Natalie Diaz, "From the Desire Field"
Jobs? In this economy?
At the 2025 Sigma Tau Delta conference, I attended a packed session of a professional development workshop, "What Can You Do With an English Major?" The students who attended were open about their fears but determined to do something. I don't think you could call them fearful or panicked; I didn't hear that in their voices. They did not complain. Their attitude was firmly centered on doing what they could for themselves and others. A few briefly noted an attack on literacy, that schools and libraries and books are viewed with skepticism by many. It was very brief. They were more than willing to attend to the matter at hand. To reflect on the skills they had developed, talk about the communities they wanted to join, and declare what they could do for a variety of employers.
I know many who attack higher education doubt the patriotism of young bookworms. I can safely say that there is a great patriotism in knowing that those with power (some with legitimacy) are actively destroying what you hold dear while renewing your focus on what you can control. Believing that American capitalism can work for you even in dire times, that freedom of speech can change hearts of stone. There's a great trust in what this country can be and it is neglected by those who should know better.
I believe we cannot simply speak of jobs to young people. That doesn't make any sense, not with certain professions completely devastated on someone's whims. We have to acknowledge that their political consciousness matters and affirm that any career they choose must complement their development. We're not doing them any favors by avoiding political discussions because they need to know that the community they make is paramount. They need people they can trust, not just jobs that exploit. They need people who will support them throughout a messy process, not just someone barking at them to work harder or get everything right the first time. They need people who will listen to them and want to see them.
If you're a young humanities major or budding social scientist looking for a job, my advice is this: focus on political communication (I stole this imperative from Mariame Kaba). People don't know what "bureaucracy" means. Some have no idea who Elon Musk is. I don't mean DOGE, I mean they have no idea someone is worth 400 billion and what the consequences of that are. Plenty have no idea how much they depend on Medicare and Medicaid, or what will happen to the elderly without Social Security. Put your powers to use by explaining the basics of civic life. When you do this for those who are earnestly asking, who have a notion that a lot of scary stuff is going on, it will translate into the network you truly need.
Fulfillment Beyond the Classroom
I didn't use the prepared remarks in the previous post for the roundtable. I and a few other Sigma Kappa Delta advisors were asked to discuss how we see our chapters making the lives of students better, and there was a good back and forth between us and the audience.
All of us talked about the volunteering our various chapters did. The truth is that Sigma Kappa Delta does a lot for literacy and a lot to help communities. It isn't only our chapter helping with book drives or working with partner organizations to promote reading. It is abundantly clear any cuts to humanities programming will constitute a net loss for an area because of the service alone. All of our students make doing things for others a habit.
I spoke about the unique challenges of teaching in Odessa. About 50% of the students at my college are food insecure, i.e. one paycheck away from not eating. Poverty abounds and dead-end jobs are everywhere. People work multiple jobs to keep bad cars running so they can get to work. Even significant amounts of money can be meaningless because power is relative. Some can make 200k in the oilfield, but if they create someone worth $12 billion, there's only one person truly in charge.
Fulfillment for us as advisors involves breaking these patterns. My co-advisor and colleague Dan Abella wrote a beautiful reflection on this that I read aloud. He mentioned how students get together through our Sigma Kappa Delta chapter for community: they meet, they talk, they eat. They face relentless discipline in nearly all other aspects of life, but SKD offers them a chance to explore meaningful work. They can do positive things, chart their own path, without fear of punishment. Dan noted the relief of the "unstructured time" of our meetings; it lends itself to genuine, "mutual support."
Natalie Diaz, "From the Desire Field"
Natalie Diaz read "Postcolonial Love Poem" and "From the Desire Field" to us. She then spoke at length from some prose she's trying to perfect. Ways of being, manifest in nature, documented in tradition, that flow through language while building humanity. Or not. That's what I got, anyway. It was all very Heideggerian and when I met her she told me she's been reading a lot of Paul Celan. My research has taken on a new significance and I need to get to work.
One of Diaz's questions is something like this: we know words have power. How much power do they have? Can I replace a word that's plaguing me with another word if I come to understand its power? She says this more or less directly about her poem "From the Desire Field:"
In these ever-green wind-bent star-strewn blades of worry and field, spinning until lost, I can rename the burdens of my heart—and offer the body back to language, to be carried, to be grinded into love and what is good. What if I call my anxiety desire? What if I rename this terrible thing as wanting and blossoming with touch?
"What if I call my anxiety desire? What if I rename this terrible thing...?" This is poetic dwelling, and there is a logic to it. You can't just do or say anything. We do try to forge our own truth in the crudest way. We'll say we're right and punish those who argue. When evidence emerges we are wrong, we double down. This, too, is a movement, a replacing of one word with another. A reality which should be described in certain ways is cordoned off. Another word, a dictate, marks it as forbidden territory. Cross it and abusers will indulge the anger and violence that are the only other things they know.
So I want to look at "From the Desire Field" with a specific intent. This is obviously an amazing poem which you should read and reread until you can't see or speak any more. What I intend right now, though, is blunt and a bit artless. I would like to replace my anxiety with desire, to understand how a curse is a longing for something greater:
From the Desire Field
Natalie Diaz
I don’t call it sleep anymore.
I’ll risk losing something new instead—
like you lost your rosen moon, shook it loose.
But sometimes when I get my horns in a thing—
a wonder, a grief or a line of her—it is a sticky and ruined
fruit to unfasten from,
despite my trembling.
Let me call my anxiety, desire, then.
Let me call it, a garden.
Maybe this is what Lorca meant
when he said, verde que te quiero verde—
because when the shade of night comes,
I am a field of it, of any worry ready to flower in my chest.
My mind in the dark is una bestia, unfocused,
hot. And if not yoked to exhaustion
beneath the hip and plow of my lover,
then I am another night wandering the desire field—
bewildered in its low green glow,
belling the meadow between midnight and morning.
Insomnia is like Spring that way—surprising
and many petaled,
the kick and leap of gold grasshoppers at my brow.
I am struck in the witched hours of want—
I want her green life. Her inside me
in a green hour I can’t stop.
Green vein in her throat green wing in my mouth
green thorn in my eye. I want her like a river goes, bending.
Green moving green, moving.
Fast as that, this is how it happens—
soy una sonámbula.
And even though you said today you felt better,
and it is so late in this poem, is it okay to be clear,
to say, I don’t feel good,
to ask you to tell me a story
about the sweet grass you planted—and tell it again
or again—
until I can smell its sweet smoke,
leave this thrashed field, and be smooth.
The sensuality of this lyric is so intense that I wonder if it is possible to have sex after hearing it. Anything you do will pale in comparison to the "green hour I can't stop." "Green vein in her throat green wing in my mouth / green thorn in my eye" asks for a freshness, a renewal that I don't always associate with romantic love. But that's Diaz's point. She's moving words around and anxiety has become desire and desire has become a garden:
Let me call my anxiety, desire, then.
Let me call it, a garden.
The outstanding question is whether you're convinced. The music of the poem is one aspect to consider. It just sounds good, it is "smooth" like its last word. It sounds so good–the poem knows this!–that it gives up on "Green moving green, moving" and will accept a mere story from the beloved. It invites more sounds when it acknowledges that being inside one, being "beneath the hip and plow of my lover," may not happen.
Another aspect is the imaginative field created in this song. The field and the music are inseparable, sure. The beloved hears it all at once and does not bother to differentiate and categorize. But again, we want to know if we can replace one word with another. If we too can imagine vast gardens blooming exactly where our insecurities and nervousness were. And we know this: we have tried to replace a word with another and it has not always been successful. Look at how Diaz relocates tossing and turning with out-of-control desire:
Insomnia is like Spring that way—surprising
and many petaled,
the kick and leap of gold grasshoppers at my brow.
Insomnia, like spring. The rays of the sun from a failed night's sleep, "gold grasshoppers." It's an amazing image. The language is perfect. But plenty of people with not so great intentions wrote lovely, moving words. I'm not saying Diaz should write "because of insomnia, I am now trying Melatonin." I mean more that some bad things don't fall away when reimagined. Insomnia is a hint that things could be worse.
All the same, this is an incredible set of words with a poetic truth. I feel like the opening particularly calls to me, because she's taking the time to wonder what's happening to her. Confronted with a lack of sleep, she repositions the word: "I don't call it sleep anymore." And then she performs her magic, her magic which sounds like fantastical flight but is grounded, seeking every detail as the domain with which it must work. She takes note of her "trembling." (Not much later, her "worry," her "hot," "unfocused" mind.) She mentions the other times she's gotten in trouble like this, i.e. "sometimes when I get my horns in a thing." This is not insignificant, as I'll demonstrate.
I think everyone reading this can recall people in our lives who ignore symptoms. I know at least one who pretends that the symptoms and causes of chronic illness don't need to be controlled. When it comes to love, we'll spend so much time loading an image of another with our expectations. That's fine to a degree, but we're often expecting them to solve some problem in our lives that they may not see and we certainly haven't solved. So that Diaz goes through her feelings with a dynamic precision, wondering "what is this anxiety, really," constitutes not just any imaginative effort or repositioning. I've name-dropped Heidegger, and one issue with Heidegger is that he did buy into cultish reasoning for his own purposes instead of taking the time to see where he actually was. He did try to load words and substitute them for reality.
It is not insignificant that the field of the imagination starts with a garden. Again, we do know plenty of people who weaponize the language of self-improvement. One person in particular tells me that they have grown with how they treat another, and what's wild is that they'll rant about this other person for hours. This imaginative space is a blossoming which grows in trying to understand what's happening to oneself. The sensuality is intense because of the authenticity. "From the Desire Field" is most certainly living in the fullest sense, a sense I want.