The Lover of a Subversive Is Also a Subversive: Essays and Commentaries

Poets on Poetry

by Martín Espada

Prior praise for Martín Espada:

"Political poetry at its finest…with his soaring lyrics, Espada broadens our appreciation not only of poetry but of resistance itself."
---The Progressive

 "(Espada) writes beautiful poems about terrible realities."
---San Francisco Chronicle

A volume in the Poets on Poetry series, which collects critical works by contemporary poets, gathering together the articles, interviews, and book reviews by which they have articulated the poetics of a new generation.

This collection of essays on poetry and politics comes from the man the New York Times predicted would become "the Latino poet of his generation" and whom Sandra Cisneros called "the Pablo Neruda of North American authors."

Martín Espada defends what Walt Whitman called, "the rights of them the others are down upon." He invokes the spirit of poet-advocates such as Whitman and Edgar Lee Masters to explore his own history as a poet and tenant lawyer in Boston's Latino community. He celebrates the poets of Puerto Rico, imprisoned for espousing the cause of independence, and the poets of the Bronx, writing bilingual poems in the voices of the dead.

Espada writes of forgotten places and reminds us of the poet's responsibility to remember, as Pablo Neruda remembers the anonymous builders of Machu Picchu or Sterling Brown remembers the slave uprising of Nat Turner. He argues that poets should embrace the role of Shelley's "unacknowledged legislator" in their work as writers and in their lives as citizens. He challenges the conventional wisdom that poetry and politics are mutually exclusive, and rejects the poetics of self-marginalization, in keeping with Adrian Mitchell's dictum that, "most people ignore most poetry because most poetry ignores most people."

Martín Espada has published seventeen books as a poet, editor, and translator. The Republic of Poetry, a collection of poems, received a Paterson Award for Sustained Literary Achievement and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Imagine the Angels of Bread won an American Book Award and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. He has received numerous fellowships and awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and the National Hispanic Cultural Center Literary Award. Espada is a Professor of English at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.

Genres: Poetry

118 pages, Paperback

First published September 9, 2010

About the author

Sandra Cisneros says: “Martín Espada is the Pablo Neruda of North American authors.” Espada was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1957. He has published thirteen books in all as a poet, essayist, editor and translator. His eighth collection of poems, The Republic of Poetry, was published by Norton in October, 2006. Of this new collection, Samuel Hazo writes: "Espada unites in these poems the fierce allegiances of Latin American poetry to freedom and glory with the democratic tradition of Whitman, and the result is a poetry of fire and passionate intelligence." His last book, Alabanza: New and Selected Poems, 1982-2002 (Norton, 2003), received the Paterson Award for Sustained Literary Achievement and was named an American Library Association Notable Book of the Year. An earlier collection, Imagine the Angels of Bread (Norton, 1996), won an American Book Award and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Other books of poetry include A Mayan Astronomer in Hell’s Kitchen (Norton, 2000), City of Coughing and Dead Radiators (Norton, 1993), and Rebellion is the Circle of a Lover’s Hands (Curbstone, 1990). He has received numerous awards and fellowships, including the Robert Creeley Award, the Antonia Pantoja Award, an Independent Publisher Book Award, a Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award, the Charity Randall Citation, the Paterson Poetry Prize, the PEN/Revson Fellowship and two NEA Fellowships. He recently received a 2006 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship. His poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Book Review, Harper’s, The Nation, and The Best American Poetry. He has also published a collection of essays, Zapata’s Disciple (South End, 1998); edited two anthologies, Poetry Like Bread: Poets of the Political Imagination from Curbstone Press (Curbstone, 1994) and El Coro: A Chorus of Latino and Latina Poetry (University of Massachusetts, 1997); and released an audiobook of poetry on CD, called Now the Dead will Dance the Mambo (Leapfrog, 2004). Much of his poetry arises from his Puerto Rican heritage and his work experiences, ranging from bouncer to tenant lawyer. Espada is a professor in the Department of English at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, where he teaches creative writing and the work of Pablo Neruda.

Reviews

[E. Rowan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Espada as always shines in his egalitarian, democratic, engaged understanding of poetry's political and social responsibilities. This collection of reflective essays mixes poetry, criticism, history and anecdote to sketch a comprehensive worldview in which poets respond to the silencing of their own voices by speaking for others, where poets are advocates and historians writing the collective memory those in power would sooner elide. There are startling facts presented, and anti-war poems so wrenching that I found myself crying in a cafe to the confusion of those around me. The compelling argument that politics always has and continues to occupy a necessary place at the heart of poetry is made especially in the essay "A Rebuttal" in which the sanitized history of poetry in the 20th century is exploded as the result of self-censorship by the collective academic memory in response to the fear of the McCarthy era inquisitions.

[Oscar · Rating 4 out of 5]

An inspiring collection that examines the effect of political poetry in a variety of real-life examples. From poetry classrooms in the Bronx to political rallies in Puerto Rio, Espada finds and breaks down the voices of dissidence to unearth their poetic centers. The common string through Espada's essays is his belief that poetry can change our system to make this American life better not just for poets but all residents in the US and the world.

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

This collection of essays by the poet is less autobiographical than it is a look at his influences and his intellectual reflections on poetry and politics. His interview about Whitman was a particular highlight. This is a very strong collection that raises important questions about politics and poetry and life. I’m very glad I read it.