HARLEM, N.Y.
Victor Hernández Cruz visited Harlem recently to read from his latest collection of poems, The Mountain in the Sea (Coffee House Press, 2006). He also treated the 20 or so guests, who gathered at the home of fellow poet Quincy Troupe and his wife, Margaret, to a selection of favorite verses from his previous books.
The gathering was also in honor of Cruz being named the chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, the first Latino to hold the post since the Board of Chancellors was established in 1946. The American Academy of Poets was the impetus behind the creation of National Poetry Month, observed each April, which was started in 1996 to raise the visibility and importance of poetry in American culture.
“I’m still trying to figure out what being in this position affords me,” he says, laughing. “But this appointment is for six years, and I’m looking forward to working with this fine group of poets.”
“We get to read lots of manuscripts and judge who gets the prestigious Academy of American Poets Fellowships and the Wallace Stevens Awards,” he adds. “We get to celebrate poets who are already published and highlight rising poets, the ones waving manuscripts around, going to readings and still having to pay their dues.”
Cruz was born in Aguas Buenas, Puerto Rico, in 1949 and later moved with his family moved to New York, where he grew up on the ethnically diverse Lower East Side of Manhattan. He attended public schools in New York City before moving to Berkeley, California, in 1968. He has taught at the University of California at Berkeley,
the University of California at San Diego, and the University of Colorado at Boulder
Cruz says that at first he wanted to be painter. Later, he started reading quite a lot, and his expressions started leaning towards writing, and those expressions lead to poetry.
