conducted by Craig Santos Perez

CRAIG SANTOS PEREZ: When did you begin writing Frozen Accident? How did the structure and themes develop?

ALFRED ARTEAGA: I started writing [Frozen Accident] in 2004. I conceived it in three different sections and wrote the sections in the order they appear. I wanted to have a large narrative section—the middle section—describing Texcoco philosopher-king Nezahualcoyotl taking a Dante-esque trip to hell. The first part—a juxtaposition of Western and Native American philosophies—and the last part—a gloss of the entire book—place the journey in context.

Throughout [Frozen Accident], I wanted to explore Nezahualcoyotl's ideas about how poetry defines life, death, and permanence. He wrote a famous poem called "Song of Flight" in which he literally ran from Texcoco to Tenochtitlan in Mexico city to flee Texcoco after the assassination of his father—a true historical event.

[Frozen Accident] is a poem of movement: however, instead of going from Texcoco to Mexico City, I have Nezahualcoyotl going from Mexico City to San Francisco. But where he's really going is to Mictlan, the land of the dead.

CSP: What is the relationship between poetry, history, and philosophy—three discourses that seem to play a major role in Frozen Accident?

AA: If you juxtapose different kinds of discourse—philosophical writing, history writing, and even science writing—with poetry, you can see that poetry has a particular knack to do certain things that other discourses don't do very well. Poetry dwells with the actual fabric of language whereas other kinds of writing don't. For example, historical writers will put things in chronological order as the main organizing structure; on the other hand, poets often organize along other lines than chronology.

Poetry is concerned with the sound and look and feel of language—the texture of language—aside from the meaning. There's a magical quality to poetry, which makes it perfect for religious and philosophical discourse. Discourses that try to speak the ineffable—to reach beyond what language can really say—are well-suited to poetry because that's what poetry does all the time. Poetry doesn't focus on mere content, but it tries to focus on the fabric of language as a means to meaning, reality, and truth.

For example, historical and philosophical discourses often turn to poetry and metaphors when they get to a point where they don't know what to say. So the relationship is that poetry is particularly suited for those kinds of discourses, but it's also particularly suited for seeking the truth, despite the difficulties. It's a struggle, but poets are willing to do it.

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