Cynthia Cruz – Conversation & Three Poems

for the series, The American Wing
curated by Carlie Hoffman and Tiffany Troy

Carlie Hoffman & Tiffany Troy: A writer’s voice is shaped by their unique history, often beginning long before they ever pick up a pen. We are particularly struck by Cynthia Cruz’s reflection that in her early childhood, she did not speak, prompting us to consider the origins of her relationship with language and her path to becoming a poet. 

How would you describe the specific ways these early years of silence influenced the development of your creative identity? In what ways do those wordless origins continue to resonate within the language you use today?

Cynthia Cruz: When I was very young—kindergarten through the second grade—I did not speak. Thus, there is, for me, a deep connection between the origins of speech/language and my having become a poet. 

When I imagine myself as a young child, I imagine silence—I was mute, or, rather, electively mute. But that doesn’t mean I was not deeply immersed in language: I was—as we all are. Indeed, as Lacan tells us, each of us is formed through language. It is language itself that forms us. I existed in the language of the world I found myself in—I was my mother and father’s daughter, my siblings’ sister, and so forth. Furthermore, I was raised primarily by my mother—my father was away most of the day working—a German immigrant. Indeed, I was born in Germany. Which is to say I was born into the German language, first, and then was raised in the English and, specifically, American language. So, already, there is the problem of the language within language: the German accent of my mother’s English and then the British English accent of my mother, having learned British English in school. The question arises, then, of language. On the one hand, we are all already immersed and formed by language, and then there is the additional question of a particular language—German, British English, American English, and so forth. 

Additionally, already in kindergarten, I spent all my free time reading. So, though I was immersed in language and, further, was actively immersing myself in language by spending all my time reading books, I did not speak. What was this willful silence I engaged in as a child? What was my determination to not speak an attempt at? 

It would take years for me to become able to speak. My development—my very slow coming to speaking and writing—has come about as a result of the long, rigorous practice of working through the mesh of language and a coming to, an awakening to, another form of language, one that had the ability to convey what I wanted to say. 

When I studied poetry formally, my writing made no sense to those I was surrounded by, so I found another school that understood what I was attempting to convey. I remained in this school for a very long time, and, under this apprenticeship, my voice was formed, or reformed, again. During this initial apprenticeship, I revised my poems forty or fifty times. But, I should say: these revisions were not acts of merely cutting away, or self-censorship but, rather, a rigorous process of working through language and meaning: dissociating as a means to access my unconscious mind, the practice of archiving moments, objects, images, thoughts, text from my everyday life, and then, once all of this raw material was set upon the page, the accompanying rigor of working through this multi layered net of language to bring a novel element to the fore. 

Then, it took another long period of time for me to realize that this voice was not yet mine. The poems I had learned to create were crystalline, dioramas one might say, tiny snow globes. What was missing was the error, the instance of failure, that is essential to knowledge acquisition. Indeed, without failure, nothing new can be brought about. So, then I began again by destroying the idea of the perfect poem and, instead, allowing this aspect of not knowing to enter the poem. Not in a literal sense, not in terms of subject matter—though that also exists—but, rather, in the structure and form. I had learned to cut away everything that seemed to make no sense when what I needed to do was the opposite—to keep the unfathomable, the most embarrassing aspects of my writing—the mistakes, the most wrong word or sound— and cut away, instead, what I knew already. This crucial aspect of not knowing is an essential component of beginning a poem. When I enter a poem, I begin in not knowing what I am about to enter, or say. And this aspect of not knowing must be held close as I continue to engage in the act of writing. Without this letting go—of everything I think I know—the poem will remain flat, unsurprising; dead, in a sense. 

All of this is to say that my coming to writing has been a very long, often difficult, rigorous process, one that is not yet complete and, I imagine, won’t be until I speak—or think— my final word. 

Three Poems

by Cynthia Cruz

CEREMONY FOR A RESURRECTION

Singing Kyrie Eleison in the silvering 
Summer rain in my poplin dress, milky
Blazer, and pink matte tights. Queen Mother 
Leading us into the glasshouse, its endless
Corridors, its locked glass vitrines. Towering 
Ostrich, frozen Osprey, and cowering 
Grey fox, its terror-filled eyes, small cat paws. 
The dark-haired docent rings the bell and I 
Awaken. Drowsy, singing in my cotton gown,
And who in her lonely slip, who by barbiturate
And who by avalanche, and who by powder.
I thought I had died. The mammal-like-animals
Drawing near, my face warm with their breath
My hands wet with death. 

FOGGY LULLABY

Endless green meadow and the clear glass lake
We ride our white horses into. 
Holly Blue, Chalk Hill, Black Dawn, and Comma. 
On the long table in the bedroom I share 
With the other girls, the mint-green
Plastic record player is playing Joni Mitchell’s 
Blue. I am singing, while the angel, Bunty, 
Strums along on her Taylor Baby Mahogany
There are so many sinking now, 
You’ve got to keep thinking
You can make it through.
My entire life, I have never been
So alone. I am running down the dirt path,
Back to my hometown.

NOCTURNE

Small Steiff fawn, black wax candles from Rome. 
Drawings of home, affixed with silver
Duct tape to the bedroom wall. Voided 
German passport, postcard of a jack rabbit. 
Letters from my father, bound in ribbon 
From the blue and white checked box
Covered in acrobats and harlequins
Packed with tiny Belgian chocolates
Bought at the airport in a state of panic 
En route to this dream. Alone, I am 
Opening monographs to images of apocalypse. 
Wherever I go I am snowbound, With thoughts of him, 
Whom I should shun. I loved them all, one by one,
I cannot gain ground, I cannot outrun.

About the Author:
Cynthia Cruz is the author of eight collections of poems, two collections of critical essays, and one novella. Two new collections of poems are forthcoming: Sweet Repetition in 2025 from the University of Chicago Press and Twilight with Four Way Books in 2026. Cruz is the recipient of fellowships from Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony, as well as a Hodder Fellowship from Princeton University and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Her recent collection of poems, Hotel Oblivion, was a finalist for the Kingsley Tufts Award and the winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award. Cruz earned a BA in English Literature at Mills College, an MFA in poetry at Sarah Lawrence College, an MFA in Art Writing at the School of Visual Arts, an MA in German Language and Literature at Rutgers University-New Brunswick, and a PhD at the European Graduate School, where her research focused on Hegel and madness.

Author’s Website: https://www.cynthia-cruz.com/books