00:00Ciao a tutti, welcome back to my YouTube channel and welcome back on WNTN Radio Boston.
00:06Today, you know, I am a big fan of poetry. I wrote myself a thesis on a Spanish poetess.
00:14So today I host an author. His name is Angel Anthony Cordero, and he is the author of The Life
00:23We Lead.
00:24So, Angel, what was the journey behind The Life We Lead?
00:29So, The Life We Lead, in many ways, was a three-step journey. It was going from a hobby of
00:38writing it, where I didn't really know I wanted to turn it into a book.
00:42And then, as I took all these different poems that were sort of separate and noticed, wait a minute, I
00:50can attach this poem to this one and this one to that one.
00:53I created all the sections of The Life We Lead, and that's when it became a book.
00:59And that's where the second phase began, where I asked myself, okay, I have a book.
01:06What do I call it? How do I structure everything?
01:10Am I looking for more of a novel view, an epic view, or just straight poems altogether?
01:16And then, once I finished that, it reached the portion of, okay, I have a book.
01:22I have a finished draft product.
01:24I need a team.
01:26I need a group of people I trust to put my vision out there.
01:31And through my research, I was able to find my team at Milton and Hugo, and I met with a
01:36bunch of great people that, as I spoke with them, they understood my vision for The Life We Lead.
01:43I wanted it to be a companion-style book, and their edits complemented what I was trying to achieve rather
01:52than changed it just to fit a popular narrative.
01:54So, the journey behind The Life We Lead was a three-year process of my growth as an author from
02:03simply being a writer and doing it as a hobby and becoming someone that felt, I need to put this
02:10work out there.
02:13And which stories did you choose to omit from The Life We Lead, and why you made the decision to
02:19do so?
02:21So, as I mentioned, it was a growth as an author, and there were a few poems that, as I
02:28wrote them, and then I looked at them in the scope of the book, I said, this is where I
02:35was learning.
02:37This is where the work was very young, and I was young as I was producing it.
02:44And I'm still young, but in the sense of experience as a writer.
02:49And, for example, there was, in the pillar section of The Life We Lead, there was another poem that I
02:54had titled City on a Hill.
02:57And as I read it, I noticed it didn't have the same weight behind it as the other works I
03:04had put in there.
03:06And then, in Shades of Love, that section was originally planned to be eight poems longer.
03:13But those eight poems, as I read them, I noticed they don't belong here.
03:19These belong in their own section, maybe in a different book.
03:23And then I decided, okay, I have them in their own section, but this section is vastly separate from the
03:31rest of the work.
03:32So, those eight poems made it into my new work, titled Being, under the section called In Love.
03:39So, it was a matter of, are these poems good enough, or was I just learning and figuring out what
03:46this book was going to be as I wrote them?
03:49And do they match the rest of the work the way I wish it to be?
03:55Thank you, Angel.
03:56And if you could go back and change something about your book, what would it be?
04:02Okay, so, I've had so many comments about this, and I've even considered going back and making a second edition
04:10just to fix the issue.
04:12I've had plenty of people tell me, you need a more fleshed-out table of contents.
04:16Which, I think this was just a choice I made out of inexperience.
04:22I put all the sections in there in the table of contents, but I didn't itemize each poem and list
04:29each poem.
04:30So, that's one thing I would change, for sure.
04:33But then, the structure of the book, I would go back and I would probably remove a few of the
04:41mirror poems that I did and make them shorter and more to the point.
04:45The mirror poem worked in a way to get me writing, but now I recognize I may have overused that
04:54crutch.
04:54And then, I may have done one too many Villanelle-style poems, simply because, well, 19 lines, I get five
05:05tercets, then a quatrain, and then the first and third line are alternating.
05:09So, it allowed me to create two lines and really build from there, which worked on the first three or
05:17four times I did it, but then I did it five, six, seven times.
05:21And looking back, I probably would have gone with a different style.
05:26So, while I wouldn't change the message of the life we lead in any way, I'm happy with the message
05:32I put out there.
05:33I would most definitely change the style in which I delivered a few of those messages.
05:40Absolutely. Thank you.
05:42And what are your top five works in the life we lead and why?
05:49So, the top five works, it's very difficult to say, but I'm going to have to go with Dove being
05:57one of them.
05:58Dove is extremely personal to me in that it was the poem that took me the longest to write.
06:05I wanted to make sure to nail it and get it down to point.
06:09So, of all the works in the book, Dove is the one I spent the most time with.
06:15The second one is in the pillars section, which I have titled...
06:24Sorry, I have the notes here. Give me a quick second.
06:27Okay.
06:31Oh, let's bring cheers. Sorry.
06:35And let's bring cheers is a favorite of mine.
06:38It actually follows that mirror section I had mentioned earlier, but for this one, it works.
06:43And it allows readers as they're going through it to answer to themselves.
06:49And I liked that interplay I created.
06:53And the next three, my favorites are easily in the I Knew Them Once series, day one, day three, and
07:03then the finale.
07:04And the reason I like those three in that section in particular is day one of that series is the
07:12first time I introduced characters that really didn't have a face in my work.
07:17And it was the first time I took a hit at, can I tell a story in a grand narrative
07:25without naming specific characters?
07:27And then day three was the first time I messed around with the idea of time and communicating with these
07:34characters and the beauty of it.
07:37And then the finale was just a poignant moment where I almost considered making that the finale of the book
07:44at one point because it's a completion of a story of two friends meeting each other over the course of
07:51five days.
07:53And it's one of those moments where you recognize you can meet someone without any intention of becoming friends.
08:02And just because of shared experiences, a little time later, you walk away having shared almost your entire life with
08:10them.
08:11So those are my top five easily in the work.
08:15Awesome. And how do you propose our audience should approach the life we lead?
08:22So the life we lead is a companion.
08:25I do not in any way place myself as an expert in the themes of life that I present or
08:33wrote about.
08:34It is a companion and I hope readers would approach the work willing to change it.
08:41If there was something that I said that you're in your own life experience saying, well, that's not true to
08:47me.
08:48But if I change this portion of what you wrote, it does become true to me.
08:52I hope readers would do that.
08:56And I'm hoping that readers would pick it up and read it in one sitting in the same way that
09:03they read one poem today and come back to it four months later.
09:09I truly believe it should be like a friend, a companion that you say, well, I just need to read
09:18about this portion of my life and you can flip it open and you can go to that table of
09:23contents and sections and say, you know, I need something to empower me today.
09:28And you can go to words of power and read something out of there or, you know, I need to
09:33remember something about love today and what it is.
09:36And you can go to the many shades of love and read about it there.
09:41So I invite readers to treat the life we lead as a journey that they come along with me on.
09:48But it's also your own personal journey to change and adapt as he best see fit.
09:55And last question for you.
09:57How much of the life we lead went on to be part of your next work being?
10:04So, as I mentioned earlier, those eight poems that I had cut from the life we lead went on to
10:11become the section in love, in being.
10:14And then there's two other poems that I have titled Firestorm, which is Dove Part 2, and then Sometimes, which
10:24is Dove Part 3.
10:26And I actually open being with a section called I Know Myself Now.
10:31So I open with Nostalgia, which sets a preface for the entire book.
10:36And then I open with I Know Myself Now, day one, day two, day three, day four in the finale,
10:41in the same writing style with the same two people from the I Knew Them Once series in the life
10:47we lead.
10:48So immediately I'm signaling to readers, this is a continuation of the life we lead, not a separate book.
10:55You're going to meet and find new characters, new themes here, but you're also going to be able to revisit
11:01familiar friends.
11:03So I would say that being is roughly, of the 50 poems, there's at least 15 that are direct continuations
11:13from the life we lead.
11:14And everything else is new and exciting, and I'm ecstatic to be able to share that with my readers.
11:21And I hope that they enjoy revisiting the classics that made the life we lead popular, and that they would
11:29enjoy the new work.
11:31And my advancement is an author that I show in the other 35 works in me.
11:36Thank you so much for joining us today on WNTN Radio Boston.
11:42Thank you for having me.
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