46 pages • 1-hour read
Citizen Illegal
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Further Reading & Resources
Related Poems
“poem where no one is deported” by José Olivarez (2021)
The speaker envisions an immigration raid the next day of a factory that employs Mexican immigrant women. However, the women outwit the authorities by staying at home on that day, and the immigration officers enter an empty factory. They find only the boxes of socks that the women have placed there and decide that no one works at the factory. The speaker plays with the idea that God, in his benevolent rather than vengeful mode, protected the workers. As with Citizen Illegal, there are several phrases in Spanish, including “si dios quiere,” which means “God willing.”
“February & my love is in another state” by José Olivarez (2019)
The poem comprises four unrhymed quatrains followed by an unrhymed couplet. It seems at first that the poem will be about loneliness, since the title states that the speaker’s lover is absent. “i’m the loneliest creature on this block,” he says as he walks down the street. There is a twist in the final couplet, as it seems that the speaker is fine with being alone, and the poem ends with a celebration of solitariness: “[A]lone is the star i follow. in love & in solitude: / alone is the home with the warmest glow.”
“Down to My Elbows (ending on a line by Shakespeare)” by José Olivarez (2023)
From Olivarez’s second collection, Promises of Gold, this presents an unromantic picture of love. The male speaker is unclogging the kitchen sink drain while his companion in the other room texts him jokes: “[S]o this is love,” he comments. Then he compares the “fistful of nasty gunk” in his hand to a Shakespearean skull (alluding to the graveyard scene in Hamlet), which says, “there is nothing either good or bad / but loving makes it so.” This suggests that how satisfying the situation he describes might be depends on how much love can be brought to it. It is the feeling, not the situation itself, that counts. The lines are a play on Hamlet’s words, “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so” (Act II, Scene 2, Lines 268-70).
Further Literary Resources
“There Are No White People in Heaven: An Interview with José Olivarez” by Andy Powell (2018)
In this interview, which was published in the Paris Review, Olivarez talks about his purpose in writing the poems that make up Citizen Illegal, the range of feelings he tapped into in order to write them, and the influences on his work. He also talks in some detail about two poems, “I Walk into Every Room & Yell Where the Mexicans At” and “Gentefication.”
“Conversation with Contributors: José Olivarez” by Dujie Tahat (2018)
This is an in-depth conversation published in The Adroit Journal in which Olivarez discusses a range of topics regarding his life and work. He also discusses specific poems, including “(Citizen) (Illegal)” and “Mexican American Disambiguation.”
“Praise Songs” by Britteney Black Rose Kapri and José Olivarez (2018)
Olivarez and fellow Chicago poet Britteney Black Rose Kapri discuss their first poetry collections. Olivarez talks about how he learned when he was very young “that [he] was supposed to be ashamed of being poor and Mexican.” He thinks of his poetry as being “against shame and about reveling in all of life. The shitty parts. The grief. The joy. The laughter.”
Listen to Poem
José Olivarez reads from Citizen Illegal
Olivarez reads from his collection, Citizen Illegal, at the UW-Madison Diversity Forum, 2023, Day Two. Running time is 1 hour and 42 minutes.
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