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kurtie's review against another edition
4.0
Good collection of poems inspired by Espada's life, experiences, and interests. Themes cover immigration, social justice, and racism. The displaced, the hopeful. Current and historical events play a role. Strong representation of Latinx and African American diasporas. Story telling, prose within poems. Not tied to a location, poems set in Central America, Caribbean, USA, Europe, Middle East, even Galápagos Islands. I found myself researching some of the events and subjects, learned a lot about Ramón Emeterio Betances.
bgg616's review
5.0
This volume won the 2021 National book Award for Poetry. Espada has already received a number of honors including a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Ruth Lily Prize for Poetry, and was a finalist for a Pulitzer. Born in Brooklyn of Puerto Rican parents, he began his career as a tenant lawyer in Boston, where he attended law school. In the early 80’s I was aware of him as a friend of friends, and a poet. Boston was a city with a strong tenants’ rights movement that I, as a renter, supported. His first volume was ‘The Immigrant Iceboy’s Bolero’, published in 1982, illustrated with photographs by his father, Frank Espada, creator of The Puerto Rican Diaspora Documentary Project.
Espada’s poetry has always focused on social justice, the lives of working class immigrants, and Puerto Rican history. In this volume, many of the poems are prose poems. In my opinion, prose poems are challenging to write, and they may be particularly appropriate for political poems. I am reminded of Carolyn Forché’s famous poem ‘The Colonel’ written in 1978 when she spent months in El Salvador during its civil war. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49862/the-colonel
The title poem ‘Floaters’ is the story of the death of 25-year-old Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez and his 23-months-old daughter Angie Valéria Martínez Ávalos. “Floater” is the term some Border Patrol agents use for migrants who drown trying to cross into the U.S. Espada reminds us that these are people who had dreams, and people who loved them.
And the dead have a name: floaters, say the men of the Border Patrol, keeping watch all night by the river, pumping coffee …
And the dead have names, a feast day parade of names, names that
dress all in red, names that twirl skirts, names that blow whistles,
names that shake rattles, names that sing in praise of the saints:
Say Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez. Say Angie Valéria Martínez Ávalos .
Poems in this volume are often based on actual events, in Espada’s life, his parents’ lives, in Boston, Brooklyn, Italy and France. My favorite is his poem in the volume ‘Letter to My Father’.
His father was from Utuado, a town in the central part of Puerto Rico, in the Cordillera Central mountain range. It was hard hit by Hurricane Maria in September, 2017, as were many of the small towns and villages in the mountains. Mudslides added to the devastation and death toll, and cut people off from aid. No one in Puerto Rico will forget Trump's visit to the island after the hurricane, when he threw rolls of paper towels to devastated, hungry citizens who had come for relief from the President of the United States.
I know you are not God. I have the proof: seven pounds of ashes in a box
on my bookshelf. Gods do not die, and yet I want you to be God again.
Stride through the crowd to seize the president’s arm before another roll
of paper towels sails away. Thunder Spanish obscenities in his face.
Banish him to a roofless rainstorm in Utuado, so he unravels, one soaked
sheet after another, till there is nothing left but his cardboard heart.
At the end of the volume, there are extensive notes that provide background on themes of some poems, as well as the inspiration for various poems. There is a fair amount to be learned about Puerto Rican history and culture in his poems and notes. The poems are very rich and I am ready to sit down and reread this volume almost immediately.
Highly recommended.
Espada’s poetry has always focused on social justice, the lives of working class immigrants, and Puerto Rican history. In this volume, many of the poems are prose poems. In my opinion, prose poems are challenging to write, and they may be particularly appropriate for political poems. I am reminded of Carolyn Forché’s famous poem ‘The Colonel’ written in 1978 when she spent months in El Salvador during its civil war. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/49862/the-colonel
The title poem ‘Floaters’ is the story of the death of 25-year-old Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez and his 23-months-old daughter Angie Valéria Martínez Ávalos. “Floater” is the term some Border Patrol agents use for migrants who drown trying to cross into the U.S. Espada reminds us that these are people who had dreams, and people who loved them.
And the dead have a name: floaters, say the men of the Border Patrol, keeping watch all night by the river, pumping coffee …
And the dead have names, a feast day parade of names, names that
dress all in red, names that twirl skirts, names that blow whistles,
names that shake rattles, names that sing in praise of the saints:
Say Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez. Say Angie Valéria Martínez Ávalos .
Poems in this volume are often based on actual events, in Espada’s life, his parents’ lives, in Boston, Brooklyn, Italy and France. My favorite is his poem in the volume ‘Letter to My Father’.
His father was from Utuado, a town in the central part of Puerto Rico, in the Cordillera Central mountain range. It was hard hit by Hurricane Maria in September, 2017, as were many of the small towns and villages in the mountains. Mudslides added to the devastation and death toll, and cut people off from aid. No one in Puerto Rico will forget Trump's visit to the island after the hurricane, when he threw rolls of paper towels to devastated, hungry citizens who had come for relief from the President of the United States.
I know you are not God. I have the proof: seven pounds of ashes in a box
on my bookshelf. Gods do not die, and yet I want you to be God again.
Stride through the crowd to seize the president’s arm before another roll
of paper towels sails away. Thunder Spanish obscenities in his face.
Banish him to a roofless rainstorm in Utuado, so he unravels, one soaked
sheet after another, till there is nothing left but his cardboard heart.
At the end of the volume, there are extensive notes that provide background on themes of some poems, as well as the inspiration for various poems. There is a fair amount to be learned about Puerto Rican history and culture in his poems and notes. The poems are very rich and I am ready to sit down and reread this volume almost immediately.
Highly recommended.
jenabest's review against another edition
dark
emotional
reflective
4.0
I'll start by stating 2 facts:
1. I do not typically enjoy poetry
2. I had the privilege of meeting Martín Espada & hear him do a reading prior to reading this poetry collection.
That said - these are heavy topics. But they didn't read like poetry typically does for me; more like short stories in verse? Hearing them read aloud helped me read them in something closer to his voice as well.
1. I do not typically enjoy poetry
2. I had the privilege of meeting Martín Espada & hear him do a reading prior to reading this poetry collection.
That said - these are heavy topics. But they didn't read like poetry typically does for me; more like short stories in verse? Hearing them read aloud helped me read them in something closer to his voice as well.
jenna_smuszkiewicz's review
dark
inspiring
medium-paced
3.0
This book does go over a lot of discrimination Puerto Ricans face, what it is like to migrate to the U.S., and all the violence and natural disasters that people are facing that force people to move. I did enjoy this short little book (it's only 74 pages in the edition I have). I just find it hard, personally, to connect to poetry so that's why I rated it 3 stars.