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Zapata's Disciple
Essays
Martín Espada
Pages: 145ISBN: 0-89608-589-9
Format: paper only
Release Date: 1998-01-01
In his first collection of essays, award-winning poet Martín Espada turns his fierce critical eye toward a broad range of urgent political and cultural issues. With the same insight and integrity displayed in his poetry, he chronicles many struggles of the Latino community: the myths and realities of machismo, the backlash against Latino immigrants and the Spanish language, the borders of racism, and US colonialism in Puerto Rico.
Espada’s poetry has survived everything from censorship by National Public Radio to a bomb threat at a reading. In his essay "All Things Censored," he describes how NPR commissioned him to write a poem, then refused to air the work because of its political content: a defense of Mumia Abu-Jamal, the African American journalist on death row. In "The Poetics of Commerce," Espada takes on the Nike corporation, which solicited a poem for use in a television commercial as part of the company’s ongoing propaganda campaign to divert attention from its dismal human rights record in Asian sweatshops.
Espada stirs together ingredients of memoir and reclaimed history in "Postcard from the Empire of Queen Ixolib," which recalls his pilgrimage to the town in Mississippi where his father was jailed half a century ago for not moving to the back of the bus. He also pays homage to "Poets of the Political Imagination"—a force throughout the Americas rooted in the traditions of Neruda and Whitman—and reflects on the political imagination as a catalyst in the creation of his own poetry.
A dozen of Espada’s poems, old and new, weave themselves through the essays in Zapata’s Disciple. In a voice charged with anger, humor, and compassion, Espada unleashes his wordSD—following Walt Whitman’s dictum on what poets should do—"to cheer up slaves and horrify despots."
Winner of 1999 Independent Publisher Book Award for Creative Non-fiction/Memoir
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Table of Contents
Part 1 Zapata's Disciple
1 Zapata's Disciple and Perfect Brie
2 Postcard from the Empire of Queen Ixolib
3 Argue Not Concerning God
4 The Puerto Rican Dummy and the Merciful Son
Part 2 Dispatches
5 ?Viva Puerto Rico Gratis?
6 The New Bathroom Policy at English High School
7 Multiculturalism in the Year of Columbus and Rodney King
Part 3 Poetry Like Bread
8 Poetry Like Bread
9 The Good Liar Meets His Executioners
10 The Poetics of Commerce
11 All Things Censored
Martín Espada
Click here to view Martín Espada's full Author PageMartín Espada was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1957. His seventh collection of poems, Alabanza: New and Selected Poems (1982-2002) was published by Norton in 2003, received the Paterson Award for Sustained Literary Achievement and was named an American Library Association Notable Book of the year. An earlier collection, Imagine the Angels of Bread (Norton, 1996), won an American Book Award and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Other books of poetry include A Mayan Astronomer in Hell’s Kitchen (Norton, 2000), City of Coughing and Dead Radiators (Norton, 1993), and Rebellion is the Circle of a Lover’s Hands (Curbstone, 1990). He has received numerous awards, including the Robert Creeley Award, the Antonia Pantoja Award, an Independent Publisher Book Award, a Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award, the Paterson Poetry Prize, the PEN/Revson Fellowship and two NEA Fellowships. His poems have appeared in the New York Times Book Review, Harper’s, The Nation, and The Best American Poetry. He has also published a collection of essays, Zapata’s Disciple (South End, 1998); edited two anthologies, Poetry Like Bread: Poets of the Political Imagination from Curbstone Press (Curbstone, 1994) and El Coro: A Chorus of Latino and Latina Poetry (University of Massachusetts, 1997); and released a CD of poetry called Now the Dead will Dance the Mambo (Leapfrog, 2004). Much of his writing arises from his Puerto Rican heritage and his work experiences, ranging from bouncer to tenant lawyer. Espada is a professor in the Department of English at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, where he teaches creative writing, Latino poetry, and the work of Pablo Neruda.
His most recent book of poetry is The Trouble Ball (W.W. Norton, 2011). His website is http://www.martinespada.net/
(From www.poets.org)