POET

Martín Espada (1957 - )

BIOGRAPHY

Attorney, educator, and poet Martín Espada has dedicated much of his varied career to Hispanic and other socially liberal causes. "Espada's books have consistently contributed to . . . unglamorous histories of the struggle against injustice and misfortune," summarized David Charlton in a National Catholic Reporter review of Imagine the Angels of Bread, the poet's fifth published collection. Charlton praised Espada's work and declared that "Espada has proven himself a strong adversary for supporters of a status quo that thrives on keeping a class of people as victims. Most of all, the poems kindle the hope that comes from an act of resistance." His critically acclaimed collections of poetry celebrate—or, in some cases, lament—the immigrant and working class experience. Whether it be Puerto Ricans and Chicanos adjusting to life in the United States, or Central and South American Latinos struggling against their own repressive governments to achieve social justice, Espada has put their "otherness," their powerlessness, poverty and enmity into verse that consistently relies on imagery. In addition to publishing his own poetry (and some prose), Espada has edited several collections of poetry by various Chicano and Latino poets. Espada, praised Library Journal contributor Lawrence Olszewski, "has provided a good, useful vehicle for disseminating [a] broader cultural awareness" with El Coro: A Chorus of Latino and Latina Poets, the alphabetically arranged, "successful assortment of 43" poets' work.

Espada's first published book of poetry is 1982's The Immigrant Iceboy's Bolero, which is enhanced by photographs taken by his father, Puerto Rican-born Frank Espada. More widely reviewed, however, is his second collection, 1987's Trumpets from the Island of Their Eviction. Published with facing pages of Spanish translation by Arizona's Bilingual Press, Trumpets features poems such as "Tiburon," which compares the United States' assimilation of Puerto Rico to a shark eating a fisherman; "The Policeman's Ball," which chants the tale of police brutality to a cadence; and "From an Island You Cannot Name," about an aged Puerto Rican veteran furious at his categorization as a negro by hospital authorities. There is also the title poem, which includes a segment in which a Hispanic woman is evicted by her landlord after she sends him the ten mice she caught in her apartment, sealed in individual sandwich bags. Linda Frost, critiquing Trumpets from the Islands of Their Eviction in the Minnesota Review, explained her view of Espada's poetic intent: "Espada uses his characters as excavated archetypes, cultural heroes who give names and faces to the members of this ignored community who have been 'evicted' from their original home of Puerto Rico . . . and their not-so-friendly new home in the United States." Frost went on to observe that "through both his swift kicks in our reading behinds and his detailed narratives, Espada takes us by the hand and leads us straight into the core of boredom, poverty, hostility and violence. He indeed gives a voice to the silenced, gathering together the tales of the ignored and forcing us to see the faces in the crowd." Noting that the poet aims his work at both English and Spanish speakers, she ended by declaring that "Espada writes to stir up the blood of those in despair and those in ignorance, and in these goals, he is indeed quite successful." Mireya Perez-Erdelyi, reviewing Trumpets from the Islands of Their Eviction in Americas, asserted that the collection "demonstrates how a people survive in spite of the harshness and squalor of their reality." She concluded that "Trumpets moves us to take notice, to care, as the song of the victims of political and social oppression is played. It is a powerful song we cannot ignore."

The poet's next effort earned him the 1990 PEN/Revson Award and the Paterson Poetry Prize. The book's title, Rebellion Is the Circle of a Lover's Hands, is taken from a poem in which a woman continues moving her hands with circular motions to complete the sewing of her wedding dress, though she has just learned her fiance has been killed. Other poems in Rebellion include "Portrait of a Real Hijo de Puta." The Spanish words of the title translate as "son of a whore," a common Spanish epithet, but Espada takes it literally, and discusses the life of a boy whose mother is a drug-addicted prostitute. "The Savior is Abducted in Puerto Rico" illustrates the metaphorical effects of the theft of a statue of a crucified Jesus from a Puerto Rican church, while in "Jorge the Church Janitor Finally Quits," a Honduran immigrant ponders the possibility that his white employers identify him completely with his mop. "Cusin and Tata" is a poem about Espada's own aunt and grandmother, who remained in Puerto Rico and survived abusive husbands and abandonment.

Roger Gilbert, taking notice of Rebellion Is the Circle of a Lover's Hands in the Partisan Review, reported that it is "continually informed by anger at social and economic injustices. This anger gives the book considerable moral urgency." Alan Gilbert, writing in the Boston Review, proclaimed that "the individuality of Espada's voice is one to which any attentive reader can respond. These poems deserve an audience." John Bradley praised the collection in the Bloomsbury Review for "the expansive humanity of Espada's vision" and his use of "the blade of humor." Leslie Ullman concluded in a Kenyon Review article about Rebellion that "the poems in this collection tell their stories and flesh out their characters deftly, without shrillness or rhetoric, and vividly enough to invite the reader into a shared sense of loss."

In 1993's City of Coughing and Dead Radiators, Espada uses a more bitingly humorous approach to get his points across. "Coca-Cola and Coco Frio" is an autobiographical poem in which the young Espada on his first visit to relatives in Puerto Rico discovers he prefers cold coconut milk to cola, while the islanders have forsaken their more healthy native beverage for the exotic foreignness of soft drinks. "Skull Beneath the Skin" compares mangoes to the piled skulls of the victims of El Salvadoran death squads, and another poem, from the volume's last section "When Songs Become Water," features an ex-mental patient trying to make contact with an alien spaceship. According to Perez-Erdelyi, this time offering her opinions in the Voice Literary Supplement, the poet of City of Coughing and Dead Radiators "cuts like a sword through the submerged layers of conquest, colonialism, diaspora, violence, and madness to create supremely gutsy poems." Bessy Reyna, critiquing the same collection in the MultiCultural Review, judged that "Espada continues to give us poems that speak directly to the heart of the Latina/o community in the U.S., while reaching the hearts of everyone else, creating a bridge of understanding between all cultures."

Espada edited the 1994 anthology Poetry Like Bread: Poets of the Political Imagination for Curbstone Press. The poets included in this anthology hail from all areas of North and South America; many of them are Hispanic. They range from El Salvador's Roque Dalton, to Guatemala's Otto Rene Castillo, to Haiti's Paul Laraque, to Los Angeles's Luis Rodriguez. While noting the "diversity" of the poetic voices in the anthology, Chris Faatz testified in the American Book Review that "they all share one thing, an intense passion for justice." Faatz went on to applaud Poetry Like Bread as "art at its most meaningful and powerful; this is the embodiment of the 'artistry of dissent.'"

With his 1996 collection of poetry, Imagine the Angels of Bread, Espada once again presents "his trademark vignettes of the indignities that working-class and immigrant Americans suffer every day," proclaimed Matthew Rothschild in Progressive. The book includes an elegy to Clemente Soto Velez, a Puerto Rican nationalist, and other poems between its covers tell of poor education in anachronous schools, and the violence encountered by Puerto Rican-Americans in prison. Barbara Hoffert, writing in Library Journal, lauded Espada's "brutal and luminescent" language and pronounced the poet "able to take raw experience, and without losing the rawness distill it to a few lines."

In a Progressive assessment of Espada's 1998 collection of essays, Zapata's Disciple, Rafael Campo commended Espada's courage, maintaining that he is one of only a few poets who "take[s] on the life-and-death issues of American society at large." The eleven "enlightening essays" were described by Library Journal contributor Rebecca Martín as "passionate yet unsentimental prose." Zapata's Disciple also contains "terse, punchy free-verse poems," stated a Publishers Weekly critic who also remarked on the "tender, personal side" of "this outspoken collection." The reviewer concluded, "In this incandescent book Espada cross-pollinates passion, poetry and politics, with fertile results." Similar to critical comments of previous work by Espada, Campo recognized that in Zapata's Disciple 's "plainspoken and uncompromising" presentation of various issues, the poet is able to effectively portray injustices without making one side of the picture villains who are completely separate and different from the other side. "Espada's gift for seeing metaphor for our common humanity . . . is startling," exclaimed Campo. Furthermore, noted Campo, "Espada builds his hopes for a better world: one informed by poetry's ability to forge such empathic connections." " Zapata's Disciple is an invaluable contribution to the discourse on American identity," determined Campo, concluding that "Espada is at his heartwrenching best here, his poetry a tense, sometimes awkwardly painful, but ultimately healing bond that draws together wounded people."

CAREER

Has worked as an attorney, salesman, clerk, telephone solicitor, gas station attendant, bouncer, bartender, and printing plant bindery worker; University of Massachusetts, Amherst, professor of English.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

POETRY

• The Immigrant Iceboy's Bolero, with photographs by father, Frank Espada, Ghost Pony Press (Madison, WI), 1982.
• Trumpets from the Islands of Their Eviction (includes "Trumpets from the Islands of Their Eviction," "Tiburon," "The Policeman's Ball," and "From an Island You Cannot Name"), Bilingual Press (Tempe, AZ), 1987, expanded edition, 1994.
• Rebellion Is the Circle of a Lover's Hands (includes "Portrait of a Real Hijo de Puta," "The Savior Is Abducted in Puerto Rico," "Jorge the Janitor Finally Quits," and "Cusin and Tata"), Curbstone Press (Willimantic, CT), 1990.
• City of Coughing and Dead Radiators (includes "Coca-Cola and Coco Frio," "The Skull Beneath the Skin," and "When Songs Become Water"), Norton (New York City), 1993.
• Imagine the Angels of Bread: Poems, Norton, 1996.
• The Republic of Poetry, Norton (New York), 2006.

OTHER

• (Translator with Camilo Perez-Bustillo) The Blood that Keeps Singing: Selected Poems of Clemente Soto Velez, Curbstone Press, 1991.
• (Editor) Poetry Like Bread: Poets of the Political Imagination from Curbstone Press, Curbstone Press, 1994, New and expanded ed., 2000.
• (Editor and contributor) El Coro: A Chorus of Latino and Latina Poetry, University of Massachusetts Press (Amherst), 1997.
• Zapata's Disciple (essays and some poetry), South End Press, 1998.
• A Mayan Astronomer in Hell's Kitchen: Poems, Norton (New York), 2000.
• Alabanza: New and Selected Poems, 1982-2002, Norton (New York), 2003.

Also contributor to periodicals, including Harper's, Progressive, Nation, and Ploughshares.

FURTHER READINGS

PERIODICALS

• American Book Review, March/May, 1995, p. 9.
• Americas, summer, 1990, pp. 119-21.
• Bloomsbury Review, March, 1991, p. 5.
• Boston Review, October, 1991, p. 29.
• Kenyon Review, summer, 1992, pp. 174-87.
• Library Journal, June 1, 1996, p. 112; October 15, 1997, p. 65; July, 1998, p. 90.
• Minnesota Review, fall, 1991, pp. 129-35.
• MultiCultural Review, March, 1994, p. 74.
• National Catholic Reporter, May 24, 1996, p. 28; May 23, 1997, p. 5.
• Partisan Review, winter, 1994, pp. 180-86.
• Poets & Writers, March-April, 1995, pp. 51-52, 53, 54-55.
• Progressive, January, 1997, p. 39; January, 1998, p. 4; April, 1999, p. 43.
• Publishers Weekly, October 12, 1990, p. 57; September 28, 1998, p. 83.
• Voice Literary Supplement, November, 1994, p. 16.