The Republic of Poetry

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Overview

The eighth collection by "the Pablo Neruda of North American authors" (Sandra Cisneros) was a finalist for the 2007 Pulitzer Prize.

In his eighth collection of poems, Martín Espada celebrates the power of poetry itself. The Republic of Poetry is a place of odes and elegies, collective memory and hidden history, miraculous happenings and redemptive justice. Here poets return from the dead, visit in dreams, even rent a helicopter to drop poems on...

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The Republic of Poetry: Poems

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More About This Book

Overview

The eighth collection by "the Pablo Neruda of North American authors" (Sandra Cisneros) was a finalist for the 2007 Pulitzer Prize.

In his eighth collection of poems, Martín Espada celebrates the power of poetry itself. The Republic of Poetry is a place of odes and elegies, collective memory and hidden history, miraculous happenings and redemptive justice. Here poets return from the dead, visit in dreams, even rent a helicopter to drop poems on bookmarks.

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Editorial Reviews

Publishers Weekly
Espada's compact, forceful follow-up to his well-received new-and-selected, Alabanza (2004), describes, in its three parts, three versions of his "republic." The first is Chile, where the Massachusetts-based, Brooklyn-bred poet has recently traveled, and where poets past and present (Neruda among them) reacted to the atrocities of the Pinochet dictatorship, hoping their verse could "make the soldiers/ vanish from the garden." The second "republic" unites the poets, from various lands, whom Espada has admired the lately deceased Robert Creeley, the South African protest poet Dennis Brutus and all those who have used their verse to speak for social justice: "I want to write," Espada explains, "a poem useful as a coat to a coughing man." Finally, there is the American republic, heir to democratic ideals traduced or shattered (in Espada's view) by the current administration and its wars, though "Sometimes a song drifts up/ through.../ machine guns and sobbing." Espada (himself of Puerto Rican descent) remains one of the nation's best-known and most outspoken Latino poets. (Oct.) Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
Library Journal

Some political poetry is mere rant, but not Espada's. Exemplified by this eighth collection, his work captures the depth of human experience as shaped by the political inevitabilities of both America and Latin America.


—Barbara Hoffert
Library Journal
The politics of both Chile and the United States features prominently in this eighth collection by American Book Award winner Espada (Imagine the Angels of Bread). In several poems, he captures the horror of 9/11, but he also tackles Chile's equivalent event-General Pinochet's 1973 bloody coup. In "Rain Without Rain," Espada empathizes with families of the slain: "Fingertips tilt the faces of the dead,/ the family nose like three pieces of garlic." He also pays homage to poets who speak truth to power, as in these lines for Pablo Neruda: "[T]he soldiers appeared/ in Neruda's garden one night, raising lanterns to interrogate the trees." Espada's work is lyrical, and its power comes from strong images; two lines from "Not Here" illustrate these features: "The fountain speaks in the water's tongue" and "I am the one navigating the night without stars." But as powerful as Espada's images are, sometimes they seem off-target: "[T]he blond officer/ who smiled at his work as if churches sang in his head." Overall, however, this is a powerful collection, as evidenced by the last poem, "The Caves of Camuy," which combines the political and personal in a moving tribute to his wife. Recommended for all libraries.-Doris Lynch, Monroe Cty. P.L., Bloomington, IN Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
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Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9780393331400
  • Publisher: Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
  • Publication date: 4/28/2008
  • Pages: 63
  • Sales rank: 535,553
  • Product dimensions: 5.50 (w) x 8.30 (h) x 0.30 (d)

Meet the Author

Martín Espada's The Republic of Poetry was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, teaches at the University of Massachusetts–Amherst and lives in Amherst, Massachusetts.

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