Rooftop Piper

by David Hernandez

David Hernandez's poetry captures the realities of both Chicago street life and Puerto Rico. He is able to make drastic, and yet effortless changes to the narratives on the page, line by line. An amazing book for both poets and non-poets.  

Genres: Poetry

90 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

Reviews

[Oscar · Rating 3 out of 5]

David Hernandez's poetry captures the elegance of a well cooked pot of rice-n-beans and the realities of Chicago street life. Different viewpoints from the Chi-Town Boricua experience are deftly handled here as switch from tragedy to comedy often from page-to-page, stanza-to-stanza, and line-to-line.

Hernandez shows great confidence in his poetics and narrative abilities, unafraid to to manipulate the space on the page while also being able to work in the prose poem to great effect.

The only thing to look out for is the glaring number of typos in the first edition copy I have. Luckily, these slight publishing errors do not detract from Hernandez's contagious joy and love of the Chicago that encroaches and sustains him.

[Vicki · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first heard of David Hernandez when he came to do a poetry reading at my high school over a decade ago. I remember thinking, "Great. A poet. This guy's going to get eaten alive." And he walked into the crowded library, where kids were talking and being general loudmouths, and he started to read -- he was incredible! We all shut up and listened, and connected, and wound up cheering our heads of for him.

His poetry is so accessible, so warm and interesting that it's hard not be drawn in. He writes from such interesting angles, and about the people, moments and places that are important to him -- his poems are even better to me now, more than ten years later. Wonderful book.

[Carlos Cumpian · Rating 5 out of 5]

I taught this book at the University of Illinois at Chicago and one other title of David's Satin City Lullaby which is hard to locate.