Please enjoy this overview of Luivette Resto's work. Here you will find biographical information, links to poems and interviews, and writing prompts to explore. You can view Resto's reading in Fall 2020 as part of our Institute for Inquiry & Poetics here.
BIO
Luivette Resto was born in Aguas Buenas, Puerto Rico and raised in the Bronx. Resto is a first-generation college graduate who earned her BA at Cornell University and her MFA at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. She has authored two collections of poetry, Unfinished Portraits (2008) and Ascension: Poems (2013). Both these books were published by Tía Chucha Press in the Northeast San Fernando Valley. Resto is also a CantoMundo Fellow and hosts a podcast called Sipping Wine & Talking Sh*t. Currently, Resto lives with her three children in the San Gabriel Valley near Los Angeles and hosts a monthly reading series called La Palabra in Highland Park, LA. Much of Resto’s work deals with themes of motherhood, daughterhood, familial roots, destigmatizing sexuality, and love in the modern age.
POEMS & PROMPTS
She posts a morning selfie, sipping her coffee in bed
pajamas still on, phone held high at an angle
#selfcare #selflove
He hits heart button
She posts a bathroom selfie
as she gets ready to go out
#squadgoals #saturdaynightfun
He hits heart button,
comments with a fire emoji
Social media has drastically evolved the way we relate to one another, ourselves, and the world at large. How has social media altered experiences and relationships in your life? What new language, emotions, and expectations have emerged?
A Poem for the Man Who Asked Me: Where Are Your Motherhood Poems?
He didn’t have the predictable inquiries
do I write in Spanish more than English
do I italicize the Spanish words
or include a translation glossary at the back of the book
with an accusatory tone like a private investigator
out to solve the case of the missing poems
as if I purposeful erased my kids’ existence and memories
in some poetic version of witness protection
Have you ever been forced into a box? What did it feel like to have these expectations placed upon you and how did you fight back?
The blend of Newports
and wine on my breath
remind me of her
as I light my next cigarette.
Holding it the way she does,
poised and lady-like
when she holds court during
unsanctioned smoke breaks.
Write a poem for those who have contributed to the mosaic of your personhood.
He welcomed her at innocence,
surrounded her with dystopic landscapes
filled with lullabies sung by fire engines,
car horns, and police sirens,
made sure her Buster Brown shoes
hopscotched safely from Tremont Avenue to Crotona Park,
never falling between the concrete chasms
left behind from salt poured on icy Januaries,
listening to his metropolitan lessons
of trusting no one, following her instincts
versus hackneyed island rhetoric, writing
ekphrasis poems from graffiti murals.
It is difficult to separate the sights, smells, and aura of a place from the transformative experiences you had there. Do you remember the city where you first fell in love? The town you lived in when you drove your first car or had your first kiss? Write about one or more experiences through the lens of the place or places they happened in.