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ABOUT THE BOOK
This journey we all call life is deeply personal and individual to all of us, but some themes and stories interlock almost invariably. Throughout these pages, there is an exploration of those themes and ideas, inviting readers from all experiences to share through the wonderful medium of poetry what this life we lead means to them. Every work offers up a perspective and viewpoint meant to be changed, adapted, and renewed by everyone who reads it. They invite everyone to author their own story on this wonderful journey we all call life.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Angel Anthony Cordero is the proud son of Gustavo Antonio Cordero and Maria Angeles Cordero and older brother to Aaron Frederick Cordero. He was born and raised in El Paso, Texas. When he is not writing he enjoys playing piano, singing, or playing a game of catch with his brother on the baseball diamond. The most important things in his life are his faith in God and the love he has for his family without which he would be unable to accomplish anything. His love for writing poetry stems from his overall love of reading. His favorite authors are H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, Edgar Allan Poe, Rick Riordan, and Miguel de Cervantes. His favorite book he has read to date is 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea. His favorite genre of literature alternates between Historical Fiction and Science Fiction.
This journey we all call life is deeply personal and individual to all of us, but some themes and stories interlock almost invariably. Throughout these pages, there is an exploration of those themes and ideas, inviting readers from all experiences to share through the wonderful medium of poetry what this life we lead means to them. Every work offers up a perspective and viewpoint meant to be changed, adapted, and renewed by everyone who reads it. They invite everyone to author their own story on this wonderful journey we all call life.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Angel Anthony Cordero is the proud son of Gustavo Antonio Cordero and Maria Angeles Cordero and older brother to Aaron Frederick Cordero. He was born and raised in El Paso, Texas. When he is not writing he enjoys playing piano, singing, or playing a game of catch with his brother on the baseball diamond. The most important things in his life are his faith in God and the love he has for his family without which he would be unable to accomplish anything. His love for writing poetry stems from his overall love of reading. His favorite authors are H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, Edgar Allan Poe, Rick Riordan, and Miguel de Cervantes. His favorite book he has read to date is 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea. His favorite genre of literature alternates between Historical Fiction and Science Fiction.
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00:06This is the Speaking of Writers Podcast. I'm Steve Richards.
00:11This is the Speaking of Writers Podcast. I'm Steve Richards.
00:15Today we're sitting down with a poet who believes words don't just live on the page.
00:20They live in memory, in family, in faith, and in the everyday moments that shape who we become.
00:26The life we lead is part autobiography, part self-reflection, part companion for anyone navigating love, loss, belief, doubt, humor,
00:36and the beautiful mess of being human.
00:39Written over three years, these poems come straight from lived experience, relationships, family bonds, faith, conflict, and the quiet lessons
00:48life teaches when no one's watching.
00:50Born and raised in El Paso, Texas, today's guest writes, not as an expert looking down, but as a fellow
00:58traveler walking beside us.
01:01Please, welcome to the Speaking of Writers Podcast, poet and author, Angel Cordero.
01:08Hello, everyone. It is my honor to be here.
01:12Yes, Steve, you captured the life we lead there perfectly, and you also captured what I try and do as
01:20an author perfectly as well.
01:22It is very much my goal that when readers read my work, they can resonate with it.
01:29And ideally, as they read my work, I hope they're not seeing me as a first-person narrator, but rather
01:37that they're sitting there reading and going,
01:40well, I know this is what you're saying, but I would want it to say this instead.
01:44And by all means, I invite readers to go ahead and do that.
01:48Change my work to make it fit your life.
01:51That's why I called the book The Life We Lead.
01:56It's an invitation to all readers to take a look at what's on the page and go a bit further
02:03than that.
02:04So by all means, look in between the lines.
02:08Yeah, when you say the life we lead is for everybody and anybody, was there a specific moment or person
02:15in your life, Angel,
02:17where you realized, I need to put this out there, not just for me?
02:24So I truly believe that stories in many ways write themselves, in that poets, writers, we're just merely the vessels
02:38that put them to page.
02:42So I started writing it my junior year of high school, more as a hobby.
02:47And in reality, I didn't expect it to flesh out into what it became.
02:54Though it started as a hobby just to pass time and enjoy myself and just see what I could write.
03:03But as I kept going through, I noticed a lot of the poems had similar themes and a lot of
03:08them almost spoke to one another.
03:11And that's when I said, I may have something here.
03:14And that was pretty much the first year, the rough draft.
03:18And then the second year was understanding myself as an author and what I wanted to do.
03:27And as I went through that process, I recognized these are my stories in a way, but they're also shared
03:36experiences.
03:37And that's where I started breaking down the book.
03:40And then that third year was all dedicated to partnering with my team at Milton and Hugo and getting it
03:46published.
03:48And I am grateful to have met them and have a team behind me that understood what I was trying
03:55to accomplish.
03:56And that they knew the work was extremely personal to me.
04:02And I wanted to give it to the readers as a gift.
04:07So if I was going to look at a point in time and say that I knew for sure I
04:12needed to do this, I needed to publish it.
04:15And I don't think there is that time.
04:18It was more so a moment in time where I said, I'm going to take a shot and do something
04:25a bit crazy.
04:25And I just hope the readers will be there for me.
04:29And I am grateful that they have been so far.
04:33You have said that poetry can actually be tedious to read, even though you write it.
04:40That's refreshingly honest.
04:41How did that belief shape how you wrote this book?
04:47Yes.
04:48So I find poetry tedious to read, as many people do, in the sense that there's a lot of hidden
04:57aspects.
04:58And you can sort of just read it and not really understand what the author intended.
05:05Or the author is being too coy and throwing in too many literary tools.
05:13So my goal with this book was to play on that and say, well, what if I hid the message?
05:20But then I also told my readers, make the message whatever you want it to be.
05:26And that's where it became fun for me, where as I started feeding it to different people and having them
05:35read it and edit, and I would give it to 10 different people and 10 different people would come back
05:40to me and say, well, I think it means this.
05:43And I think it means that, et cetera, et cetera.
05:46And that's when I knew I had accomplished what I wanted to do, which was every poem should mean something
05:53different to everyone that reads it.
05:55And they should absolutely take something away from it that is uniquely theirs.
06:02So that was my approach.
06:04How do I use an aspect of poetry that is usually tedious in that you're trying to determine what the
06:12author means and flip that on its head and tell readers, it doesn't matter what I meant to say.
06:18What do you want it to say?
06:20Because what you want it to say is what gives it meaning anyways.
06:25The author's intention, once we put it out there, almost falls away.
06:32The meaning tends to take on what readers want it to mean.
06:38And that was my goal, to let readers know, go for it.
06:42If you want what I thought was a love poem to be about fantasy and as far away from romance
06:51as you can possibly get, do it.
06:54So that was my goal.
06:56This book is deeply tied to family, Angel, your parents, your brother, your faith.
07:01Can you share a moment from your life where a relationship conflict directly turned into a poem?
07:12Yes, so there's actually a few moments in it.
07:17There's one poem called Dove, which isn't a specific relationship, more like a collection of them.
07:27But just working on the aspect of unrequited love and how we work through it and those moments of what
07:40would I say if I got the chance to say it because I didn't say it the first time.
07:46And that's what inspired Dove.
07:49And then the entirety of the family section, all of those are dedicated directly to my family.
07:58The one I wrote for my mom, basically, a lot of people would tell her she didn't have a real
08:06job.
08:06She just stayed at home being a housewife.
08:10And for me, I would always say I would not be able to do what I do.
08:15And I would have never had the opportunity to do what I do if my mom wasn't at home doing
08:21the hardest job on this planet, raising me and making sure I turned into a good man.
08:31I'm not perfect by any means.
08:34I slip up.
08:35But she instilled in me, as did my dad, the ideal of do unto others as he would have them
08:44do unto you.
08:46And above all, love God and love others as God has loved you.
08:53And then there's another one there from my brother where I just referenced.
08:58There's been many moments in his life where people have tried to look down on him and or stop him
09:06from achieving his potential.
09:08And the goal with that poem was just to remind him, understand the light that is within you and how
09:15precious it is that so many people are trying to put it out.
09:21No one tries to put out a beacon that isn't shining and reminding him, keep shining.
09:29So there's many moments within the work itself that come from direct conflicts in my life.
09:37And I think if readers go through, they could probably identify most of them.
09:41But those are at the top of the list of ones that I would say were deeply inspired by relationship
09:51moments.
09:52And the final set would be the entirety of the I Knew Them Once series.
09:58That kind of follows the end of my senior year and the goodbyes that come with that, of saying goodbye
10:07to different friend groups and people that you sort of know once you graduate, you may not stay friends with
10:16them and life is going to take you different places.
10:18And then I imagined it through the lens of if I made a new friend later on down the line
10:24and they would ask me, tell me a story of people you once knew.
10:28And that would be the story.
10:31Angel, your favorite authors range from Edgar Allan Poe to Jules Verne to Miguel de Cervantes.
10:37That's a wide spectrum.
10:39Can you point to a poem or two in The Life We Lead where one of those influences quietly shows
10:46up, even if readers might not notice?
10:50You know, contradictions.
10:54For sure.
10:55If they read through contradictions, and I actually have a copy of it right here, I'll go through it.
11:01In flame, in fumes, in passion, in hate, with cold, with ice, with ignorance, with pain, in the dark, in
11:09the rain, in emptiness, in vain.
11:11And the entirety of the poem just goes back and forth like that.
11:15And that's kind of playing on what Cervantes does a little bit in Don Quixote of what's reality and what
11:25Don Quixote is actually seeing.
11:27And that I was actually reading Don Quixote when I wrote this poem, and I was saying, how cool would
11:34it be if I could write a poem that plays on that contradiction between reality and what we wish to
11:42believe?
11:45And then there's a lot of moments where I referenced nature, and all of those are kind of playing through
11:55Jules Byrne writing and how often he references the forces of nature.
12:02Because in my mind, when we look through life and the world that we live in, it is impossible not
12:12to appreciate how powerful everything around us is and how oftentimes we can't affect a lot of it.
12:20But we live in harmony with it, but we live in harmony with it, and that's the beauty of it.
12:25So the entirety of the section that I titled The Animals references Jules Byrne writing and how he uses nature
12:36as a force.
12:39And then Edgar Allan Poe is just present throughout the entirety of the work.
12:48As I mentioned earlier, how do I make poetry more approachable?
12:54What was harder, writing the poems or deciding which life moments deserve to stay private?
13:05Definitely deciding which life moments deserve to stay private.
13:11The poems that I wrote, the poems that I wrote, I knew I wanted to write them.
13:17But then of the 99 poems that made it to the book, there's probably 60 that I cut because I
13:25said the work is good, but that's a part of my life that I'd rather keep to myself.
13:33And finding that balance between keeping myself relatable and also separating the art from the artist.
13:44So that was far more difficult than the actual poetry writing ever was, determining which stories do I have to
13:54tell and which stories do I keep.
13:57After sharing so much of yourself here, what is next for you?
14:02More poetry, a different genre maybe?
14:07So the life we lead in many ways actually picked off what I am picturing as a trilogy in the
14:14same vein of reflective poetry.
14:19I recently worked on and published my second work, it's titled Being, it'll be ready towards the end of this
14:27month, beginning of next month.
14:30And that work is going to focus on revisiting some of those 60 stories that I said I cut from
14:37the life we lead, that I feel ready to share now.
14:43And it's also going to keep expanding on the different themes, and it's shorter.
14:50It's only 50 works compared to the 99, but that is intentional because being in comparison to the life we
14:58lead is going to hit far harder.
15:01It's going to read more as an epic journey.
15:03I'm going to expand on what it means to be nostalgic, a poet, bold, in love, joyful, at peace, faithful,
15:12and hopeful.
15:13So it's going to get deeper into the emotional side of things.
15:17So that's what's coming up next.
15:19He's got a lot still to come.
15:21Angel Cordero's The Life We Lead isn't about having all the answers.
15:24It's about sitting with the questions, honoring the memories, and recognizing ourselves in someone else's words.
15:31If you've ever needed a quiet companion, a moment of reflection, or a reminder that you're not alone in the
15:38life you're leading, this book just might find you at the right time.
15:42It is available at Milton and Hugo, Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and wherever you get your books from.
15:50Angel, thank you for joining me.
15:54It's been a pleasure.
15:55Thank you for giving me the opportunity to share my work and also a bit more of my personal life
16:02and what went into making this book.
16:05And he's got another one coming very soon.
16:07So check that out, too, from Angel Cordero.
16:10And don't forget to subscribe to the Speaking of Writers podcast on Spotify, YouTube, and Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
16:17get your podcasts.
16:18I'm Steve Richards.
16:27This is the Speaking of Writers podcast.
16:30I'm Steve Richards.
16:32I'll see you next time.
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