The Crazy Bunch

by Willie Perdomo

From a prize-winning poet, a new collection that chronicles a weekend in the life of a group of friends coming of age in East Harlem at the dawn of the hip-hop era

Willie Perdomo, a native of East Harlem, has won praise as a hip, playful, historically engaged poet whose restlessly lyrical language mixes "city life with a sense of the transcendent" (NPR.org). In his fourth collection, The Crazy Bunch, Perdomo returns to his beloved neighborhood to create a vivid, kaleidoscopic portrait of a "crew" coming of age in East Harlem at the beginning of the 1990s. In poems written in couplets, vignettes, sketches, riffs, and dialogue, Perdomo recreates a weekend where surviving members of the crew recall a series of tragic events: "That was the summer we all tried to fly. All but one of us succeeded."

Genres: Poetry, African American, Latinx

128 pages, Paperback

First published April 2, 2019

About the author

Willie Perdomo is the author Where a Nickel Costs a Dime and Smoking Lovely, which received a PEN America Beyond Margins Award. He has also been published in The New York Times Magazine and Bomb and his children's book, Visiting Langston, received a Coretta Scott King Honor. He is a NYFA Arts Fellowship winner, Pushcart Prize nominee, a Urban Artists Initiative/NYC grant recipient and was recently a Woolrich Fellow in Creative Writing at Columbia University. He is currently Artist-in-Residence, Workspace, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. He is co-founder/publisher of Cypher Books.

Reviews

[Bandit · Rating 3 out of 5]

Definitely one of the stranger poetry books I’ve read. More experimental. Almost like a performance art of mixed style spoken word.
This was essentially an ode to the author’s NYC neighborhood and its denizens, told through a variety of different methods and forms from interview to freestyle to literary sketches.
Took a while to get into, but then it was easy enough to appreciate. As an experiment, anyway. Which is to say not the sort of thing that maybe I’d read a lot of but for the book’s length it was just right. Interesting and original, nice rhythms.

[Emily Slomski · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this in the same week as "Queenie" and "The Tradition."

I am so impressed by Perdomo's ability to write a novel in poetry form.

[Nathan Albright · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an odd but interesting book of poems that relates to an attempt at understanding a story in the youth of some people, where violence snuffed out the life of several and ended a period of perceived innocence among them.  How you feel about this book will depend largely on your own belief system and opinion when it comes to urban crime and gang violence.  I myself looked at this book as somewhat experimental (and not in a bad way) but had very little sympathy for the people involved, most of whom were up to no good and paid an appropriate price for their criminality.  In general it might be said that I have little sympathy for criminal classes.  Yet the story itself is compelling apart from the fact that it deals with young people involved in the wrong sort of activity.  After all, most of the discussion involves questions of family, friendship, loyalty, and love, and the fascinating way in which different people have varying perspectives on the same events.  Told through a connect series of poems and dialogues, this makes for an interesting approach, and certainly one that I may consider worth emulating in future works.

As far as poetry books go, this one is more coherently organized than the vast majority of poetry books I have read.  The book begins with an introduction about the supposed "poetry cops" who behave like a detective asking questions to occasionally unwilling or unreliable witnesses and participants in the events of the book.  After that the first section of the book looks at the reliability or unreliability of memory "in the face of what you remember."  After that there are some poems that relate to the lovesick nature of the protagonist of the poem, who is called by various names like Papa and Skinicky, whose amorous interests are not viewed as highly by the object of his affections.  This leads to a discussion about how "you lose something each day," and also a discussion about how it is necessary to "forget what you saw" and to "forget what you heard," both of which are small sections with a few subjects dealing with alibis and prison and the drug war.  The book closes with a series of poems that look at "a spot where you can kiss the dead," reflecting on the losses faced by a group of young people over a short period of time, after which the book ends with shout outs.

This book provides a compelling way to frame a narrative within a series of related poems that include dialogue as well as verse, and several different types of poetry that range from well-written free verse poems to prose poems of considerable worth as well.  For those readers who have an animus towards the drug war or feel more empathy towards those involved in youth hooliganism, this book will offer a thoughtful view of youth involved in such matters reflecting over matters of life and love.  If the subject matter that the author is writing about is not necessarily new, he does at least provide a compelling way to look at familiar problems and perspectives that are rarely seen in poetry this articulate and this thoughtful (and I have read a lot of bad contemporary poetry, alas, dealing with some of these subjects).  When someone writes a book that can be appreciated for its sheer technical ability as well as its subject matter for those who are so inclined, that is a rare and notable achievement indeed, and one worth celebrating at least a little.

[Andy Oram · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this dense, intense little book Perdomo weaves street talk and hiphop-like jive in with extraordinarily sophisticated poetic language, conveying the feel of being part of a tight, young cohort routinely "confronted with the choice of fight or fun." There is so much slang here--probably tied to a particular neighborhood at a particular era--that much of this book is like a foreign language to me, but the resonance and richness of the poetry is all the more fascinating.

We all bond together in communities, but I think that people of limited means and options stay in their communities longer and depend on each other more. Thus the names of vaguely understood characters that turn up over and over in these stories-as-dreams-as-poems. Perdomo also plays and struggles, through mock interviews with the Poetry Cops ("Consolidated Poetry Systems), with the dual vision of reliving this youth and looking at it from the outside, having clearly made it into the ranks of the intelligentsia. ("I go uptown and try to find friends in the faces of strangers.")

[Josh · Rating 3 out of 5]

This reads more as a sort of avant-garde, almost stream-of-consciousness style story rather than a book of individual poems. This, along with the heavy Nuyorican (new word for me) lingo and other slang, made the reading a bit challenging. I know there were more than a few times where some meaning was lost on me.

That bring said, I liked diving into this little bit of culture. It's not something I would've picked up on my own, but happenstance put it in my hands last year, and I finally just got around to reading it.

Recommended for people following #OwnVoices.

[Kirsten · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent as always. There were times that I was simply enjoying the rhythm of the writing, but I think that's ok, and the story comes together even for someone not privy to every reference. I bought this at Lit Bar in the Bronx, very sad that I missed the signing.

[Drew · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very cool.

[Ariana van Dyck · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't have the range to write a review of this, but I'm very amazed by the form and delivery of this poem/novella/hybrid.

[Clay Anderson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good collection. I just wasn’t a huge fan.

[Pamela · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book of poetry that reads like a novella. The language and imagery are so engaging.

[Stephanie Dargusch Borders · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loved the range of these poems and the feeling of place.

[Dara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Man, this was beautiful. The way Perdomo plays with language even when writing pain is unparalleled — he has such a gift for rhythm and sound, for marrying the everyday to the elevated. This is genre-bending poetry that’s first and foremost about capturing story. His depiction of early 90’s East Harlem is like a time capsule, a snapshot of a past that still lives and breathes and sings. Stylistically and thematically, this collection reads like a natural successor to Gwendolyn Brooks’ iconic “We Real Cool.” Loved very bit of it.

[Santi Carmenate · Rating 5 out of 5]

Man, this made me cry at the end. I’ve read it before but this time hit different. Perdomo is a legend. His poetry makes me feel this unknown nostalgia that I’m always trying to understand. If ephemera had a wielder it would be him. Wow.

[Siobhan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tender portrait of a community. Even better if you can hear him read them.