Poetry Life 2023: Martin Espada

I am not a reader of poetry. I am certainly not a writer of poetry. And yet the annual Poetry Life event, co-sponsored by Bookstore1 and Florida Studio Theatre, calls out my name. Hearing from poets directly about their lives and the stories behind the poems they share is fascinating. Case in point: Activist poet Martin Espada. 

Heritage was the theme of this year's Poetry Life. Espada's stories and poems revolve around his father and their identity as Puerto Ricans. His father was Frank Espada, a man described by the Smithsonian as a "Nuyorican community organizer, activist, educator and documentary photographer." (In case you, like me, aren't familiar with the word "Nuyorican," it means a Puerto Rican living in the United States, often in New York.) The senior Espada's photographs are both beautiful and powerful. Not surprisingly, his father's commitment to social justice was passed on to his son. 

Espada went to his first protest when he was just nine years old. The family was living in Brooklyn at the time, and Agropino Bonillo, a short order cook and father of ten children, had been stomped to death on his way home from work. The perpetrators were a group of drug addicts frustrated by Bonillo having no money to give them. A candlelight vigil was held in the man's honor. As Espada tells the story, it was a rainy night and the candles kept going out. Each time, the marchers would gather and light the candles anew. People kept flowing out of their buildings as the protesters approached the site of the murder. What had started as a group of about 100 people eventually swelled to 3,000. Many years later Espada wrote the poem "The Moon Shatters on Alabama Avenue" about this experience. It reads, in part:

"And the grief of thousands illuminated city blocks.                                                                        moving with the tired feet of the poor;                                                                                                        candles a reminder of the wakes too many and too soon,                                                                      the frustrated prayers and pleading with saints,                                                                                        in memoriam for generations of sacrificed blood..."

The senior Espada framed the poem and kept it on his wall.

Espada shared that he came to poetry in a surprising way. When he was 15, his family lived on Long Island. They were the only Puerto Ricans in town, and Espada did his share of acting out. He characterizes his typical classroom experience as "sitting with the young thugs in the back of the room." But the teacher had their number. "Young thugs, I have an assignment for you," she said one day. (I'm thinking she didn't actually call them young thugs, but that's how Espada told the story.) She gave them a copy of New Yorker magazine and told them to create their own version. What a project! 

The boys divided up the magazine by section. As Espada explained it, "We chose our sections by order of thuggery." The movie reviews went first. By the time it was Espada's turn, all that was left was the poetry section. Espada said he had failed English and typing and gym and decided then and there that he didn't want to fail any more. 

Espada wrote a poem about rain and remembers only one line: "Tiny silver hammers pounding the earth." He had created his first metaphor (even though he didn't know what a metaphor was at the time). Last November one of Espada's poems -- "Your Card is the King of Rats" -- was published in the New Yorker. His teacher would be proud. 

Given the current political climate, it's no surprise that the subject of banned books was discussed. For Espada, this is well-known territory. Back in 2011, the Arizona Attorney General declared Tucson's Mexican American Studies program illegal for running counter to the state's law against teaching ethnic studies. (Is this sounding familiar?) Espada's book of poetry and essays entitled "Zapata's Disciples" was on the list. He took it in stride, saying at the time, "On the list of banned authors I am keeping company with...are some of the finest Latina/o writers alive today. May our words always trigger the sweating and babbling of bigots." 

I'll leave you with a few lines from Espada's poem "How We Could Have Lived or Died This Way" that's included in one of the books PoetryLife participants received. It is this poem to which I randomly turned as I was waiting for the presentation to start. It reads, in part... 

"I see the dark-skinned bodies falling in the street as their ancestors fell                                             before the whip and steel, the last blood pooling, the last breath spitting.                                               I see the immigrant street vendor flashing his wallet to the cops,                                                            shot so many times there are bullet holes in the soles of his feet...

 I see the coroner nodding, the words he types in his report burrowing                                                into the skin like more bullets. I see the government investigations stacking,                                          words buzzing on the page, then suffocated as bees suffocate in a jar. I see                                        the next Black man, fleeing as the fugitive slave once fled the slave-catcher,                                          shot in the back for a broken tail-light. I see the cop handcuff the corpse..." 

At the end of the book is a section entitled "Notes on the Poems." The entry for "How We Could Have Lived or Died This Way" sets out the names and circumstances of each death referred to in the poem. The immigrant street vendor is Amadou Diallo, an unarmed 22 year old immigrant from Guinea shot 19 times by NYC police officers in 1999. The next Black man refers to Walter Scott, an unarmed 50 year old Black man shot five times by police officers in South Carolina in 2015. In total, the deaths of nine men of color are chronicled in the poem. Espada's poem also cites "the rebels marching, hands upraised," a reference to the Ferguson protests. To read the poem in its entirety, click here. 

I am so glad to have been introduced to the work of Martin Espada. Thanks to Bookstore1 and Florida Studio Theatre for continuing to shine a light on poets of our time. 

Note: If you are reading an email version of this post, it is likely that the format of the poems referenced is awry. Apologies to Espada -- and the readers -- for that. Click here to see the correct format.