Juan Felipe Herrera

Juan Felipe Herrera (born December 27, 1948) is a poet, performer, writer, cartoonist, teacher, and activist.

Quotes

 * They are standing up and they're crying…and their emotion is coming from all the emotion we're experiencing collectively.
 * On his young readership in “Juan Felipe Herrera On Poetry In Tough Times” in NPR (2017 Apr 12)


 * I believe in beautiful messes…I like to splatter a lot.
 * On his creative process in “Juan Felipe Herrera On Poetry In Tough Times” in NPR (2017 Apr 12)


 * Poetry, with the breath of the poet, the heart of her life, joined by millions, pushes forth with the creative forces bestowed upon us. A wall is a plaything before the positive. It will take time. Change comes — rumbling with letters and caesuras, chants, odd-angled rhymes and earthy people power.
 * On the U.S.-Mexican border wall issue in “Poetry is Built for Compassion: An Interview with Juan Felipe Herrera” (Humanities Institute, UC Santa Cruz; 2019 Feb 27)


 * Beauty, suffering, power and culture are all related. We cannot tear away from reality. It is better to live with all things, then to cut ourselves off and fester in a segmented mind.
 * On the role of beauty in poetry in “Poetry is Built for Compassion: An Interview with Juan Felipe Herrera” (Humanities Institute, UC Santa Cruz; 2019 Feb 27)


 * I think it’s one of the major responsibilities of the poet. As poets we tend to not like the word “responsibility”. We prefer “freedom”, we want to be as free as we can, but freedom and responsibility can go together. We’re responsible because we’re writers, and we’ve been at this all our lives…
 * On the poet having both responsibility and freedom in “Interview with Juan Felipe Herrera” (Gulf Stream, 2015)