Kyle Carrero Lopez on the Five Poetry Books That Inspired His Debut Collection

In his debut poetry collection, Party Line, Kyle Carrero Lopez’s subjects range in scale from Cuban–American relations and Black identity across international borders to the ins and outs of queer nightlife. “I walk up to a party I didn’t pay to attend since I’m on the list,” he writes in one poem. “The gays throwing it craft lengthy manifestos on community care and the impermissibility of all ‘isms’ within the space and charge fifty to eighty at the door. You, too, can cruise utopia nightly for the price of one disposable income. The money you have and the people you know: two ropes. A climb to safety, or a bind round the neck.”

Carrero Lopez shares his interest in examining the overlap of racial and ethnic identity and nightlife with authors such as Simon Wu and Aria Aber—but his poetic voice is fully and triumphantly his own. Here, as part of Vogue’s Required Reading series, Carrero Lopez rounds up five poetry collections and books that helped to inspire Party Line.

Cruelty by Ai Ogawa

There is a poem in Party Line called “Cuba, 2022,” written as a sequel to a brutal, unforgettable poem from Cruelty called “Cuba, 1962.” I’m very inspired by the way Ogawa utilizes persona in her work.

Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton (BOA Editions)

Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton

My poem “Chalkboard” begins with an epigraph from the Lucille Clifton poem “listen children.” It goes: “we have never hated black // listen / we have been ashamed / hopeless tired mad / but always / all ways / we loved us.” Lucille Clifton loved Black people so, so, so deeply. I love us, too, and I have greater language for all the ways I do because of her.