"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}