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AUDIO TRANSCRIPT

Poetry Off the Shelf: All the Shiny Knives

(MUSIC PLAYING)

Helena de Groot: This is Poetry Off The Shelf. I'm Helena De Groot. Today, "All the Shiny Knives." The Mexican-American poet Monica Rico grew up in Saginaw, Michigan, not far from the General Motors plant where her father worked. In her debut collection, Pinion, she evokes this plant: the iron at 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, the darkness, the noise of the assembly line. She also describes the work her mother did in the home, including the hours she spent in the kitchen, cutting tomatoes, squeezing lemons, making enchiladas, fried chicken, rice. In one poem, Monica Rico writes, "I believe men made work for women, invented tile, starch, matrimony." In her own life, she was determined not to repeat the pattern she saw growing up. In a poem titled "Luxury," she writes: "I know I'm not supposed to like it, alone at the table, peeling the chicken skin off and into my mouth, the crisp salt sting of hot sauce stuck to fingers, and I am eating the prettiest piece first. I served no one and ate entirely with my hands." Two years ago, Monica Rico got a bad cancer diagnosis. When we talked, she was still undergoing treatment, and the whole process had made a mess out of everything she once loved so uncomplicatedly, from eating food to reading books. Here's Monica.

Monica Rico: It's been really weird as a writer. You're also equally an avid reader, and so anytime anything happens to you in your life, good or bad, you go to the bookstore, you go to the library, and you find those books that help get you through that. And for me, when I was diagnosed with cancer, I started looking for books, and they were so unhelpful. They were so dark. I couldn't read about people's diagnosis at all. It was just so triggering. And then I tried to pick out books specifically that I knew the person survived cancer and had a happy ending, but I felt really betrayed because I couldn't find anybody who specifically had my exact situation. And so for my first year of diagnosis, I didn't really read anything, and I also couldn't read because my treatment, the chemotherapy I was receiving, was so strong that I would read a paragraph and have no idea.

Helena de Groot: And what was it like to find your way back to reading?

Monica Rico: Well, I always go back to food. I love cooking, and I love food a whole bunch. And during treatment, food became a very big thing to me, because chemo also changes your taste buds. So, it makes everything very bizarre tasting, and until you finish your treatment, it takes months for your taste buds to come back. So that's how I got back into reading, as I started reading books about food.

Helena de Groot: Oh, so before you could taste again, you were already reading about food to just be like, "I'll just do it in my mind."

Monica Rico: Yeah, I mean, because I like to cook a lot, and I love to read about food. One of my fantasies was always to be of someone who could write about food and get paid for it.

Helena de Groot: I know, right? Go to restaurants and get paid. I don't know how that is a job, but yeah, it sounds amazing.

Monica Rico: Well, if you ever wanna be treated really well at a restaurant, the writer Jim Harrison suggests [you] bring out your notepad and a pen and ask to keep the menu—and they'll think you're a journalist, and you will get the best service. I've tried it. It works. It's great. And I felt super bad afterwards because I was like, "Oh, man, I don't get to write this nice review for this really lovely restaurant." I went out to eat once, and there was no one in this restaurant, and it was this really fancy, beautiful restaurant. And I was just getting ready to start culinary school. And the entire restaurant, because it was so quiet, the chef started sending out little tastes of different kinds of food for us because the staff said, "Hey, this girl kind of knows something about cooking," and I impressed them with the tiny amount of knowledge that I knew, and we got so much food that night, and it was fabulous.

Helena de Groot: I love that. I wanted to ask you about culinary school. When did you decide [on] culinary school—what was going on in your life? Who were you and what led you to that decision?

Monica Rico: Well, I finished my first master's degree in creative writing, and my brother had just opened a restaurant. And so when I graduated, he needed help and asked if I would come help him work at the restaurant. And I knew absolutely zero about restaurants. I knew nothing about cooking. I knew how to cook maybe three things. And that was the first job that I had out of grad school. My brother decided to start showing me how to do little things here and there, and I became really just obsessed with being a dishwasher. I don't know. There's something maybe just appealing to me about grunt work, and I just became like—"I'm a dishwasher"—and every day I would get in there, I would set up my station exactly how I wanted it. I would make sure that the dishes being put in the sink didn't have food covered in them, or everybody's napkins, and I would just get this really orderly structure happening. And I just kind of felt like this is my place in life. At that point, I was trying to publish, and publishing in the early 2000s was much different than it is now. There weren't seven million online journals that you could look up and to submit to a journal. You had to find the journal, first of all, in a bookstore, and if you couldn't find the journal in a bookstore, you could send a check in the mail to get the journal so you could read it first to see even if your poems would be a good fit in it, and then you had to mail your poems out and wait a half a year to get them sent back to you. So, I mean, everything took forever, and so I tried submitting my poems to three places or something and got rejected and thought, "Oh no, I'll never be a writer."

Helena de Groot: Yes, yeah, exactly, and at least at the restaurant it's kind of clear. It's immediate. I don't have to wait half a year for a dish to show up in my pit.

Monica Rico: No, I can just do it and do my job and go home. So, I just became obsessed with being at the restaurant, and my brother really needed help. So, I got to work side by side with him—which was also really wonderful for me because my brother is six-and-a-half years older than I am, so when we were growing up, we didn't really hang out very much together. And being at the restaurant, it was just like being able to have that childhood again with him, because we were close every single day. But my brother and his girlfriend, they ended up breaking up at that time, and so the restaurant went. And after that I was just like, "Oh man, I'm so accustomed to this world," and I thought, "I'm an English major. Maybe I can do something with my writing and food"—again, that dream job of being a food writer. And I was just like, "I should go to culinary school. I feel like this is where I'm meant to be, is in the kitchen. I just feel really comfortable here. I like having all the shiny knives around me."

Helena de Groot: Yes, that are sharpened every day or even multiple times a day. It's so satisfying.

Monica Rico: It's wonderful. So, the restaurant closed, and I signed up for culinary school.

Helena de Groot: And how old were you at that point?

Monica Rico: I had just turned 30, so I was a very old person in culinary school. I mean, everyone in the class was 18 years old.

Helena de Groot: Wow. And I haven't gone to culinary school, but I have worked as a line cook in a restaurant. And what I find so fascinating about cooking is how physical it is, and things like knife skills, and you have to be quite strong to do a lot of the things. These big heavy pans and stuff. So, can you tell me a little bit what it was like physically for you to go to culinary school?

Monica Rico: Well, my feet were getting used to being up standing on them all day, and I had found shoes that my feet really liked. So, it was comfortable to be up for eight hours or ten hours on my feet. So, I think that's always the first huge shock to anybody's body when you enter the service industry. And the second part is that the kitchens are hot. I specifically studied baking and pastry, and I specifically studied that because every book that I had read up to that point that talked about jobs in the kitchen, they always said: "Be a pastry chef, because you get to come in early when no one's there, work in air conditioning, and then leave." And I was like, that sounds like a dream.

Helena de Groot: That's amazing. That's like people who say, "Become a dentist, not a doctor. There's no such thing as a dentist emergency."

Monica Rico: Exactly. So that's what I was looking forward to, but it's the standing that's hard on the body, it's the leaning over where you're kind of hunched over doing a repetitive action. I remember the first time I had to pipe little rosettes on a cake, so it's like you're not just doing one cake, you're doing a hundred cakes, right? So, at the end of the day, your hand is stuck. It's like a claw.

Helena de Groot: And were there moments when you thought: "I made a mistake?"

Monica Rico: Never. There was never a moment. I felt like I was exactly in the right place. I remember calling my dad when I was in culinary school and I would tell him about what we did—cause to be in the baking and pastry, you had to get up pretty early in the morning, and so by three o'clock I was done with school, but I would come home, eat something, and just pass out. And so I would call my dad and talk to him. And my dad worked in the plants, and I felt like I had earned my father's respect because I was in this hot-ass kitchen.

Helena de Groot: So, he had been at General Motors, kind of near the ovens and iron or smelting, or whatever that all is.

Monica Rico: Absolutely, and he was just like, "Now you know what it's like." And so I think up until that point, my dad thought I was kind of soft, but I had earned my little stripes.

Helena de Groot: It's a different kind of oil you had on your hands—but you had oil.

Monica Rico: Exactly, and the thing that I think is so important about culinary school, which I think is important in any kind of training when you wanna learn something, is that you have to start at the very bottom. For instance, when we have to zest a lemon, you don't get the lemon zester and you get to just brush it off real fast. You don't get the lemon zester until you can peel the zest off with a gigantic chef knife, get all of the white pith out, and then mince it perfectly fine. And that became how I started to look at everything in my life I wanted to understand.

Helena de Groot: Can you give me an example?

Monica Rico: For instance, taking care of your car, changing a tire or changing your own oil. Then the car becomes something that you care about more deeply, because you're like: I've replaced my own alternator. I have put my hands inside the heart of my car. It just makes you appreciate everything to a deeper level, because you've done it all from the very beginning. You haven't skipped any steps.

Helena de Groot: But I think it's easier to imagine doing that with something mechanical like your car, or even cooking—which of course is more of an art, but it's also still something that it's a project you can finish; you can start, and at the end you have a dish. With writing a poem, it's a little messier. And so I'm wondering, how do you bring that structure into something as unpredictable as writing a poem? What is step one for you?

Monica Rico: Well, I spend a hell of a lot of time just thinking about my poem. One of the ideas that I first thought of when I was writing my book Pinion was the time when I was maybe about five years old and my mom took me to the plant to see my dad. They allowed your family to come in and say hi. And it was a really weird experience, 'cause when you go into the plant, they don't really prepare you for how dark it is inside there. There [aren't] bright lights everywhere. It's kind of dark, and there's all of these sparks flying from the machines, so it looks like fireworks. So I had to think about that image for a really, really, really long time and think about—what did I smell, what did I see? I remember feeling the heat. And the only way I can describe the heat that I felt at the plant was if you've ever been on a New York sidewalk, waiting for a bus in the middle of summer, and the exhaust from the bus just hits you, and it's so hot and disgusting you feel like you're gonna pass out. So, I think about it for a long time, so when I finally come down to actually write the poem, it pretty much comes out how it ends up.

Helena de Groot: So it comes out as it is, more or less, because you've done the work internally of zesting the lemon with a big knife.

Monica Rico: Exactly.

(BREAK)

Helena de Groot: So, here's what's happening. I had a whole other line of questioning prepared, but you are sending me down another direction—and I love going down a direction of whatever we talk about, but I need a second to find the poem that I thought we could read, because now I wanna hear about your dad and the plant. So can we do "Citizenship of the Owl at General Motors?"

Monica Rico: Sure.

Helena de Groot: And maybe before we go into it, can you tell me a little bit about what you would see of your dad when he was working there? Like, what time did he leave? When did he come home? What was he like when he came home? Would he tell stories about the work?

Monica Rico: Yeah, so I didn't see my dad at all for my childhood. I kind of joked that I was raised by a single parent. I had two parents, but I was really just mostly raised by my mom, because my father worked second shift, which meant that he would start work at 3pm and then he wouldn't get home until 11:30pm. On the weekends he always worked overtime. He would work on Saturdays and Sundays, so I would get to see him for the few hours before he went to work. And often he was working on his car or doing stuff that he had to do just in general around the house. So I didn't see him that often. And when I did see him, if I wanted to hang out with him, I had to work on the cars with him. I had to hand him screwdrivers and wrenches and I had to be interested in cars if I wanted to talk to him at all, 'cause that just seemed to be his hobby and his passion. So when I was really little, I was like: my dad likes to wax the cars, he likes to wash the cars, how can I help out this way? And because of my height, I was the right size to wash the tires and wax the rims of the cars. So that's when I was very—you know, I got really good at doing it. And then as I grew taller, I could start waxing the doors of the car. That's how our relationship began.

Helena de Groot: And when did the plant shutter? How old was your dad? Was he still employed there?

Monica Rico: So the plant was—it went through phases. So, what GM does when they close plants, they often don't close the entire facility, they just close parts of it—or the plant will be bought by somebody else, and they'll start manufacturing perhaps a different part from this one area. So, my father started working at the foundry when my parents first got married. And when my father was getting ready to retire, he had his salary, he had his pension, he wanted to ease into it and maybe just work no more weekends, and then maybe just a few times a week. And he wanted to do it his own way, but of course, you know, GM was just like well, if you wanna stay here, you have to be an hourly worker. So, it's just like, here's somebody who makes this amount of money and now you're telling them we're gonna pay you $15 an hour. And it's just like, I don't think so, like what's the point?

Helena de Groot: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Wow, that is so insulting after so many decades.

Monica Rico: Absolutely, and it's just like—my father was a skilled electrician. So his knowledge and expertise was needed, and he could have helped train other people to do his job, and he should have been compensated to do that, because of all the vast knowledge that he held after being an electrician for over 30 years. So, it's just too bad.

Helena de Groot: Did he take it hard?

Monica Rico: He was upset, but I think he also was just like, "I've worked so hard all of my life, like I'm ready to be retired and do things that I wanna do, and go on vacations, mess around . . ." My dad has an Oldsmobile 442, and so he can work on that. So, I think he was just ready to start this other part of his life where he was not associated with GM. I mean, my dad's also a huge reader, which is also fun because that's what we do—we swap books back and forth with each other, which is great.

Helena de Groot: Wow, has he read your poems?

Monica Rico: Yes, my dad's pretty much my first reader of all of my poems.

Helena de Groot: And what was his reaction to the poems about him?

Monica Rico: Oh, he loved them. I think my dad just thought it was super cool to even be considered—like, the stuff that he did, that anybody would wanna write about it.

Helena de Groot: Yeah, I love that your dad is such a fan. I mean, such an early reader of your poetry and that you trust him.

Monica Rico: Well, I did, I mean, 'cause it was just . . . I always wanted to write about what it felt like growing up in my household, and there's no way to write about that without writing about General Motors. And so when I first started wanting to write about it, I wanted to make sure that how I was doing it was a way that was respectful. I really wanted to honor him and show him how much it meant to me that I know he sacrificed so that my brother and I and my sister could have things that he couldn't.

Helena de Groot: Yeah. Can we do the "Citizenship of the Owl at General Motors?"

Monica Rico: Sure.

Helena de Groot: So that's on page 20.

Monica Rico: Alright.

"Citizenship of the Owl at General Motors"

The foreman insists owls like the heat.

No need to ruin a white boy where the iron melts men.

Spilled, it beads like mercury and burns through flesh.

Count what the rocket sheds. A shot blast bursts through the core.

Without sun, Michigan sounds like Michoacán where his eyes didn't need shielding.

An engine block sealed shut in the beautiful body of a Chevy.

He casts this metal heart.

A continuous hum of the line shaking a path through darkness.

It is the pulse of the owl.

He hears it as he flies home

And strikes a second time on the first songbird of morning.

Helena de Groot: Thank you. I love how physical your poems are. I mean, so many of them are about taste and cooking. But here too, like, "he casts this metal heart," "a continuous hum of the line shaking a path through darkness." You know, "it is the pulse of the owl." That sense that I get from that is like, you've worked all day in this loud factory, that is like shaking and humming and buzzing. And you kind of have that in your system. Even as you drive home, that's what you hear, that's what you feel. How did you get there? 'Cause that is such an inner physical experience of what it was like to be at the plants. So, was that just your imagination? Did that come out of conversation with your dad? How did you get to that physicality?

Monica Rico: Well, I did a lot of research. There's a really cool archive through the UAW, and they basically did like an oral history with people who worked at the plant. There's even a more specific grouping where you can find just Mexican Americans, and, like, they talk about what it was like working at the plant in like the ’60s and ’70s. And I also recorded conversations of my dad and my uncle talking about working at the plant. I just would ask them to just tell me what a typical day was like for you when you would just walk in, what would happen. And they would just start gossiping. And I would just sit there and just like take it all in.

(BREAK)

Helena de Groot: You know, what I found so fascinating about your book is [that] there are all these glorious poems about your father, and then your grandfather, at the plants. And then there are these domestic poems where the women are the center. And the men in these poems, they seem to be tethered quite tightly to patriarchy. When they're home, they sit at the head of the table. They are fed first, that's how it goes. There's no questions about that. And the women are sort of . . . they're much harder to read in a way. Because the men, you're like, "OK, I get where you get your behavior from." We have a name for this. And, of course, the women, too, because that's the other side of patriarchy. But they were much harder to decipher. And I was intrigued by your mother and your relationship to her, but especially your grandmother, who you say multiple times throughout the book was mean. And you don't really explain why, why anyone is mean. I don't know if that's even a good question to ask. So let me just ask you a little bit about your grandmother. Like, how present was she? Was she your dad's mother?

Monica Rico: Yep, my dad's mother.

Helena de Groot: So how present was she for you growing up, and what was she like?

Monica Rico: She was very present. I mean, I saw her pretty much every week when I was growing up. And she played a very big role in my life, 'cause I just was so intrigued by her. I just found her really fascinating because she was so private and she wouldn't tell you anything about her life or her likes or dislikes. If she wanted to talk to you, she would be really open. I mean, not open, but like she would be really funny. But it was mostly like she was all business all the time. And what I mean by that is that she was a caregiver and her whole life, she had been a caregiver. So, if she needed to give care, that's what she was doing. If you didn't need care, then you weren't on her radar at all. And so I didn't require any care because I had two parents at home who were taking care of me and feeding me. So, I was just like a non-person to her. She wasn't nurturing, like when you think of a grandmother who's like, "Oh, come on into my house and let me give you something to eat." She didn't do that to me at all. And my dad had told me stories about her. She used to beat my father, so I was terrified of her. I knew that very early on. And like when she would kiss you, every once in a while she'd kiss you, she would grab you right here by your shirt. She'd pull you down really close to her face. And like it was always the fear that she was gonna hit you. But then she would give you a small kiss on the cheek. She'd be like, "Love you." That describes my relationship with my grandmother.

Helena de Groot: That's so interesting. I think what really comes out in your book is the way that violence and care are intertwined. And what I found so fascinating, too, is like in the poems about your grandmother, they're written very much from a child's perspective. What I don't read in the book is sort of your now understanding of her. When you look at her with your grown-up eyes and having gone through more life, why do you think she was like this?

Monica Rico: Oh, I just think that her life was just so unimaginably hard. When she was only nine years old, her mother died and she was put in charge of her family. She had to cook and clean and take care of absolutely everybody. And then when she turned 18, my grandfather kidnapped her from Mexico and brought her to the United States. It's not like she was in love with him and ran away with him. I mean, I don't think my grandmother ever particularly liked my grandfather very much. So, then she comes here to the United States. She's separated from her entire family. She can't go see them whenever she wants to. And then she has several kids of her own, and she has to take care of them. And then her kids have kids, and she helps take care of those children. She was just a really hard-working woman. And I just feel that she wasn't given a lot of luxuries. And I think that's why she was withholding, is 'cause that was something that was special. Her memories were the only things, they were the only jewels she had.

Those were the only sacred beautiful things that were hers and hers alone. And I feel like that's why she didn't share them with anybody.

Helena de Groot: And when did you learn all this?

Monica Rico: I would ask my tías, I would ask my dad, "Tell me what you remember about grandma." To the smallest things. Like, I know she loved salmon. Whenever we took her out to dinner, she would always order salmon. She loved fish, fish was her favorite. Just little things like that I would just ask people about, and I just started putting it all together. And then my grandmother died in the early 2000s. So almost 20 years now. And when she died, it was on Thanksgiving, and it was after she had Thanksgiving dinner and everyone left her house. And I always kind of just thought to myself, she was like, "I don't have to do any more work, I can relax." And she just took her exit.

Helena de Groot: I mean, you hear that, right, that people wait, let's say, until their child is at the hospital so that they can say goodbye. But this is a very symbolic timing. Was anyone still in the house, or everyone had left?

Monica Rico: Everyone had left, she was completely alone, and she died with her rosary in her hand. But I always just like to think that you know she had a full belly, she was happy, and I liked, you know, I hope she left the dishes for someone else to do. (LAUGHS)

Helena de Groot: Absolutely. Well, I was thinking of reading "Behind the Back of a Robin." But if there's another poem about your grandmother that you prefer to read, I'm all ears.

Monica Rico: No, that one's fine.

Helena de Groot: It's on page 35.

Monica Rico: Oh, thanks.

"Behind the Back of the Robin"

Even in the city 

the cicadas are heavy 

with song and I am 

too young to call 

a bird anything but red. 

What do I 

name this, when 

the sun enters

my head. I’m afraid 

the flowers are blooming again. 

When my grandmother feeds 

my father I know 

to sit still. A girl 

at my school eats 

ants. She snaps 

off their heads and says 

they taste like candy

and it doesn’t scare me 

like my grandmother does. 

I can’t look at her

or the doll she sewed 

me, without arms.

When she leaves the kitchen 

my father lets me eat.

The sting of menudo sharp, 

listening for the sound of her 

to return, like a curse.

Helena de Groot: Thank you. You're so good at these details that do so much work. I mean the ants already, it's just such a totally out-of-pocket detail. "A girl at my school eats ants. She snaps off their heads and says they taste like candy." And then that sort of horrifying image is sort of this, "Oh, but it doesn't scare me like my grandmother does." Like, you don't need to say a lot about her to sort of get into the child's psyche, of the hierarchy of fears. And then "I can't look at her or the doll she sewed me without arms." Again, it is such a horrifying, uncanny image, A doll without arms, especially one that is hand-sewn, and there's love in there, but then this sort of bizarre form of it. And I'm just wondering, with a figure as big as your grandmother—what was it like to distill someone who you've spent your lifetime with into these tiny little blips?

Monica Rico: Well, how it started out was . . . [When] the book started, I was only writing about the men and I was only writing about the plant, and I was at a break in between my two classes, and I was walking in this beautiful marbled hall. And there's many beautiful, marbled halls at the University of Michigan. It's just like this really gorgeous old building. And you feel very important and special being in there, and your shoes click, click, click, click on the floor. And I was thinking—I was in graduate school. I was turning 40, and I was obviously the oldest person in graduate school. And I was just walking and thinking. My grandmother didn't learn how to read or write in English until she was in her 40s. And I thought, like, how cool is that, that I'm here at the same time, getting to do my MFA. And then I just—it kind of hit me that I was like . . . I would like to try and write something about my grandmother. And then I thought, well, I know so little about her, how do I honor her and honor her memory with just these few conversations I've had with her? And so that just became my obsession, and I just became obsessed with thinking about her. I have a picture of her on my writing desk that I would just sit and stare at, and I would just sit and listen to her favorite music, just constantly. And I would ask my dad to tell me a favorite meal she would make for you. And then I would try to recreate that meal from just his memories. And I would try to eat it and just think like her. And it was wonderful to get to know her that way. And I kept thinking how wonderful it would be to cook for her and take care of her. And so that's what I wanted to do with those poems, is just to offer her something and just let her know that like I empathize with you. And I have some idea of what you've been through. And I just wanna hug you, I just wanna care for you.

Helena de Groot: And you wrote her a very complicated honoring. Can you tell me about that idea of honoring your grandmother, and also being honest about how she terrified you and how she was mean to you. You know, like how do you honor yourself and your experience, and how do you honor her and her experience at the same time?

Monica Rico: You know, it's a lot of gentleness. It's gentleness with myself, it's gentleness with her. But I also feel it's not fair to paint her in a way that I didn't see her. I also wanted to honor my father's memory of her too. And she was chilling and terrifying when my father was growing up. And my father was traumatized by her. And that was super important to me to get across, because that trauma that my father felt, I also felt. And so I wanted to go back to both my father and myself when we were little kids and just say to us, we don't have to be scared, we have each other, that we can be safe.

Helena de Groot: Was your dad open about that?

Monica Rico: Absolutely, yeah.

Helena de Groot: And do you feel like it was a struggle for him to learn how to love in a sort of warmer way?

Monica Rico: Oh absolutely. I mean, I tell my husband all the time. Like, my dad didn't hug us when we were little kids. When I would have to hold my dad's hand as a little kid, this is how little I was. He would just put his pinky out and I would just hold on to his pinky, and that's how we would walk. I mean, he was really standoffish until I became an adult. Like my dad really didn't talk to me all that much.

Helena de Groot: So it was really your doing, this sort of growing closer, and creating this intimate bond—that was really your sort of effort, then?

Monica Rico: It was, and how it happened was through reading. I would read books and it started in high school when I read The Great Gatsby. I love that book for so many different reasons. And one of them is because I read it, and I asked my dad, "Have you read this book before?" And he was like, "Yeah I remember reading it in college." And then my dad read it again. And after he read it, we talked about it. And that was like the first time we actually had, like, a conversation. And so then every book I read that I thought he might like, I would give to him, and he would read it on his breaks at work.

Helena de Groot: What kind of books did he like, or what did you bond over?

Monica Rico: He liked everything. My dad and I both are huge fans of Jim Harrison. That came much later. Gore Vidal was a big subject for a while. There's so many books. But my dad loves all of it. He went through a period where he was reading Shakespeare plays at work. So, everyone was calling him Shakespeare. He just . . .

Helena de Groot: And did he ever talk about, like, would he have liked to go to college and have that kind of life, or was that not an issue?

Monica Rico: It was never an issue. My dad, he never was a person that . . . He isn't a person who dwells on the past. And he did exactly what he wanted to do, how he wanted to do it. He wanted to be a skilled tradesman, and he wanted to be an electrician, and he wanted to work at the plant, and that's what he decided to do. I think there was a small period of time where he wanted to be a fighter pilot—when he was little, really young and in high school. But my father loved cars and wanted to work on cars. He's the kind of person who's super good with his hands and can build things by himself. And that's just his talent.

(BREAK)

Helena de Groot: I'm just going to look at your poems a little more. Maybe we can read one about your mother—or where your mother is; "about" is always such a dumb word for poems. But there are two poems that I'm very interested in. One is one called "Tomato and Lettuce," and then the other one is "Each is Another and No Other." I don't know, do you want to read them both and have a conversation about how they interact with each other?

Monica Rico: Sure, absolutely.

Helena de Groot: OK, let's start with the one on page 45, "Tomato and Lettuce." And so, before you do, can you bring me a little bit into the world of the poem? So, OK, we talked about your father, we talked about his mother. But we haven't really talked about your mother and your parents' relationship. So can you just tell me—I don't know, what kind of question is that?—just tell me about your parents' marriage.

Monica Rico: So, when I was younger, my parents, they weren't—I don't know if there was a period in my life when I was a small child where I just didn't think my parents liked each other very much. I wasn't convinced they were friends in any way. Perhaps that they were more like business partners or something. I always felt really bad for my mom. I didn't feel like my dad gave her enough attention. I didn't feel like my dad was as caring for my mom as I think she required, 'cause my mom is a very cuddly, hand-holding, huggy person. I mean, we were very nurtured by her. She was very, very loving. She is the best cook in the world. And I was just talking to her yesterday, and I was telling her—my mom always jokes that I brought all my friends to our house all the time. And I was just like, because I had the nicest mom and she made the best food, I was not going to my friends' houses at all! (LAUGHS) So that was our relationship. I mean, I adored my mother but I also felt bad for her. I wanted my dad to be nicer to her. So, if my dad was sleeping on a Saturday morning, if he was still sleeping, I would steal money out of his wallet and I would put it in my mom's wallet, 'cause I was just like, you owe her this. Like, she is gonna go buy something nice for herself or something. And it was the same thing when her birthday would come up, or their anniversary. I would get on my dad right away. Like, you need to go out and get her flowers, like now.

Helena de Groot: Aww.

Monica Rico: So that was our relationship.

Helena de Groot: It's so interesting. And the stealing money from your dad—I love this sort of redistributive justice. I love that you were just like, let me make this right. Did either of them ever find this out?

Monica Rico: No, they didn't find it out until I published the poem. And my mom laughed about it, and my dad was, like, a little upset. (LAUGHS)

Helena de Groot: Do you want to read the poem?

Monica Rico: Sure.

"Tomato and Lettuce"

Then, everything was garnish,

two kids and a house,

a wife who kept the

beds made, shirts ironed,

secrets hidden like dust

on the canned goods.

What can’t be washed

with vinegar—

scum of the coffee pot—or

set out in the sun with

fresh linen

my mother swears

had to be ironed

and I believe men

made work for women,

invented tile,

starch, matrimony,

and ama de casa

to chop the tomato

and lettuce sometimes

in bowls, often on the side

as adornment. What

is the relationship

between mother and

daughter, tree and limb?

The moment I say my

memory is not of her

sadness but of her laughter

I’ve gotten it all wrong.

The bright split of my

birth was to a woman

who wanted me

to wear my decoration—

a tree cleaned of its bark

after a cool winter doesn’t

forget its leaves.

Helena de Groot: Thank you. What do you feel got passed on to you, because when we were talking about culinary school, you said I didn't really know how to cook anything. Maybe three things or whatever. So clearly your mom did not teach you how to cook then.

Monica Rico: She offered to teach me how to cook. I refused to learn, 'cause I was just like, "I'm gonna get a man to cook for me." (LAUGHS)

Helena de Groot: Did you tell her that, or was that just like your little inner dialogue?

Monica Rico: Oh, no, I absolutely told her that. I was like, "I am not gonna be doing any of this. When I get older, I'm gonna have a man do all of it for me." Like, I was just very determined. I also told her that I would never change my name if I got married. If the man wanted to change his last name to mine, I would be fine with it. But I wasn't gonna do it. I think I told her that when I was like ten. I had just decided. Because I thought my mom was sad, I wanted to do things that were different than what she did. I didn't wanna be sad. And so I remember being really specific about that, because I didn't want a man to be in charge of me in any way whatsoever. So, I made that decision very very early on, that I was going to be in charge. Like, if anything, in the relationship I wanted to be more like my grandmother, who was strong and everyone was afraid of her, than to be weak, which I saw my mother as weak. Which—I don't think she's weak now. But I did think that when I was little.

Helena de Groot: And I hear you, when you say she was sad and I didn't want that for myself, I can hear the care there, that you're like, "I wish also my mother wasn't sad." But I can also imagine, and I wonder, if your mother ever took your "Oh, I will never live like you," if she ever took that as a rejection of who she was?

Monica Rico: I'm not sure. I mean, I hope that I was never insulting in any way. But I just feel like my dad wasn't always really respectful to my mother. That's not cool. Like when you're in a relationship with someone and you share space with that person, you have to be really respectful of them and respectful of the things that they need and desire. Otherwise, why share a space with that person? I wanted to be respected in a way like, quite frankly, how men were respected. I wanted that respect. And I naively thought as a young child that I had to, you know, perhaps be more masculine to get respect. And like that's ridiculous. You don't have to do that at all. You just have to be a nice person. And if you respect other people, they'll respect you back. But you don't know that when you're little. You're just like, this is a man's world, so I have to be manly.

And no, you don't. That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard.

Helena de Groot: Yeah. Do you wanna read the poem on page 71, "Each is Another and No Other?"

Monica Rico:

"Each is Another and No Other"

And there it was

the aftermath of my dinner.

The orange lick around the burner,

bright spears of fat suspended before they stain.

I will not find the spot until morning.

Under the chest, quick and eternal.

Being a good cook means cleaning up

and having an oven that won't heat properly.

Much in the way as being in love means hurt.

The sudden cut of fingernail and then into finger.

Nothing I've made tastes like a picture.

The knife a decoration

and I hated my husband

when he bought me a cookbook.

Everyone said I was so lucky.

Cooking was easy.

The kitchen was where women went to die

not to be born as dishwashers.

Day drunk, the pain in my feet holy

and in my apron is the face of water.

You pick the sink, wash, rinse, or sanitize.

One will say more about you than me.

The steam comes off my hand for minutes

caught in sunlight. Why must every place

 have too many windows and girls who

won't pull back their hair.

The curled edge of a blade seems easy

to hone like the stick of garlic and the

taste of a little blood.

I was never a very good daughter.

I let my mother do everything and I

thought her a fool who drew smiley faces

with mustard on every single bologna sandwich.

Helena de Groot: Yeah. Again, it's such a complicated poem, you know? "I let my mother do everything and thought her a fool who drew smiley faces with mustard"— oh, God, it's so cute—but I get it, that you're like, don't be so cute, be better to yourself. Don't just be good to other people.

Monica Rico: Well, yeah, that was just my thing. It's like my mother, you know, every single day for 100 years, made my father lunch to take to work. She made him really, really nice lunches to take to work, not just sandwiches. But even when she made a sandwich, she would draw a heart with the mustard or a smiley face with the mustard. And that was just, to me, like that was just so over-the-top with what I thought he deserved, you know?

Helena de Groot: Yeah. I mean, one thing that I think is so interesting is, like, given that you were, like, as a 10-year-old, "I am never gonna cook for my man," like, that is not happening, you know, we're not repeating this pattern here—but then you love to cook, and you went to culinary school, 'cause that's how much you love to cook. Was it a struggle for you to rest your love of cooking away from the sort of patriarchal overtones that it has? This is a very complicated way to just ask, like, do you now cook for your husband and like it, is actually my real question. (LAUGHS)

Monica Rico: Yeah, I cook for people and I love cooking for people. It's one of my favorite things in the world to do, is to have people over and cook for them. And I just was, like, excited about trying new food. And my husband loves to eat, and he was always super excited to try different stuff too. So, it was just kind of fun at first. And then, I think it quickly evolved into, I definitely was trying to impress my husband with my food. I wasn't, when we first got married—I mean, maybe this isn't everybody—but when I married my husband, I don't feel like I knew him very well. Like, you're only engaged for a year or two, and then you get married. And you don't know each other. Like, for a couple of years that's nothing. And so until my husband and I were married for ten years, I don't feel like I knew him intimately in any way. I don't feel like he started opening up to me until then. And I definitely was—he loved my food. And so I spoiled him with cooking whatever he wanted. I wasn't really sure how else to express my love for him, because I was young and immature and I didn't really know how to say those things to him. So, I would cook him his favorite foods.

Helena de Groot: And was that ever complicated? The fact of, oh, here I am doing what I vowed never to do?

Monica Rico: No, because whenever I would get done cooking, my husband would get up and help me clean everything up. He just never took it for granted that I could do that. And especially when I became sick and when I was diagnosed with cancer, I had to have some surgeries and I wasn't able to cook, I wasn't able to do anything. I couldn't move around my house. I was pretty sedentary. And I had to teach my husband how to cook from sitting in our kitchen and just explaining to him how I did stuff. And he learned how to cook, and in the last two years, we cook exclusively together now. And it's so much more fun. And so it really evolved into a really beautiful process. And I feel so lucky to have someone so loving and so caring who turned out to be an excellent cook.

Helena de Groot: And what was it like for you to allow him to take care of you?

Monica Rico: At first, I was afraid. I didn't think he was able to take care of me, 'cause he just works so much. I thought I was gonna have to go home and live with my parents and have my parents take care of me, which was really frightening. I mean, it's hard for them, and it's hard for you. And so I was really afraid, but my husband, he stepped up to the plate really quickly. And just, you know, I remember the first thing I taught him how to make was just how to make scrambled eggs. Like, egg cookery to me is—that is how I will judge everybody, is how they make their eggs. I mean, it's a simple thing, just a small amount of butter. And, yes, just a whisked egg. And making a scrambled egg perfectly, it requires gentleness, it requires patience. And that was the first thing I taught my husband how to make. And he makes the best scrambled eggs.

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Helena de Groot: Monica Rico is the author of the debut collection Pinion, selected by Kaveh Akbar as the winner of the Levis Prize in Poetry. She also won fellowships from CantoMundo and Macondista. She won a Hopwood Graduate Poetry Award and was a finalist for the 2021 Ballard Spahr Prize for Poetry. Monica is program manager and editor-in-chief for the Bear River Writers' Conference. To find out more, check out the Poetry Foundation website. The music in this episode is by Blue Dot Sessions. I'm Helena de Groot, and this was Poetry Off the Shelf. Thank you for listening.