Interview with Ruben Quesada, Author of Brutal Companion

Upon the release of his new poetry collection, Brutal Companion. Ruben Quesada spoke to Sundress Publications’ Darren Demaree about his writing and creative decision-making process and the importance of rhythm and musicality in his work.

Darren Demaree: Tell me how this collection took its final form. What was the last decision that made it feel complete?

Ruben Quesada: The day Barrow Street Press accepted Brutal Companion, I added about a dozen additional poems, some of which have appeared in various publications. The collection took its final form in early 2024, and the manuscript continued evolving until the final round of copy edits. While I don’t labor excessively over thematic cohesion, I focus on conveying sharpness and immediacy. There was a time when I would publish work, and I’d want to continue thinking about its situation, and sometimes I’d make one poem two or vice versa, but the poems in Brutal Companion have their own life, and I’m fine with them.  

My writing process has shifted over time. I wish I had your stamina and drive, Darren. You are prolific. I feel like when I wrote in journals, I wrote more. No, with everything being almost entirely digital writing and more painstaking to produce. It’s difficult not to edit as I write. Earlier in my career, I often sought to write about everyday moments, preserving their spirit in a journal and allowing for some emotional distance. Writing in a journal, I was able to have some distance after I’d written it. 

I knew I had to try to sit fully with each moment, allowing its rawness to remain intact. But I was limited by the scope of the journal and its pages. Sometimes this change in approach influenced the final shape of Brutal Companion, as I included poems that confronted moments directly without retreating into metaphor or detachment. Spencer Reece calls it flat and sharp. 

Sometimes you must believe you’ve shared everything you want to share about a situation. A former teacher of mine, Juan Felipe Herrera, has often said that the poem you write is the first iteration that finds its place on the page. Everything after that is a different poem. A different spirit than the one that found its way out of you in the first place. I revise a lot. I spent nights just reading the book again and again. But when the book had its ISBN, it felt complete.

DD: I’m always fascinated by the entry and exit points of a poem or of a poetry collection. I’ll spend forever trying to choose the first and last poem of a book. How did you choose “Terminology” (to begin) and “The Fortune Teller” (to end)?

RQ: The decision to open Brutal Companion with “Terminology” and to close with “The Fortune Teller” came after much deliberation. These poems are bookends that set the tone for the emotional and thematic journey of the collection. “Terminology” is an invocation, a moment of realization and vulnerability. Its opening lines, “My mother is going to die. Her ashes / will be sewn into the ocean, stitched / onto passing angelfish,” draw the reader into a space of reckoning with loss and the language we use to give shape to grief. There is an urgency and a willingness to confront a difficult past and present. I want the reader to feel the weight of this emotional landscape from the beginning. I want a sense of cleaving to loss, much like Li-Young Lee’s The City in Which I Love You starts with a meditation on loss that reverberates through the entire collection. 

On the other hand, “The Fortune Teller” offers another kind of closure. My poem explores themes of fate, reflection, and the elusive nature of certainty. It’s about seeking answers, even as they slip through our grasp, symbolized by the fortune teller’s grasp moments before her terminal revelation. This ending leaves the reader with a moment that lingers, inviting them to sit with the questions rather than find neat resolutions. It echoes the work of my predecessors like Louise Glück, where the closing lines often leave space for reflection and ambiguity, allowing the reader to carry the poem beyond the page. Choosing these poems as the entry and exit points created a frame through which the entire collection could unfold, making the experience circular yet open-ended for multiple yields and interpretations.

DD: That was one of my favorite parts of this book. I think it’s a real skill to show how capable you are in terms of the music and energy of the poems, and know when you have the reader in the rhythm of things, and cut the music completely. There were parts of Brutal Companion where I got lost in the execution of the piece, just the tethers of you at work, but then you so deftly would give us a line or an image that made things stark and profound in the bareness of that moment. 

Were some of those moments built in purposely, or did the weaving of the poems into the collection show you what you’d done, and you leaned into it?

RQ: I’m happy you asked about this. Thank you for recognizing the energy in my poems. I love how you describe the music as “the tethers of [me] at work.” Those moments are needed like “Pyre of a Vanishing Planet” with its nostalgic view of Los Angeles through the newly refurbished Sixth Street Aqueduct. You can find the poem at Honey Literary.

I remember when I first noticed the shift in movement. The heaviness in some poems is undercut by the music and energy you mention. As I began putting poems together, I knew I needed moments of respite, where the reader could lose themselves in the rhythm and sound or the energy and juxtaposition of a line break. It was an intentional movement through the book. It’s satisfying to have a clear-eyed vision of a poem’s intent, which takes practice to understand.

DD: Every time I have a new book come out, I carry it with me for 24 hours. Everywhere I go, the book goes. I try to make sure I read it from beginning to end that day, the same way a reader would. The best part is when I manage to surprise myself. What part of this finalized version of the book surprises you the most?

RQ: I am most surprised to find that although most of these poems and the book were completed in the past two years, so much reading, writing, and thinking from the past ten years is present in the work. I can feel it; sometimes, there’s a phrase or an idea that originated long ago. 

There was so much care taken for the diction and syntax as much as curating the poems to resonate ideas or images, threads that tied it all together. The opening and closing references to my mothers was a dynamic surprise. I find myself in tears sometimes when I read these poems. I keep finding deeper emotions and memories each time I read the book. 

DD: How has it felt to read some of those poems in public while you’ve been promoting the book?

RQ: Reading the poems aloud anytime feels like sharing the work for the very first time. There’s a feeling of excitement that I’m sharing the work, but also a feeling of concern that the poem won’t be well-received. It always reminds me of my time in the 1990s when I would participate in Open Mics at my local coffee shop. I love reading aloud. I struggled with reading as a child because English is my second language. Now, every time I get to read aloud, I feel a sense of pride that I’m able to do it. I’m always hoping for more reading opportunities, both online and in-person. 

DD: What’s become your favorite “performance” poem from this book?

RQ: That’s a question I’ve never been asked about my work, and it strikes me as odd that I’ve never been asked, considering how much music is found in this new book. I’ve been reading a contrapuntal poem I wrote that’s in the new Taylor Swift anthology Invisible Strings (Ballantine Books, 2025). 

DD: Any lessons you’ve learned from publishing this book you’d like to share?

RQ: There are definitely some important lessons I learned with the publication of this book. It’s the second book I’ve published in the past two years—an edited anthology and my poetry collection. Having help and others who share in supporting your work is extremely valuable. It’s important to have a network of colleagues who can share in the promotion of the book through various means like reviews, interviews, and features. My experience with literary journals is helpful only in that they may be willing to offer space to a review or an interview, but again, having colleagues willing to do some of that work with you is necessary. Additionally, getting work placed into magazines or journals that are outside of my network is valuable exposure. Access to those venues may only be possible with the help of a publicist or editor, which can sometimes be costly. Hiring a publicist is something I only recently started to consider. 

DD: Thank you for your time, and thank you for sharing so much of the process of the book. Keep reading it and keep celebrating it. You earned it.

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Ruben Quesada is an award-winning poet and editor. He edited the anthology Latinx Poetics: Essays on the Art of Poetry, winner of the Gold Medal from the Independent Publisher Book Awards. His writing appears in The New York Times Magazine, The Believer, Seneca Review, Ploughshares, Harvard Review, and American Poetry Review. He was poetry editor for AGNI, Poet Lore, and Pleiades. Quesada has received fellowships from the CantoMundo, Jentel, and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. His new collection, Brutal Companion, won the Barrow Street Press Editors Prize.

Darren C. Demaree is the author of twenty-three poetry collections, most recently So Much More (Small Harbor Publishing, November 2024). He is the recipient of a Greater Columbus Art Council Grant, an Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award, the Louise Bogan Award from Trio House Press, and the Nancy Dew Taylor Award from Emrys Journal. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the Best of the Net Anthology and the Managing Editor of Ovenbird Poetry. He is currently working in the Columbus Metropolitan Library system.