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Alabanza: New and Selected Poems 1982-2002
Alabanza is a twenty-year collection charting the emergence of Martín Espada as the preeminent Latino lyric voice of his generation. "Alabanza" means "praise" in Spanish, and Espada praises the people Whitman called "them the others are down upon": the African slaves who brought their music to Puerto Rico; a prison inmate provoking brawls so he could write poetry in solitary confinement; a janitor and his solitary strike; Espada's own father, who was jailed in Mississippi for refusing to go to the back of the bus. The poet bears witness to death and rebirth at the ruins of a famine village in Ireland, a town plaza in México welcoming a march of Zapatista rebels, and the courtroom where he worked as a tenant lawyer. The title poem pays homage to the immigrant food-service workers who lost their lives in the attack on the World Trade Center. From the earliest out-of-print work to the seventeen new poems included here, Espada celebrates the American political imagination and the resilience of human dignity. Alabanza is the epic vision of a writer who, in the words of Russell Banks, "is one of the handful of American poets who are forging a new American language, one that tells the unwritten history of the continent, speaks truth to power, and sings songs of selves we can no longer silence." An American Library Association Notable Book of 2003 and a 2003 New York Public Library Book to Remember.
"To read this work is to be struck breathless, and surely, to come away changed."
—Barbara Kingsolver
"Martín Espada is the Pablo Neruda of North American authors. If it was up to me, I'd select him as the Poet Laureate of the United States."
—Sandra Cisneros
"With these new and selected poems, you can grasp how powerful a poet Espada is—his range, his compassion, his astonishing images, his sense of history, his knowledge of the lives on the underbelly of cities, his bright anger, his tenderness, his humor. "
—Marge Piercy
"Espada's poems are not just clarion calls to the heart and conscience, but also wonderfully crafted gems."
—Julia Alvarez
"A passionate, readable poetry that makes [Espada] arguably the most important 'minority' U.S. poet since Langston Hughes."
—Booklist
"Neruda is dead, but if Alabanza is any clue, his ghost lives through a poet named Martín Espada."
—San Francisco Chronicle
"To read this work is to be struck breathless, and surely, to come away changed."
—Barbara Kingsolver
"Martín Espada is the Pablo Neruda of North American authors. If it was up to me, I'd select him as the Poet Laureate of the United States."
—Sandra Cisneros
"With these new and selected poems, you can grasp how powerful a poet Espada is—his range, his compassion, his astonishing images, his sense of history, his knowledge of the lives on the underbelly of cities, his bright anger, his tenderness, his humor. "
—Marge Piercy
"Espada's poems are not just clarion calls to the heart and conscience, but also wonderfully crafted gems."
—Julia Alvarez
"A passionate, readable poetry that makes [Espada] arguably the most important 'minority' U.S. poet since Langston Hughes."
—Booklist
"Neruda is dead, but if Alabanza is any clue, his ghost lives through a poet named Martín Espada."
—San Francisco Chronicle
245 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2003
17 people are currently reading
325 people want to read
About the author
Martín Espada
60 books107 followersSandra Cisneros says: “Martín Espada is the Pablo Neruda of North American authors.” Espada was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1957. He has published thirteen books in all as a poet, essayist, editor and translator. His eighth collection of poems, The Republic of Poetry, was published by Norton in October, 2006. Of this new collection, Samuel Hazo writes: "Espada unites in these poems the fierce allegiances of Latin American poetry to freedom and glory with the democratic tradition of Whitman, and the result is a poetry of fire and passionate intelligence." His last book, Alabanza: New and Selected Poems, 1982-2002 (Norton, 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 and fellowships, including the Robert Creeley Award, the Antonia Pantoja Award, an Independent Publisher Book Award, a Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award, the Charity Randall Citation, the Paterson Poetry Prize, the PEN/Revson Fellowship and two NEA Fellowships. He recently received a 2006 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship. His poems have appeared in The New Yorker, 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 an audiobook of poetry on CD, called Now the Dead will Dance the Mambo (Leapfrog, 2004). Much of his poetry 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 and the work of Pablo Neruda.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 35 reviews
December 8, 2009
A poem from the book, so you can decide for yourselves:
"This is the year that squatters evict landlords,
gazing like admirals from the rail
of the roofdeck
or levitating hands in praise
of steam in the shower;
this is the year
that shawled refugees deport judges
who stare at the floor
and their swollen feet
as files are stamped
with their destination;
this is the year that police revolvers,
stove-hot, blister the fingers
of raging cops,
and nightsticks splinter
in their palms;
this is the year
that darkskinned men
lynched a century ago
return to sip coffee quietly
with the apologizing descendants
of their executioners.
This is the year that those
who swim the border's undertow
and shiver in boxcars
are greeted with trumpets and drums
at the first railroad crossing
on the other side;
this is the year that the hands
pulling tomatoes from the vine
uproot the deed to the earth that sprouts the vine,
the hands canning tomatoes
are named in the will
that owns the bedlam of the cannery;
this is the year that the eyes
stinging from the poison that purifies toilets
awaken at last to the sight
of a rooster-loud hillside,
pilgrimage of immigrant birth;
this is the year that cockroaches
become extinct, that no doctor
finds a roach embedded
in the ear of an infant;
this is the year that the food stamps
of adolescent mothers
are auctioned like gold doubloons,
and no coin is given to buy machetes
for the next bouquet of severed heads
in coffee plantation country.
If the abolition of slave-manacles
began as a vision of hands without manacles,
then this is the year;
if the shutdown of extermination camps
began as imagination of a land
without barbed wire or the crematorium,
then this is the year;
if every rebellion begins with the idea
that conquerors on horseback
are not many-legged gods, that they too drown
if plunged in the river,
then this is the year.
So may every humiliated mouth,
teeth like desecrated headstones,
fill with the angels of bread."
-Martin Espada
"This is the year that squatters evict landlords,
gazing like admirals from the rail
of the roofdeck
or levitating hands in praise
of steam in the shower;
this is the year
that shawled refugees deport judges
who stare at the floor
and their swollen feet
as files are stamped
with their destination;
this is the year that police revolvers,
stove-hot, blister the fingers
of raging cops,
and nightsticks splinter
in their palms;
this is the year
that darkskinned men
lynched a century ago
return to sip coffee quietly
with the apologizing descendants
of their executioners.
This is the year that those
who swim the border's undertow
and shiver in boxcars
are greeted with trumpets and drums
at the first railroad crossing
on the other side;
this is the year that the hands
pulling tomatoes from the vine
uproot the deed to the earth that sprouts the vine,
the hands canning tomatoes
are named in the will
that owns the bedlam of the cannery;
this is the year that the eyes
stinging from the poison that purifies toilets
awaken at last to the sight
of a rooster-loud hillside,
pilgrimage of immigrant birth;
this is the year that cockroaches
become extinct, that no doctor
finds a roach embedded
in the ear of an infant;
this is the year that the food stamps
of adolescent mothers
are auctioned like gold doubloons,
and no coin is given to buy machetes
for the next bouquet of severed heads
in coffee plantation country.
If the abolition of slave-manacles
began as a vision of hands without manacles,
then this is the year;
if the shutdown of extermination camps
began as imagination of a land
without barbed wire or the crematorium,
then this is the year;
if every rebellion begins with the idea
that conquerors on horseback
are not many-legged gods, that they too drown
if plunged in the river,
then this is the year.
So may every humiliated mouth,
teeth like desecrated headstones,
fill with the angels of bread."
-Martin Espada
April 24, 2020
It's clear that Espada is an excellent poet with control of his craft. None of these poems spoke to me specifically, but I can see why he was chosen as Poet Laureate of Northampton MA.
Most of the poems in this collection are lengthy, bleak, and establishment-defying. But the one copied below is my favorite. It's the only one like it in this volume, but it still makes a comment on the establishment.
Sheep Haiku
A lone sheep cries out:
There are more of us than them!
The flock keeps grazing.
Most of the poems in this collection are lengthy, bleak, and establishment-defying. But the one copied below is my favorite. It's the only one like it in this volume, but it still makes a comment on the establishment.
Sheep Haiku
A lone sheep cries out:
There are more of us than them!
The flock keeps grazing.
July 20, 2007
The title poem brings tears to my eyes. It's a most noble tribute to the victims of violence in Afghanistan and the World Trade Center.
May 4, 2008
I liked most of the poems in this book, but none of them really struck me as amazing except this one. I'm still awed by how it manages to be scary and romantic at the same time.
"When the Leather is a Whip
At night
with my wife
sitting on the bed
I turn from her
to unbuckle
my belt
so she won't see
her father
unbuckling
his belt."
Read it again.
See what I mean?
Read for: Surviving the American Dream
"When the Leather is a Whip
At night
with my wife
sitting on the bed
I turn from her
to unbuckle
my belt
so she won't see
her father
unbuckling
his belt."
Read it again.
See what I mean?
Read for: Surviving the American Dream
December 17, 2009
I had to read and analyze Espada's poems for my poetry and poetics class. This is a thought-provoking collection that brought both tears, laughter, and anger at the prejudices shown to Spanish-speaking people.
July 22, 2024
Espada is a democratic poet, one who listens, observes, and gives voice to all the faded neighborhood cats, barrio brothers and sisters, murdered martyrs, and servants with thankless but crucial jobs who have long been neglected. Through his poems, Espada unfolds the crumpled legends that lay wadded up in the oblivion of America's wastebasket. He hears the quotidian shuffle of their bruised hearts in the kitchens, laundry rooms, janitor closets, and slum bedrooms and handles them with warmth, candor, reflection, and jouissance. These moments are relayed to us by the infinite dimensions that birthed them.
Espada hears ancestors. As in “The ancianos, with skin like cured tobacco leaves, remembered 1868, taught you in hoarse conspiracy that a machete could chop the wrist of a landlord easily as cane.” Here, “Hands without irons become dragonflies, red flowers rain on our hats, subversive angels flutter like pigeons from a rooftop, this stripped and starving earth is not a grave” (247-250). Although it is thought that the subversive has been suffocated, Espada imagines the supposedly crushed topple their oppressors. He speaks it into existence. He pours kerosene on the hopes of the hopeless and infuses our minds and veins with the combustible ingredients for rebellion.
In speaking about the quiet, forgotten, or silenced, Espada also comes to redefine rebellion. His poems show every subversive act sliding beneath the nose of the oppressor, affording his subjects dignity. Such is the case within the poem “Bully,” where he speaks of a Theodore Roosevelt statue who is “nostalgic for the Spanish-American war, each fist lonely for a saber or the reins of anguish-eyed horses, or a podium to clatter with speeches glorying in the malaria of conquest...” But goes on to show how “the Roosevelt school is pronounced Hernández. Puerto Rico has invaded Roosevelt with its army of Spanish-singing children in the hallways, brown children devouring the stockpiles of the cafeteria, children painting Taíno ancestors who leap naked across murals” (87-88).
Espada is a poet of the republic in that he represents the voice of the voiceless in the most sincere and genuine fashion. He does this by going where they are—their spaces, experiences, hardships, minds, and bodies. He is a poet of the Latino/a/x/e body politic.
Espada hears ancestors. As in “The ancianos, with skin like cured tobacco leaves, remembered 1868, taught you in hoarse conspiracy that a machete could chop the wrist of a landlord easily as cane.” Here, “Hands without irons become dragonflies, red flowers rain on our hats, subversive angels flutter like pigeons from a rooftop, this stripped and starving earth is not a grave” (247-250). Although it is thought that the subversive has been suffocated, Espada imagines the supposedly crushed topple their oppressors. He speaks it into existence. He pours kerosene on the hopes of the hopeless and infuses our minds and veins with the combustible ingredients for rebellion.
In speaking about the quiet, forgotten, or silenced, Espada also comes to redefine rebellion. His poems show every subversive act sliding beneath the nose of the oppressor, affording his subjects dignity. Such is the case within the poem “Bully,” where he speaks of a Theodore Roosevelt statue who is “nostalgic for the Spanish-American war, each fist lonely for a saber or the reins of anguish-eyed horses, or a podium to clatter with speeches glorying in the malaria of conquest...” But goes on to show how “the Roosevelt school is pronounced Hernández. Puerto Rico has invaded Roosevelt with its army of Spanish-singing children in the hallways, brown children devouring the stockpiles of the cafeteria, children painting Taíno ancestors who leap naked across murals” (87-88).
Espada is a poet of the republic in that he represents the voice of the voiceless in the most sincere and genuine fashion. He does this by going where they are—their spaces, experiences, hardships, minds, and bodies. He is a poet of the Latino/a/x/e body politic.
August 17, 2013
I never thought I would enjoy political poetry so much. While that aspect was certainly very pronounced, and at first (in Espada’s early works) a little off setting, the poems themselves were successful. By that I mean to say that the statement Espada wanted to make didn’t interrupt the flow of his poems or the direction they needed to go in.
Being both Hispanic and a recent resident of New York state, I found the poems especially dear to me. Each character in Espada’s poems has a name and a history. As I read Alabanza I also felt the importance he recognizes in mankind’s individuality and culture, both which should never be generalized or ignored completely but so often are. The impression I was left with after reading was that I needed to pay closer attention to others, that while “a rose by any other name would smell as sweet” there is still such importance in a name because it is a label for one’s identity. In his poems I began to see each character as an entire world.
On another note, the imagery Espada creates within the more prose-like poems is dripping with sensual elements. The sounds of the languages spoken, the smell of burnt arroz y habichuelas, the image of palms dirty with soil and blood, etc. all help to place the reader inside the events and moments within his poems. I’ll never look at a cockroach the same way again.
Being both Hispanic and a recent resident of New York state, I found the poems especially dear to me. Each character in Espada’s poems has a name and a history. As I read Alabanza I also felt the importance he recognizes in mankind’s individuality and culture, both which should never be generalized or ignored completely but so often are. The impression I was left with after reading was that I needed to pay closer attention to others, that while “a rose by any other name would smell as sweet” there is still such importance in a name because it is a label for one’s identity. In his poems I began to see each character as an entire world.
On another note, the imagery Espada creates within the more prose-like poems is dripping with sensual elements. The sounds of the languages spoken, the smell of burnt arroz y habichuelas, the image of palms dirty with soil and blood, etc. all help to place the reader inside the events and moments within his poems. I’ll never look at a cockroach the same way again.
November 4, 2015
"No one asks
where I am from,
I must be
from the country of janitors,
I have always mopped this floor.
Honduras, you are a squatter's camp
outside the city
of their understanding..."
This is the most unassuming and down to earth book of poetry I've ever read. In Albanza you will read about real people and real problems. "With a voice trained obedient in the darkness of church confessionals," Martín Espada unleashes a series of poems that are both sardonic and beautiful. These poems document the struggle of Latin American & Caribbean immigrants in the United States of America while also exploring the idea of Revolution, and ending with the question of whether we can ever overcome our rabid jingoism to experience true cultural exchange.
"and one said with an Afghan tongue:
Teach me to dance. We have no music here.
And the other said with a Spanish tongue:
I will teach you. Music is all we have"
where I am from,
I must be
from the country of janitors,
I have always mopped this floor.
Honduras, you are a squatter's camp
outside the city
of their understanding..."
This is the most unassuming and down to earth book of poetry I've ever read. In Albanza you will read about real people and real problems. "With a voice trained obedient in the darkness of church confessionals," Martín Espada unleashes a series of poems that are both sardonic and beautiful. These poems document the struggle of Latin American & Caribbean immigrants in the United States of America while also exploring the idea of Revolution, and ending with the question of whether we can ever overcome our rabid jingoism to experience true cultural exchange.
"and one said with an Afghan tongue:
Teach me to dance. We have no music here.
And the other said with a Spanish tongue:
I will teach you. Music is all we have"
October 5, 2014
Oh…these poems and this poet - sang powerfully and well. i had come across a poem a few years ago by this author and loved it. But I just began reading these poems of his, this year. What a collection. His use of metaphor and clarity in the service of justice is striking and strong. Every time. He writes and tells the stories of those whose stories would be untold in public places if not for him. These stories need to be told. And I am so very glad I read this.
July 1, 2012
A contemporary classic by one of America's most powerful contemporary poets--eloquent, rich, compassionate, with flashes of dark, subversive humor. Espada's experience as a tenant lawyer gives him a distinctive vantage on community, politics, and the working world. The title poem is the finest and most effective poem on 9/11 out there.
October 28, 2007
wow, this is an INCREDIBLE collection of poetry by martin espada. his voice is such a presence, it sprawls across the page and throughout the book. i found myself laughing and then nearing tears - sometimes within one poem. amazing work.
September 28, 2008
possibly even better than The Republic of Poetry, but only because it contains so many wonderful accounts as his time as both tenant laywer and poet.... by far one of my favorite poets to watch here at the G R Dodge Festival, maybe tying with N. S. Nye.
June 18, 2012
I really enjoyed this book of poetry, they either made me laugh or cry or shake my head in confusion.
Took the class at Chautauqua with Mr. Espada as teacher, it was a great time, he can't be described in a few lines. I'll add something later.
Took the class at Chautauqua with Mr. Espada as teacher, it was a great time, he can't be described in a few lines. I'll add something later.
November 12, 2012
I first learned about this author when he was being interviewed on TV a number of years ago about the great work he was doing in schools to inspire primarily minority students to write. It was enjoyable to read some of his poetry.
March 22, 2008
A collection from my favorite political poet, a former tenant lawyer.
January 26, 2009
Each poem a gem. Lovely, powerful book.
July 1, 2009
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Para siempre.
Yes.
Yes.
Para siempre.
February 24, 2011
This was one of the 2004 RUSA Notable Books winners. For the complete list, go to http://www.ala.org/ala/mgrps/divs/rus...
February 1, 2013
Powerful
July 7, 2013
A very fine collection by a Latino American with an affinity for political statement.
March 23, 2020
"This is the year that squatters evict landlords, / gazing like admirals from the rail / of the roofdeck / or levitating hands in praise / of steam in the shower; / this is the year / that shawled refugees deport judges / who stare at the floor / and their swollen feet / as files fare stamped with their destinations..." (117).
"Alabanza. When the war began, from Manhattan and Kabul / two constellations of smoke rose and drifted to each other, / mingling in icy air, and one said with an Afghan tongue: / Teach me to dance. we have no music here. /And the other said with a Spanish tongue: / I will teach you. Music is all we have" (232).
Espada's poetry bristles with a left politics that exalts the dispossessed and indicts the ruling class, but it does so in a way that hardly stretches language; in fact, for poetry, it often felt flat in my mouth and dull on the page. Still, ALABANZA features two of my all-time favorite poems: "Imagine the Angels of Bread" (a revolutionary New Year's poem) and "Alabanza: In Praise of Local 100" (a poem for the union workers who died in 9/11). The collection also introduced me to a few others I really liked, and I'm ultimately so grateful for Espada. As he points out, "there are poets / who versify vacations in Tuscany, / the villa on a hill, the light of morning / ... poets who cannot sleep as they contemplate / the extinction of iambic pentameter" ( 227); he is not one of those frivolous poets. Instead, he's trying to lyrically tell the story of massacres brushed under the rug of history, of the evicted, of the immigrant, of the union worker, of the free press, of the kid in juvie so desperate to write poetry that he keeps landing himself time in solitary to write. Espada, in other words, is the people's poet: alabanza.
"Alabanza. When the war began, from Manhattan and Kabul / two constellations of smoke rose and drifted to each other, / mingling in icy air, and one said with an Afghan tongue: / Teach me to dance. we have no music here. /And the other said with a Spanish tongue: / I will teach you. Music is all we have" (232).
Espada's poetry bristles with a left politics that exalts the dispossessed and indicts the ruling class, but it does so in a way that hardly stretches language; in fact, for poetry, it often felt flat in my mouth and dull on the page. Still, ALABANZA features two of my all-time favorite poems: "Imagine the Angels of Bread" (a revolutionary New Year's poem) and "Alabanza: In Praise of Local 100" (a poem for the union workers who died in 9/11). The collection also introduced me to a few others I really liked, and I'm ultimately so grateful for Espada. As he points out, "there are poets / who versify vacations in Tuscany, / the villa on a hill, the light of morning / ... poets who cannot sleep as they contemplate / the extinction of iambic pentameter" ( 227); he is not one of those frivolous poets. Instead, he's trying to lyrically tell the story of massacres brushed under the rug of history, of the evicted, of the immigrant, of the union worker, of the free press, of the kid in juvie so desperate to write poetry that he keeps landing himself time in solitary to write. Espada, in other words, is the people's poet: alabanza.
November 9, 2016
I began reading this when the presidental debates started three months ago, and it would only be aprepo to finish it on the eve of election day.
As always, a collection of Espada poetry never ceases to disappoint. Chalked with politically charged, gritty poems, powerful lamentations on death, family, community, and resistance, Espada proves himself to be a poet of our time. He is a necessary voice that understands the many terrains of struggle that exist inside and outside social movements, as well as the materiality of peoples lives.
I gather Alabaza will be just as relevant in the years to come as it is today.
As always, a collection of Espada poetry never ceases to disappoint. Chalked with politically charged, gritty poems, powerful lamentations on death, family, community, and resistance, Espada proves himself to be a poet of our time. He is a necessary voice that understands the many terrains of struggle that exist inside and outside social movements, as well as the materiality of peoples lives.
I gather Alabaza will be just as relevant in the years to come as it is today.
April 9, 2019
Beautiful, harrowing, and tender- reading these poems about what it means to be left behind and invisible can feel like desperation, yet there is a magical spirit within Espada’s poetry that becomes bittersweet triumph.
September 19, 2013
Some absolutely gorgeous juxtapositions and use of language. I love the poems about Espada's family.
December 27, 2016
So, so good.
January 23, 2023
A beautiful, sweeping introduction to the work of Espada. There are incisive, short poems that stick in your mind ("When the Leather is a Whip", "The Florida Citrus Growers Association Responds to a Proposed Law Requiring Handwashing Facilities in the Fields," "Pegao," "The Community College Revises its Curriculum in Response to Changing Demographics") truly like the rice at the bottom of the pot or those memories that come back to you every few years in a flash of pain and reset your mind. The longer poems about Puerto Rican independence fighters and Nicaragua and Cambridge, MA of course all resonated with me for identity reasons, sure (read: I am Puerto Rican/Nica and living in Cambridge), but even more so because I felt the weight of them. Espada was there, he gets it. Maybe in diaspora, but not disconnected or pithy or anodyne. He understands the importance of the work he is doing and has no interest in writing just because it's "about" being "Latinx"--which is to say, if someone tried to present this as just a book of "Latinx" poetry (or, God forbid, #ownvoices) I would know immediately that they did not understand the context of this collection or had ever thought meaningfully about what that word even means. The politics and stakes are clear, and Espada is never careless. Even as the tone is often so tongue-in-cheek, one gets multiple portholes/windows/glimpses into history and life in PR/Cambridge/Chile/Nicaragua/California/Texas/Mexico/etc. This is one that will stick with me for a while.
May 3, 2020
Martín Espada is a poet of protest; Puerto Rican, trained as a lawyer, teaches poetry at Amherst College - his poems remind me of Neruda and Whitman. Short, brimming with anger and humor, offering insights into the life of the immigrant, the prisoner, the son, the father.
August 16, 2020
I must admit that my mind wanders on a few of the longer poems with references to specific people, but there are moments, especially early on in the book, when the poetry is as good as I've ever read.
December 3, 2021
Always moving, One of my favorite poets
May 2, 2022
Martin Espada is able to blend the political and the personal better than almost anyone I can think of. Amazing collection of work.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 35 reviews