Please

by Edwin Torres

Poetry. Latino/Latina Studies. CD ROM format. Text, audio poems, soundscapes, & video from Edwin Torres. I was in a room./The left wall was my friend./I turned. With these lines, we enter PLEASE -- a CD that uses the screen as metaphor for room and house to navigate sublime stagecraft and lyrical realization. Bob Holman has praised Torres' use of text, graphics and poesie concrete...the equivalent of Torres' fully-orchestrated live performances. In PLEASE Torres' design background informs the minimal visual architecture, combining paranoia with nomadic wonder outside the 'walls.' Brenda Coultas observes, The nomad is a constant in Torres' work, an alter ego. PLEASE brims over with such alterity, a nomad trapped by desire, an analogy to walking through the poet's mind, wandering in and out of rooms representing phases of time & space: City/Morning/Night, Boy/Nature, Media/Remote, Time/Galaxy, and Love.

Audio CD

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

Edwin Torres is a former New York State Supreme Court judge and author, who wrote the 1975 novel Carlito's Way. His book was the basis for the 1993 movie of the same name, starring Al Pacino, and for the 1979 book After Hours, the sequel to Carlito's Way.

In 1958, Torres was admitted to the New York State Bar. In 1959, as an assistant district attorney, Torres participated in the prosecution of Sal "the Capeman" Agron. Shortly thereafter he became a criminal defense attorney.

In 1977, Torres was appointed to the New York State Criminal Court. In 1980 he was selected to the State Supreme Court, where he served as a justice in the Twelfth Judicial District in New York City. The Supreme Court has jurisdiction over felony cases, and Torres presided over a number of high-profile murder cases.

He retired from the bench in 2008 and since then has served on the New York State Athletic Commission.

A film adaptation of Q & A was released in 1990, directed by Sidney Lumet, and it starred Nick Nolte and Armand Assante. "After Hours" was filmed in 1993, but used the title Carlito's Way to avoid being confused with Martin Scorsese's 1985 film After Hours.