I Give You Steven Cordova, Poet

Steven Cordova is a Latino poet and author who was born and raised in San Antonio, Texas, but now lives in Brooklyn, New York. He is a gay, HIV positive man that writes often about HIV and homosexuality. He was in Brooklyn in the 1980s, when HIV was becoming a rallying point for many men and women to gather together in community. During the late 1980s, Cordova joined the Gay Men's Health Crisis (GMHC) and began to work with HIV-positive men in NYC. There, he began his first poetry workshops, and met many of the people he would continue to keep a writing community with. He has a few other published works, other than his poems in The Wind Shifts. These include Long Distance, a collection of poetry printed by Bilingual Review Press (2010); short works in Ambientes: New Queer Writing (2011) and The Other Latin@:Writing against a Singular Identity (2011) (University of Wisconsin and University of Arizona, respectively). The poems by Steven Cordova in the anthology The Wind Shifts can be appreciated by gay people, HIV-positive people, and dreamers because the poems explore the topics of HIV, homosexuality and dreams in metaphorical, free-verse poems. Bio information found here.

In Meditations on the Jordaan, Cordova begins to discuss one of the major themes that he has in many of the poems in The Wind Shifts: the presence of HIV. The poem is a commentary on two lovers (quite possibly two men, but that is never stated) staying in Amsterdam, enjoying each others' company. But in the background is the presence of HIV, seen in line seven: “...it had nothing to do with T-cells of hospital beds.” It is a poem from the perspective of one lover in a pair, and their journey together through Amsterdam, on a vacation in the European city. Cordova indirectly describes the two lovers in the poem, calling them birds “trapped in paper cages,” indicating the men are no more than literary characters (4-5). In this poem, Cordova emulates other famous gay poets that have come before him, such as Frank O'Hara. O'Hara was a poet who enjoyed writing poems about places he had never been, and wrote his poems in the NYC area in the 50s and 60s. Cordova also seems to enjoy writing poems in 2^nd person narrative, so it is as if the reader is the subject of the poem, rather than, in the case of this poem, the lover of the narrator. “How you” is repeated at the beginning of four of the seven stanzas in the poem, giving the reader a clear indicator that the poem is meant to be a remembrance of a happy time not marred by HIV-related hardships.

HIV is a common theme in many of Cordova's poems, but in Across the Table, HIV is present only in inference. The meat and potatoes of the poem is a discussion of two people on a date, most likely men, and their discomfort at the souring of the evening. This poem comments on homosexuality and also the want of one person to find someone else that is in a similar position as themselves. In this poem, it is two HIV positive men, glad that they've met each other (1-2). After the initial pleasantries of the date, the narrator of the poem starts to drift into negative thought about the person across the table from them, noting that they (the narrator) is not the one who will call after the date (9). Then, again in inference, HIV is brought up in the line “we both know we have that-what?-that ultimate date,” meaning that even though the two people are on a bad date, there will be a time when they both will have the same date (perhaps with death), no matter if they are together or apart (11-12). The last few lines of the poem shows how the date has fallen apart, using the images of forks and knives “[carrying] on and [doing] the heavy lifting now”to show that the conversation has faltered, the two daters are no longer talking, and forks and knives make the only sound at the table. The narrator has not found the one that they were looking for on the date.

Of Sorts is a prose poem that combines two of the major themes in Cordova's poems. The poem is in 2^nd person narrative, and the first line of the poem, with its reference to a dream diary, gives the reader the perspective that the poem itself is supposed to be a diary entry. The fact that Of Sorts is a prose poem bolsters this assumption. The themes of dreaming and homosexuality are present in this poem, especially when the narrator begins to tell the reader about the dreams they are having. First, the reader is “in the home you've made for yourself,” then “in a home made for you by others” (5, 7). The dreams are an interesting juxtaposition of the realities of being gay and HIV positive and dreaming about moving from home to home, as well as trying to find a place in a world that tries to fit people into boxes based on information. The narrator then continues the juxtaposition of the two themes, saying “with dreams...it's round trip,” meaning that there is a way to come back to reality, and not be too affected by the real world and its notions (11).

Cordova is a poet that is gay, HIV-positive, and Latino, all of which are not highly accepted qualities of people in mainstream American society. However, Cordova is not ashamed of who he is, and his poetry reflects his personality and his life, without regrets or caveats.

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