The Library of America’s ‘African American Poetry: 250 years of Struggle and Song’ is stunning in its historic and literary scope and the same is true of LOA’s ‘Latino Poetry’ an anthology that brings together the voices of 168 poets going back four centuries, across continents, cultures, and poetic legacy of the Latin diaspora.
Editor Rigoberto Gonzalez, writes in his introduction “I conceived of Latino poetry as a kind of landscape, a communal, an open space where many different visions-Mexican American, Cuban American, Puerto Rican, Dominican American, Afro-Latino, and Indigenous Latino, among others, can flourish.” Gonzalez is professor of English at Rutgers University and director of the MFA program for creative writing.
With over 250 poems Gonzalez arranges them by eras- Antecedents (17th to Early 20th century; Corridos and Nostalgia Songs (19th & 20th C.); Latino Ancestors (20th C. Latin American); and theme chapters- Latino; Let Me Tell You What A Poem Brings; My Body Sang It’s Undeath; Howling As They Came.
From quatrains that document the 16th century Spanish sea battle depicted in La Florida that opens this collection to the narrative ballads of the Corridos, to the mystic haiku and jazz poetry of the Nuyorican Café collective in New York’s Greenwich Village to the work of a new generation of millennial spoken word and slam poets- the literary scope of this anthology is breathtaking.
Gonzalez also notes in his intro, “Perhaps above all I was aware of a sense of urgency animating these poems as political as it is aesthetic, a belief that ‘poetry is not a luxury,’” a quote from African American Lesbian poet borrow Audre Lorde. Indeed, many of the writers in this collection have experienced multiple obstacles in their home countries, from having to flee colonialized governments or civil wars or threat by oppressive government because they were writers.
If ever there was a sociopolitical time when a book of poetry was not only a luxury, that speaks to challenges in the US for thousands of refugees and migrants without the right paperwork face off with collateral deportation and for many even facing the revoking of their birthright citizenship, which is manifestly unconstitutional.
Most of the contributing poets had rough upbringings in their birth countries. Even as they grew up pursuing academic careers they ended up as exiles, or branded dissidents in their home countries by authoritarian regimes or political enemies. They overcame these obstacles, becoming professors, activist writers, and international award-winning poets. Poet Tato Laviera has dubs the inestimable ‘tapestry’ of Latin poetics as ‘Continental Mixturao.’
The anthology includes notes on the works, and capture biographies of the poets. Many of the poems are printed in the poets original language, with an English translation on the facing page. Some of the poems are mixed with verse with lines in both Spanish and English rendering dynamic and dramatic lyrical elements.
Here are a few random excerpts from the book:
Tato Laviera | MIxturao- “we-who create continental music/elaborate universal jazz/rhythmic tonalities/vallenato oilings/gospel-rap soulings/Brazilian Portuguesa/bonito bolero/Mayan songs soothing/Quebecois hard rock/patois saging/Andino cumbias/world-wide tango curvings/merengue-calypso/mating-mixing dancing/ tres por cuatro cubanities/con los pasos firmes de aztecas/who are you, English, telling me,
“speak English or Die
The poems of Latino antiquity speak to our time in their imagery and epic stye. This verse play ‘Los Comanches’ by Anonymous written circa 1780 in classical form concludes with the heroic stanza- ‘this district entirely in search of this fierce warrior who sent so many to the pyre// who wore his mask madness as his shield//Who is this man and what his name// I call him to the battlefield…”
Mariposa’s embraces her indelible cultural heritage in her work in her verse diatribe ‘Ode to the Diasporican- “What does it take to realize that being /Boricua is/a state of mind/a state of heart/a state of soul Mira a mi cara Puertoriquena/A mi pelo vivo/a mis mano morenas/ Mira a mi corazon que se llena de orgullo/Y dime que no soy Boricua/ ‘No naci en Puerto Rico/Puerto Rico nacio en mi (I wasn’t born in Puerto Rico/Puerto Rico was born in me.”
Rodrigo Tuscano captures the real time ephemera of today’s spoken word performance in his poem ‘LatinX Poet’– “3rd wave Harlem Renaissance singing, bouncing it to symbolize techno with acoustic Marxists. LEHRSTUCK. At baroque Takata Tempe in true NOLA line strutting yo.”
Darrell Alejandro Holnes’ haunting ‘Cristo Negro de Portobelo’ metaphor of being a gay Panamanian confronted by priests and of a black swan’s “struggle of first flight against the moon’s night can be a freedom beyond heaven, and it’s wanting eternity. So now rebellion is my new religion, or something else romantic and American like a crownless king, perhaps an immigrant one at the top of the throne in native disguise.”
Puerto Rican American playwright Miguel Pinero’s ‘A Lower East Side Poem’ has the same brutal edge as his prison drama ‘Short Eyes. “ I don’t want to be buried in Puerto Rico. I don’t wanna rest in a Long Island cemetery. I wanna be near the stabbing, shooting, gambling, fighting and unnatural dying and new birth crying. So please, when I die… don’t take me far away, keep me nearby. Take my ashes and scatter them throughout the Lower East Side…”
Natasha Carrizosa writes of her multi-racial heritage in Majiafricana: …I am mejiafricana//that’s half and half/but whole-as in//an entire empire of Aztec warriors//breathed orange red fire into my lungs//that’s half and half//but whole-as in//an entire tribe from the congo//rained blue black blood into my soul.
The literary heritage of the Latin diaspora through poetic arts served as indelible artistic statement of events that only those who were part of that history can document. If a picture tells a thousand words, the poems in this anthology conjure thousands of pictures. The poems in this anthology are illustrative of art as witness- to oppression, war, famine, exile, tyranny, corruption, violence, poverty, and just as many with themes of love, nature, families, community, art, traditions, rhymes and rhythms of life and a collective passion to fight for freedom no matter what comes.
