Where a Nickel Costs a Dime: Poems - Softcover

Perdomo, Willie

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0393313832 ISBN 13: 9780393313833

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 1996

Synopsis

A first book of poems by one of the best new voices to emerge from the Nuyorican Poets Cafe. Where a Nickel Costs a Dime captures the hip-hop rhythms and in-your-face intensity of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, a downtown Manhattan club where the hottest young poets are finding their fame. Willie Perdomo's poems, in the tradition of Amiri Baraka, Langston Hughes, and Ntozake Shange, meet at the intersection of the street and the academy. The world in these piercing and heartbreaking poems is Spanish Harlem, "where night turns to day without sleep," where "Puerto Rico stays on our minds when the fresh breeze of cafe con leche y pan con mantequilla comes through half-opened windows and under our doors," where "babies fall asleep to the bark of a German shepherd," where "Independence Day is celebrated everyday," where "the police come into your house without knocking. They throw us off rooftops and say we slipped. They shoot my father and say he was crazy. They put a bullet in my head and say they found me that way." Blending images of street life, drugs, and AIDS against hope and determination, Willie Perdomo is a cutting-edge bard who speaks to the soul of his generation. .

About this title

About the Author

Willie Perdomo is the author of The Essential Hits of Shorty Bon Bon, Where a Nickel Costs a Dime, a finalist for the Poetry Society of America Norma Farber First Book Award and Smoking Lovely, winner of the PEN Beyond Margins Award. His poems have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, BOMB, Mandorla, and African Voices. He is a Pushcart Prize nominee, a former recipient of the Woolrich Fellowship in Creative Writing at Columbia University, and two-time New York Foundation for the Arts Poetry Fellow. He is a member of the VONA/Voices faculty and is currently an English Instructor at Phillips Exeter Academy. Visit his website at www.willieperdomo.com

From Library Journal

Perdomo (Young Tongues, First Civilizations, 1992) does not write a focused, collected poetry with practiced diction and tidy lines. His raucous craft owes more to rap than Whitman, forging works that sing, dance, and howl at the moon: "the 'hood/ the block/ the Ave./ the corner/ my boys." These are songs of the Harlem barrio, where (according to Langston Hughes) "a nickel costs a dime." Perdomo finds poetry in broken lines and blocked prose, in pieces of dialog and prayer. "Where I'm from, Puerto Rico stays on our minds when the fresh breeze of cafe con leche y pan con mantequilla comes through our half open windows." These sentiments give way to rage at times: "Every time I go downtown la madam blankita de Madison Avenue sees that I' standing next to her and she holds her purse a little tighter." As rough and sharp as the images often are, there is grace and tenderness as well. A good introduction to what's happening on the cutting edge. Recommended for larger collections.?Louis McKee, Painted Bride Arts Ctr., Philadelphia
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0393313832
• ISBN 13: 9780393313833
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 80