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lsparrow's review against another edition
2.0
I wanted to get into this poet and I loved the flow of some of the words but I just couldn't get into the poems.
wmmcmanlypants's review
4.0
3.5*. Really enjoyed some of the first poems in this collection. I also see why it was picked as a Pulitzer finalist. However, for me, for the same reason, I don't like poems as much when they lean so heavily on other works. I felt lost in a quarter of these poems because I had never heard of some of the history surrounding Pinochet. I've heard back and forth whether you should or should not point people outside your poem. For now, I'm in the camp of keep the reader inside it.
clarissechiyo's review against another edition
emotional
funny
hopeful
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
5.0
juanjmorales's review against another edition
dark
emotional
funny
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
sad
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? N/A
- Strong character development? N/A
- Loveable characters? N/A
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
5.0
mothtimothy's review against another edition
4.0
Stone Hammered to Gravel
(for poet Dennis Brutus, at eighty)
The office workers did not know, plodding through 1963
and Marshall Square station in Johannesburg,
that you would dart down the street between them,
thinking the police would never fire into the crowd.
Sargeant Kleingeld did not know, as you escaped
his fumbling hands and the pistol on his hip,
that he would one day be a footnote in the book of your life.
The secret policeman on the corner did not know,
drilling a bullet in your back, that today the slug
would belong in glass case at the museum of apartheid.
The bystanders did not know, as they watched
the coloured man writhing red on the ground,
that their shoes would skid in blood for years.
The ambulance men did not know,
when they folded the stretcher and refused you a ride
to the white hospital, that they would sit eternally
in hell’s emergency room, boiling with a disease
that darkens their skin and leaves them screaming for soap.
The guards at Robben Island did not know,
when you hammered stone to gravel with Mandela,
that the South Africa of their fathers
would be stone hammered to gravel by the inmates
who daydreamed a republic of the ballot
but could not urinate without a guard’s permission.
Did you know?
When the bullet exploded the stars
in the cosmos of your body, did you know
that others would read manifestos by your light?
Did you know, after the white ambulance left,
before the coloured ambulance arrived, if you would live at all
that you would banish the apartheid of the ambulance
with Mandela and a million demonstrators
dancing at every funeral?
Did you know, slamming the hammer into the rock’s stoic face,
that the police state is nothing but a boulder
waiting for the alchemy of dust?
Did you know that, forty years later,
college presidents and professors of English
would raise their wine to your name
and wonder what poetry they could write
with a bullet in the back?
What do the people we call prophets know?
Can they conjure the world forty years from now?
Can the poets part the clouds for a vision in the sky
easily as sweeping curtains across the stage?
A beard is not the mark of a prophecy
but the history of a man’s face
No angel shoved you into the crowd
you ran because the blood racing to your heart
warned a prison grave would swallow you
No oracle spread a banquet of vindication before you
in visions; you mailed your banned poems
cloaked as letters to your sister-in-law
because the silence of the world
was a storm flooding your ears.
South Africa knows. Never tell a poet: Don’t say that
Even as the guards watched you nodding in your cell
even as you fingered the stitches fresh from the bullet,
the words throbbed inside your skull:
Sirens knuckles boots. Sirens knuckles boots.
Sirens knuckles boots.
djinnofthedamned's review against another edition
5.0
Espada's poetry in this collection is more timely than ever
emmkayt's review against another edition
4.0
Striking thoughts and imagery, wit and feeling in this poetry collection. Poems about the Chilean coup, Pablo Neruda, various Latinx and other poets - none of which I knew much about, but it was interesting to look up background details. This is powerful political poetry, a ringing voice for a courageous response to oppression, a call to disregard the gods who say "war" in favour of "the God who sweats in the street,/the God of the weather-beaten face."
More of the poetry: "their pill bottles rattling, maracas in a mambo for the dead," "no words to sing when the president swears/that God breathed the psalms of armies in his ear,/and flags twirl by the millions/to fascinate us like dogs at the dinner table," "Did you know, slamming the hammer into the rock's stoic face,/ that a police state is nothing but a boulder/ waiting for the alchemy of dust?"
More of the poetry: "their pill bottles rattling, maracas in a mambo for the dead," "no words to sing when the president swears/that God breathed the psalms of armies in his ear,/and flags twirl by the millions/to fascinate us like dogs at the dinner table," "Did you know, slamming the hammer into the rock's stoic face,/ that a police state is nothing but a boulder/ waiting for the alchemy of dust?"
thndrkat's review against another edition
5.0
Amazing, strong, beautiful poetry written with conscience and heart.
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