A Mayan Astronomer in Hell's Kitchen: Poems [Paperback]

Martín Espada (Author), Martin Espada (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0393321681 | ISBN-13: 978-0393321685 | Publication Date: June 2001

"Martín Espada ....forges a new poetic language."—Dennis Loy Johnson, Pittsburgh Tribune

In his sixth collection, American Book Award winner Martín Espada has created a poetic mural. There are conquerors, slaves, and rebels from Caribbean history; the "Mayan astronomer" calmly smoking a cigarette in the middle of a New York tenement fire; a nun staging a White House vigil to protest her torture; a man on death row mourning the loss of his books; and even Carmen Miranda.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Espada, a frequent contributor to National Public Radio's various news programs, can keep his magic-inflected tone light even when engaging social disparity: "As I was about/ to put a quarter/ in the parking meter,/ a man walking by/ stopped, whirled,/ fired three karate kicks/ decapitating the meter,/ and stretched out/ his hand/ for the quarter." A former tenant lawyer, Espada makes a convincing Robin Hood both in the poem cursing a "Jim Crow Mexican Restaurant in Cambridge, Massachusetts Where My Cousin Esteban Was Forbidden to Wait Tables Because He Wears Dreadlocks" and in "The Governor of Puerto Rico Reveals at His Inaugural That He Is the Reincarnation of Ponce de Leon." While these poems make a scene defying their overly deterministic titles, it's the quiet and quick ones that make his sixth collection solid, like the title poem, about a man on a fire escape who stops to smoke a cigarette, or "The Mexican Cabdriver's Poem for His Wife, Who Has Left Him", in which the speaker, having challenged the poets in his cab to write the poem at hand, supplies the somehow heartbreaking information that his wife isn't like the moon but "is like the bridge/ when there is so much traffic/ I have time/ to watch the boats/ on the river." The book ends with a suite of unsatisfying poems about the executions of American political prisoners, but the overall effect of this book is one of poetic uplift in the face of everyday oppression. (Apr.)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Library Journal

American-born Puerto Rican poet Espada, son of a political activist and at one time a practicing lawyer, has spent his life involved in social justice work on behalf of the Hispanic community. His poems speak eloquently of issues that cut to the core of human existence--death, tumors, heart disease, poverty--and to individuals who suffer inhumane treatment (and worse) owing to political oppression (e.g., Sister Dianna Ortiz, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg). From the enigmatic title poem (from a third-floor window, a man watches the restaurant below him burn, seemingly unaware or immune to the danger he's in) through pieces about the death of his grandmother, Puerto Rico, his wife's family, Carmen Miranda, and more, Espada employs a variety of styles--sometimes long-lined, sometimes brief as haiku. In a richly descriptive, highly political poem for death row prisoner/poet Mumia Abu-Jamal (commissioned by NPR's "All Things Considered," which later refused to air it), he writes, "The executioner's needle would flush the poison/ down into Mumia's writing hand/ so the fingers curl like a burned spider." A glossary translates terms that may be unfamiliar to the reader. Highly recommended.
-Judy Clarence, California State Univ. Lib., Hayward
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 88 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company (June 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393321681
• ISBN-13: 978-0393321685
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.5 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #735,572 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Surreal Poet on Real Fire, June 5, 2000

By 

Holly Hunt - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Mayan Astronomer in Hell's Kitchen: Poems (Hardcover)

Martin Espada's tumultous language rushes forward in this unforgettable sixth collection of firey work: white heat surrounded by the cooler, blue streaks of history. Rather than hold a mirror up to the broken time-barrier of his people's seemingly eternal struggle, he captures it by the hair of its head and drags it onto the page where it still lives, thrashing. Emotive and layered with textural surreal images, his words continue to carry the torch through the subterranean tunnels of fresh consciousness, where the shadows first cast by Neruda still dance. He is a worthy carrier of that kind of genuine magic. His is a poetry of sharp blades that cuts through the toughest-rooted dream territory, as we see in "The Shiny Aluminum of God:" "The scar carves her husband's forehead/ where the doctors scooped the tumor out,/ where cancer cells scramble like a fistful of ants." No other present-day Mayan, or present-day prophet, for that matter, writes with such warp and texture. Warning: the poet talks texture at the table: the communion table of collective consciousness. Because he seems to hear more and see more than other spiritual chroniclers, his readers can be with "the preacher who first heard the savior's voice/ bleeding through the plaster of the jailhouse." He is one who has a gift to let the blood speak-- to let the truth seep through. The title is appropriate; he may well chart the stars of the past and future, and his poems are our hotline to his vision in Hell's Kitchen. Espada never shies away from the drama of his subject matter. Each poem is loaded with the special energy that only he can impart. The message is usually violent, requiring a sizeable talent which has yet to let us down.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Naming the Stars, September 12, 2000

By 

David Howlett (Herndon, VA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: A Mayan Astronomer in Hell's Kitchen: Poems (Hardcover)

A MAYAN ASTRONOMER IN HELL'S KITCHEN by Martín Espada

A Mayan Astronomer in Hell's Kitchen is the title of Martín Espada's new book. The title reflects the cultural and linguistic mix in which Espada lives, shuttling from his Puerto Rican heritage to Old Guard Connecticut.

The book begins in Puerto Rico with the poet's relatives. These include a dying grandmother and a cousin whose stock of miracle cookware fails to heat the family dinner. About his father in Brooklyn, the poet writes:

Sometimes I dream

my father is a guitar,

with a hole in his chest

where the music throbs

between my fingers

("My Father as a Guitar")

Espada also writes about a magically real politician ("The Governor of Puerto Rico Reveals at His Inaugural That He Is The Reincarnation of Ponce de Leon") and the mixture of foreign birds in a luxury hotel in San Juan:

The White cockatoo from Australia

twirls tricks with a hostess

. . .

the scarlet macaw of Brazil

yammers a joke about pina coladas

. . .

the peacock of India

skitters around the koi pond

. . .

the frostbitten turkey from North Carolina

thaws in the kitchen

("Ornithology at the Caribe Hilton")

These poems range from the deadly serious to the comic. "The Carpenter Swam to Spain" is about the Spanish Civil War and "The River Will Not Testify" is about a Colonial massacre of Indians. Espada also speaks about the Rosenbergs and Mumia Abu-Jamal. Other poems can make you laugh out loud such as "Anarchism and the Parking Meter" and "Why I Went to College":

If you don't,

my father said,

you better learn

to eat soup

through a straw

cause I'm gonna

break your jaw.

The book's best combination of social commentary and humor, as well as the most intense cultural conflict, occurs in Connnecticut where Espada's in-laws have been resident since 1680. At Thanksgiving, he silently compares the New England fare to the "turkey with arroz y habichuelos and plátanos" he grew up with. Later, his father-in-law hauls out a small cannon and fires it at some old tombstones; "This way, if I hit anybody, / they're already dead." The poet concludes: "When the first / drunken Pilgrim dragged out the cannon at the first Thanksgiving - / that's when the Indians left." ("Thanksgiving"). With humor, Espada compares the father-in-law's lack of value for his cultural heritage with the poet's own sense of the past.

Espada has serious things to say, but he is not preaching. His language is direct and pulls the reader along through images of both personal and political history. This book shows that Mr. Espada is a mature poet who continues to offer readers a great variety.