Customer Reviews

Smoking Lovely

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2 star:		(1)
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It is great when someone has the ability to take their experiences of life and put them on page to be explored by the world. This book talks the breath and life of growing up in the NYC and being a minority. The struggle, pain and love for his New York enviornment of urban struggle, pride and triumph is all displayed throught "Smoking Lovely". This book is good for those wanting to learn how to craft experiences into great prose.

When Willie Perdomo wrote, "The Notes for a Slow Jam - I wanted to play this like Petrarch and bless you with a suite of sonnets. But I can't rock sonnets, so I thought I would write you 100 letters for 100 days," it was over for me. I had to call up a friend, read the entire piece and just say, "damn." If poetic skill could be equated to narcotic potency, Willie Perdomo's Smoking Lovely would be an illegal substance. He is phenomenal poet, the epitome of Nuyorican poetry, blending Spanish and English metaphors seamlessly, with a singularity and power that is halting. Often in the world of Spoken Word poetry, what sounds good does not translate with equal prowess to paper. Willie Perdomo is master of both page and stage, evidencing the beauty and majesty that is born when great writing weds great performance.
His metaphoric world reflects images of violence and humor, love and stink, drug abuse, prison and overcoming. Everything that is New York City sweet and sour is delivered with honesty. A CD that accompanies the book, read by the author, is an added bonus, offering an even more intimate view into the Perdomo poetic window. There are no music tracks to camouflage or hide behind. None are needed, as his verse alone seizes ears. In one poem he writes, "...there's a disco ball spinning starlight on the New Boogaloo." I write, the spinning starlight is Willie Perdomo's talent, and the New Boogaloo is Smoking Lovely.

Willie Perdomo is "la voz" for a part of society that is under represented in the world of published literature. His range is broad as he paints the gruesome faces of crack addicts that drag the neighborhood pavement like zombies to the cream-laced words of bedtime seduction to the shameless honesty of the faithful blind patron of the Nuyorican Cafe. No matter the arena, political, social, or economic, he handles any topic with the same frank manner, delicate imagery, powerful clinchers that hits you in the heart of your compassion's home.

The title piece is particularly strong. He uses few words, but the few words he selects accurately depict the awful irony of a life devoted to drugs. The addict is devoted to his narcotic and is deemed to be "Smoking Lovely." Perdomo's gritty description of him shows there's nothing lovely about his appearance, his reality or his addiction.

"Smoking Lovely" is a collection of street-life, city-life, broken home-life sagas. Yet, it's not begging for pity in any way whatsoever. He's simply telling a story and dares you to comprehend the emotional, psychological, and physical hardships of his characters. Perdomo just paints it like it is. Besides, if there's a grain of humanity in you, you'll be shaking your head mildly from left to right in empathy (not sympathy) throughout the collection. "Smoking Lovely" is a more than worthwhile read!

And so now we know more about the man who is steady asking us for change, or the woman in the alley at one o'clock in the morning, all thanks to Willie Perdomo. This book struck a special cord with me because I have spent the majority of my life watching these people who are "Smoking Lovely"crawl through the streets. Perdomo takes this nameless, faceless character and gives him a name, a story, and a place in the world. It is amazing to me the way he is able to capture the essence of someone who is addicted to drugs, and plaster their story in the form of a poem. Perdomo's words are pure and unbiased showing us the beauty of humanity and the ugly truth of what it means to be "Smoking Lovely".

Willie Perdomo says it all about the Nuyorican experience in Smoking Lovely. The book explores poetry in a biblical sense. Like the bible, it addresses the history of poetry, the history of spoken word and the reality of struggles facing the everyday poet. There is a constant tone held throughout the collection of poetry that stays above borrowing but manages to maintain a calm voice with conviction.
The pain, the joy, and the experience of struggle, and the experience of spoken word is heard in the tone of Perdomos voice. He does a fantastic job of explicating his version of the Nuyorican experience and contributing to the cannon of writers. The narrating voice is not just that of Perdomo, but other, possibly all Nuyorican poets. Perdomo takes a reader on a journey beyond the walls of The Nuyorican Poets Café.
This book invokes laughter and feelings of amazement amongst the readers because Perdomo is witty, wise and flavorful in his writing. This book of poetry is truly the expression of struggle, addictions, family, love and spoken word.

Willie Perdomo's Smoking Lovely melts the grit of New York City life into a work as beautiful and diverse as the people who live there. Through the use of poignant and important imagery and a conversational tone, he brings his readers into the place where he grew up - a world that held him captive for most of his life. Smoking Lovely, therefore, is a collection of writings where each,'poem looks like a/ mother who just lost her only son/ to the last gunshot of the night/ [whose] long cries sneak under [our] door/ like the beginning of dinner (Perdomo, 25).' Consistent with his previous work, in Smoking Lovely, English and Spanish are masterfully folded together to create a unique and genuine snapshot of Puerto Rican life in Spanish Harlem. His style of writing embodies the very spirit of New York: fierce and honest, hopeful but unforgiving, and most importantly, in-your-face and real. An easy read from start to finish, this work should not be discounted as undeveloped, or "spoken-wordish." Perdomo's poetry is as eloquent and academic as it is sharp and relevant. This book is a force to be reckoned with, as dangerous and powerful as a hurricane.

Willie Perdomo, Smoking Lovely (Rattapallax, 2003)

I picked this up blind from the library, and as soon as I saw the word "Nuyorican" on the cover, I braced myself for the worst. Reflex action. Pound for pound, I've seen more bad non-poetry coming out of the Nuyorican scene than just about anywhere else.

True to form, when Perdomo is writing poetry, well, he fails. It's non-poetry of the most banal sort; image plays no part in the work at all, leading to prose chopped up into lines to make it look good. Well, it doesn't make it look good, it makes it look either pretentious or like an affectation used to make the pieces take up more room on a page (thus, leading to more pages, thus, leading to faster book publication).

The prose pieces here, though, have more of a grip to them. When the author is on his game, he's really on his game. Short, punchy paragraphs that (ironically, given the above paragraph) are all about helping the reader see through the author's eyes. Unfortunately, the strength of the prose makes the weakness of the poetry all the more apparent. **