Platica Y Poetics S4E2: Alex Salinas

In Episode 2 of Season 4 of Plática y Poetics, the only thing missing was a bucket of butter popcorn and a nostalgic 80’s movie playing in the background. My plática with Alex Salinas, author of Hispanic Sonnets, a striking collection that blends humor, vulnerability, and cultural critique. With its bold red cover, reminiscent of a retro Talking Heads album, it immediately draws the eye, much like Alex’s poetry draws readers into his categorically layered world of memory, critique, and transcendence. His work merges the mundane and the nostalgic—whether through malls, family lore, music, or movies—illuminating how the everyday can open into transcendence. Alex shared how his style oscillates between wit and gravity, humor and heartbreak, always seeking liminal space to reflect life’s contradictions. As we dug into the sonnet as both tradition and innovation: a vessel for wrestling with heritage, assimilation, and individuality, Alex spoke about coining the term “Hispanic sonnet” and the influence of poets who led him to reimagine the form through a Latinx lens. Reading the poems 10-part rumination and Translucent Whales, he revealed how pop culture, literature, and personal memory are woven together to unlock micro worlds for his readers. Themes of absolutes, truth, beauty, and authenticity surfaced. His found art poetics, especially his love of napkins and gum wrappers as a paper/canvas point to how mundane objects can be used to chronicle everyday occurrences. His poem Likes highlight his use of cataloguing as a way to hold both personal and universal experiences at once, gifting readers to live in the stream consciousness, reminding us that humor can be poetic, gifting us a laugh in between stanzas reminding of the ephemeral passing moment.