Floaters Poems

Martín Espada, 1957-

Book - 2021

"From the winner of the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize come masterfully crafted narratives of protest, grief, and love. In this collection, Martín Espada bears witness to confrontation with anti-immigrant bigotry as a tenant lawyer years ago, and now sings the praises of Central American adolescents playing soccer in an internment camp founded on that same bigotry. He knows that times of hate also call for poems of love-even in the voice of a Galápagos tortoise. Whether celebrating the visions of fallen dreamers and poets or condemning the devastation of Hurricane Maria and official negligence in his father's Puerto Rico, Espada invokes ferocious, incandescent spirits"--

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Subjects
Genres
Poetry
Published
New York, NY : W. W. Norton & Company, Inc [2021]
Language
English
Main Author
Martín Espada, 1957- (author)
Edition
First edition
Physical Description
xiii, 75 pages ; 22 cm
Awards
Winner of the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize.
ISBN
9780393541038
  • Acknowledgments
  • I. Jumping Off the Mystic Tobin Bridge
  • Jumping Off the Mystic Tobin Bridge
  • Floaters
  • Ode to the Soccer Ball Sailing Over a Barbed-Wire Fence
  • Not for Him the Fiery Lake of the False Prophet
  • Boxer Wears America 1st Shorts in Bout With Mexican, Finishes Second
  • Mazen Sleeps With His Foot on the Floor
  • I Now Pronounce You Dead
  • II. Asking Questions of the Moon
  • The Story of How We Came to America
  • Why I Wait for the Soggy Tarantula of Spinach
  • The Stoplight at the Corner Where Somebody Had to Die
  • Death Rides the Elevator in Brooklyn
  • The Cannon on the Hood of My Father's Car
  • Asking Questions of the Moon
  • Standing on the Bridge at Dolceacqua
  • III. Love Song of the Kraken
  • Aubade With Concussion
  • I Would Steal a Car for You
  • That We Will Sing
  • Love Song of the Kraken
  • Love Song of the Galápagos Tortoise
  • Love is a Luminous Insect at the Window
  • Insulting the Prince
  • The Assassination of the Landlord's Purple Vintage 1976 Monte Carlo
  • IV. Morir Soñando
  • Remake of Me the Sickle for Thy Grain
  • Be There When They Swarm Me
  • The Bard Shakes the Snow From the Trees
  • Flan
  • Morir Soñando
  • The Five Horses of Doctor Ramón Emeterio Betances
  • Letter to My Father
  • Note on the Cover Photograph
  • Notes on the Poems
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

The visionary latest from Espada (Vivas to Those Who Have Failed) combines a sharp political awareness with a storyteller's knack for finding beauty and irony in the current moment. Espada writes on an immigrant experience, in which "We smuggle ourselves across a border of a demagogue's dreams" and "In the full moon of the flashlight, every face is the face of Guillermo." His poems challenge the idea of an invented immigrant other ("Conquerors sailing the world mistake my body for an island./ They navigate into hurricanes and blame me when the ships vanish") and reasserts the humanity of the marginalized. In "That We Will Sing," Espada describes a poetry class in which recovering addicts spontaneously sing a poem to the instructor: "and so their voices became human again,/ not the baying of wolves to be shot on sight by police after sundown,/ but church voices, school voices, voices before the needle flooded/ their bodies and drowned all the songs, all the poems they knew." Drawing on history, personal experience, and keen observation, this impressive collection is unique for the way it captures the world-weary voice of a poet and political activist who doesn't simply call for change, but offers a sense of the long, difficult struggle toward justice. (Jan.)

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