Alabanza: New and Selected Poems 1982-2002 - Hardcover

Espada, Martín

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0393051927 ISBN 13: 9780393051926

Publisher: W.W. Norton & Co., 2003

Synopsis

An astonishing collection of political poetry at its finest.—The Progressive, Favorite Books of 2003 Alabanza is a twenty-year collection charting the emergence of Martín Espada as the preeminent Latino lyric voice of his generation. "Alabanza" means "praise" in Spanish, and Espada praises the people Whitman called "them the others are down upon": the African slaves who brought their music to Puerto Rico; a prison inmate provoking brawls so he could write poetry in solitary confinement; a janitor and his solitary strike; Espada's own father, who was jailed in Mississippi for refusing to go to the back of the bus. The poet bears witness to death and rebirth at the ruins of a famine village in Ireland, a town plaza in México welcoming a march of Zapatista rebels, and the courtroom where he worked as a tenant lawyer. The title poem pays homage to the immigrant food-service workers who lost their lives in the attack on the World Trade Center. From the earliest out-of-print work to the seventeen new poems included here, Espada celebrates the American political imagination and the resilience of human dignity. Alabanza is the epic vision of a writer who, in the words of Russell Banks, "is one of the handful of American poets who are forging a new American language, one that tells the unwritten history of the continent, speaks truth to power, and sings songs of selves we can no longer silence." An American Library Association Notable Book of 2003 and a 2003 New York Public Library Book to Remember. "To read this work is to be struck breathless, and surely, to come away changed."—Barbara Kingsolver "Martín Espada is the Pablo Neruda of North American authors. If it was up to me, I'd select him as the Poet Laureate of the United States."—Sandra Cisneros "With these new and selected poems, you can grasp how powerful a poet Espada is—his range, his compassion, his astonishing images, his sense of history, his knowledge of the lives on the underbelly of cities, his bright anger, his tenderness, his humor. "—Marge Piercy "Espada's poems are not just clarion calls to the heart and conscience, but also wonderfully crafted gems."—Julia Alvarez "A passionate, readable poetry that makes [Espada] arguably the most important 'minority' U.S. poet since Langston Hughes."—Booklist "Neruda is dead, but if Alabanza is any clue, his ghost lives through a poet named Martín Espada."—San Francisco Chronicle .

About this title

About the Author

Martín Espada, recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, teaches at the University of Massachusetts–Amherst. He lives in Amherst, Massachusetts.

Reviews

Martín Espada believes that the pursuit of social and political justice can and must be joined to the quest for art. These ideals are for him inseparable. He is a Latino poet who takes a cue from Whitman -- "Vivas to those who have failed!" -- and dreams of an inclusive democracy. He stands up for what Whitman calls "the rights of them the others are down upon" and writes a fiery, impure, earth-tinged, human-centered poetry.

"Alabanza," the title of Espada's new and selected poems, means "praise" in Spanish. It has a religious sense and derives from "alabar," to celebrate with words. Espada self-consciously uses poetry to celebrate those who don't usually find their way into literature -- the unsung and marginalized, the overlooked and forgotten. He finds his title in some moving anaphoric lines from the poem "Oubao-Moin" by the Puerto Rican poet Juan Antonio Corretjer (1908-1985), which serve as an epigraph and set the tone for Espada's work over the past two decades.

Gloria a las manos que la mina excavaran.
Gloria a las manos que el ganado cuidaran.
Gloria a las manos que el tabaco, que la cańa y el café sembraran . . .
Para ellas y para su patria, Ąalabanza! Ąalabanza!
Glory to the hands that dug the mine.
Glory to the hands that cared for the cattle.
Glory to the hands that planted the tobacco, the sugarcane and
the coffee . . .
For them and for their country, praise! Praise!

Espada's poems are haunted by voices and memories. Refugees and immigrants call out to him. "I cannot evict them/ from my insomniac nights," he writes, "tenants in the city of coughing/ and dead radiators." He fantasizes that "this is the year that squatters evict landlords" and that "those/ who swim the border's undertow/ and shiver in boxcars/ are greeted with trumpets and drums/ at the first railroad crossing/ on the other side."

The title poem, "Alabanza: In Praise of Local 100," memorializes 43 restaurant workers who lost their lives in the attack on the World Trade Center. "Praise Manhattan from a hundred and seven flights up,/ like Atlantis glimpsed through the windows of an ancient aquarium," he declares in a poem that becomes a virtual roll call of poor countries. "Praise the great windows where immigrants from the kitchen/ could squint and almost see their world, hear the chant of nations:/ Ecuador, México, Republica Dominicana,/ Haiti, Yemen, Ghana, Bangladesh./ Alabanza."

Here is a villanelle that characteristically becomes a hymn to a group of Spanish-speaking prisoners incarcerated in upstate New York:

The Prisoners of Saint Lawrence
Riverview Correctional Facility,
Ogdensburg, New York, 1993

Snow astonishing their hammered faces,
the prisoners of Saint Lawrence, island men,
remember in Spanish the island places.
The Saint Lawrence River churns white into Canada, races
past barbed walls. Immigrants from a dark sea find oceanic
snow astonishing. Their hammered faces
harden in city jails and courthouses, indigent cases
telling translators, public defenders what they
remember in Spanish. The island places,
banana leaf and nervous chickens, graces
gone in this amnesia of snow, stinging cocaine
snow, astonishing their hammered faces.
There is snow in the silence of the visiting rooms, spaces
like snow in the paper of their poems and letters, that
remember in Spanish the island places.
So the law speaks of cocaine, grams and traces,
as the prisoners of Saint Lawrence, island men,
snow astonishing their hammered faces,
remember in Spanish the island places.

Editor's Note: Martín Espada will recite his poetry as part of an homage to Nuyorican poets at the Kennedy Center's Americartes Festival, Friday, Sept. 17, at 7:30 p.m.

By Edward Hirsch
Copyright 2004, The Washington Post Co. All Rights Reserved.

Although a U.S. citizen born in Brooklyn, Espada has a larger loyalty, out of which he has forged a passionate, compelling, eminently readable poetry that makes him arguably the most important "minority" U.S. poet since Langston Hughes. His greater allegiance could be called pan-Hispanic, and its roots are in the dilapidated tenements of mid-twentieth-century New York and such heartbreaking stories as the basis of "Tato Hates the New York Yankees," about a Puerto Rican baseball phenom spurned by the pros in 1947. From the beginning, Espada has been compassionate but scrupulous to avoid arousing pity, for pity might blur the perception of injustice crucial to the poetry of advocacy he determined to practice. As he progressed, he took on the struggles of Mexicans, Chileans, Peruvians, and other Latin Americans against postcolonial tyranny at home and prejudice in the U.S., to which multitudes of them fled. He makes his leftist orientation apparent, but in his poetry he is far less an ideologue than a lyrical champion of the oppressed and dispossessed. Ray Olson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: W.W. Norton & Co.
• Publication date: 2003
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0393051927
• ISBN 13: 9780393051926
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 224