Crucifixion in the Plaza de Armas is a collection of Martín Espada's Puerto Rico poems. Espada means 'sword' in Spanish, and the poet contemplates the meanings of his name for conquerors and rebels over the centuries. He writes of colonialism and the movement for independence, from the Ponce Massacre to the epic life of Clemente Soto Vélez, a poet imprisoned for 'seditious conspiracy'. Espada also creates a narrative of family, searching the mountains for the grave of his great-grandfather, or bearing witness to the struggles of his cousins to survive.
These poems insist on the details that give history a human face and resistance a human voice, finding transcendence in the music of African slaves, in the caves where spirits dwell, even in the miraculous mop of a janitor.
"the best new poet I've read for years."
Adrian Mitchell
A former tenant-lawyer, Martín Espada is now a professor in the Department of English at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He has published fourteen books as a poet, editor and translator, including Alabanza: New and Selected Poems, A Mayan Astronomer in Hell's Kitchen, Imagine the Angels of Bread, City of Coughing and Dead Radiators and Rebellion is the Circle of a Lover's Hands. He has received numerous awards and fellowships, among them an American Book Award, the Robert Creeley Award, the PEN/Revson Fellowship and a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship. His most recent book of poems, The Republic of Poetry, received the Paterson Award for Sustained Literary Achievement and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.
Visit Martin Espada's web site.
Crucifixion in the Plaza de Armas, by Martín Espada
ISBN 978-0-9554028-1-4
Price: £7.95
Publication date: 29th February 2008
Order Crucifixion in the Plaza de Armas from Inpress.
