Love Is Hard Work: Memorias de Loisaida/Poems

by Miguel Algarin

Overview

At once a moving personal memoir and a colorful portrait of life in New York's Lower East Side (Loisaida), this masterly collection of poems captures the whirlwind of sights, sounds, celebrations and sorrows of urban life.

In the centerpiece of the book, the poet offers a searing, unsentimental look at himself and his life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780684825175
Publisher:	Scribner
Publication date:	08/05/1997
Edition description:	Original
Pages:	160
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.40(d)

About the Author

Miguel Algarín was a poet, writer, cofounder of the Nuyorican Poets Café, and a Rutgers University professor of English.

Editorial Reviews

Manhattan's Lower East Side is rich in history and ethnic diversity, and Algarin's energetic new collection celebrates the neighborhood's people and streets. The author, an English professor at Rutgers University and a founder of the influential Nuyorican Poets Cafe, divides his book into four sections, introducing each with a short prose "proem." The angels of the first section are connected to his melting-pot world in "Mayan Nuyorican Angel": "and it is absolutely true that Nuyoricans/ order Moriawase with their pasteles/ and that the Itamae-San/ serves his sushi creations in perfect harmony/ with alcapurrias and beef patties,/ over blue corn tortillas." The poems in "Shared Love (Bio/Ethics in an Age of Plagues)" detail the drastic effects of HIV and AIDS on the poet's world: "If I were to show you/ how to continue holding on,/ I would not kiss you,/ I would not mix my fluids with yours,/ for your salvation." The section "August in Loisada" chronicles the painful end of a relationship, the sweetness of which is found in the peaches that grow in the poet's urban backyard. In the final section, "Nuyorican Kaddish," Algarin mourns his father in some of the book's most arresting images: "...the La Paz Funeral Parlor embalmer,/ who made a southbound turn/ onto the northbound traffic on Queens Boulevard/ with my father's cadaver/ neatly tucked into a body bag/ in the rear of his station wagon/ which I was following". Like Whitman and Ginsberg, Algarin sings the life of the city, providing road maps to both the outer and inner worldsand a report on the pleasures and terrors of fully lived life. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Algarin, founder of the Nuyorican Poets' Caf and three-time winner of the American Book Award, makes for a formidable presence in contemporary poetry. This volume, which comes with an interpretive introduction by Roy Skodnick and an affectionate afterword by Ishmael Reed, gives us a multifaceted portrait of Algarin and the world he has created, just as HIV casts a long shadow over his future. Algarin's style is rapid, simple, and free, as one might expect from a champion of caf poetry, but he is not without the refinements of craft, and the candor of his recollections of life on the lower East Side of New York is often profoundly moving. The first section, "Nuyorican Angels," is perhaps the most striking, lifting up disparate people and ideas as types of "metaphysical thunderstorm." His "Nuyorican Angel of Wordsmithing" asserts that the poet is a "Cultural Worker: A Humble Servant," a description that suits Algarin's own skill and appealing modesty. This volume should be popular in city libraries and among the poetry-slam crowd.Graham Christian, Andover-Harvard Theological Lib., Cambridge, Mass.

Library Journal