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Floaters: Poems
Martín Espada is a poet who "stirs in us an undeniable social consciousness," says Richard Blanco. Floaters offers exuberant odes and defiant elegies, songs of protest and songs of love from one of the essential voices in American poetry.
Floaters takes its title from a term used by certain Border Patrol agents to describe migrants who drown trying to cross over. The title poem responds to the viral photograph of Óscar and Valeria, a Salvadoran father and daughter who drowned in the Río Grande, and allegations posted in the “I’m 10-15” Border Patrol Facebook group that the photo was faked. Espada bears eloquent witness to confrontations with anti-immigrant bigotry as a tenant lawyer years ago, and now sings the praises of Central American adolescents kicking soccer balls over a barbed wire fence in an internment camp founded on that same bigotry. He also knows that times of hate call for poems of love—even in the voice of a cantankerous Galápagos tortoise.
The collection ranges from historical epic to achingly personal lyrics about growing up, the baseball that drops from the sky and smacks Espada in the eye as he contemplates a girl’s gently racist question.
Whether celebrating the visionaries—the fallen dreamers, rebels and poets—or condemning the outrageous governmental neglect of his father’s Puerto Rico in the wake of Hurricane María, Espada invokes ferocious, incandescent spirits.
Floaters takes its title from a term used by certain Border Patrol agents to describe migrants who drown trying to cross over. The title poem responds to the viral photograph of Óscar and Valeria, a Salvadoran father and daughter who drowned in the Río Grande, and allegations posted in the “I’m 10-15” Border Patrol Facebook group that the photo was faked. Espada bears eloquent witness to confrontations with anti-immigrant bigotry as a tenant lawyer years ago, and now sings the praises of Central American adolescents kicking soccer balls over a barbed wire fence in an internment camp founded on that same bigotry. He also knows that times of hate call for poems of love—even in the voice of a cantankerous Galápagos tortoise.
The collection ranges from historical epic to achingly personal lyrics about growing up, the baseball that drops from the sky and smacks Espada in the eye as he contemplates a girl’s gently racist question.
Whether celebrating the visionaries—the fallen dreamers, rebels and poets—or condemning the outrageous governmental neglect of his father’s Puerto Rico in the wake of Hurricane María, Espada invokes ferocious, incandescent spirits.
96 pages, Hardcover
First published January 19, 2021
38 people are currently reading
1082 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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June 20, 2023Prose poetry. Some people break out in hives at the term.
OK, how about narrative poetry written more in blocks than lines? (Some people who are cool with "prose poetry" say it ain't prose poetry once you get more than two blocks, the blockheads.)
Good grief, man. Instead of looking at the hand, these folks need to look at the poetic license. Martin Espada is at home with political poetry too. Blatantly so. And it works.
Here are a pair from the book that should tempt you to dive in (apologies that line length limits at GR screw up the formatting):
Love is a Luminous Insect at the Window
for Lauren Marie Espada
July 13, 2019
The word love: there it is again, indestructible as an insect,
fly faster than the swatter, mosquito darting through the net.
How the word love chirps in every song, crickets keeping
city boy up all night. I wish I could fry and eat them.
How the word love buzzes in sonnet after sonnet. I am
the beekeeper who wakes from a nightmare of beehives.
To quote Durȧn, the Panamanian brawler who waved a glove
and walked away in the middle of a fight: No mȧs. No more.
Then I see you, watching the violinist, his eyes shut, the Russian
composer’s concerto in his head, white horsehair fraying on the bow,
and your face is bright with tears, and there it is again, the word love,
not a fly or a mosquito, not a cricket or a bee, but the Luna moth
we saw one night, luminous green wings knocking at the screen
on the window as if to say I have a week to live, let me in, and I do.
And watch how effectively Espada uses repetition in the following:
The Stoplight at the Corner Where Somebody Had to Die
They won’t put a stoplight on that corner till somebody dies, my father
would say. Somebody has to die. And my mother would always repeat:
Somebody has to die. One morning, I saw a boy from school facedown
in the street, there on the corner where somebody had to die. I saw
the blood streaming from his head, turning the black asphalt blacker.
He heard the bells from the ice cream truck and ran across the street,
somebody in the crowd said. The guy in the car never saw him.
And somebody in the crowd said: Yeah. The guy never saw him.
Later, I saw the boy in my gym class, standing in the corner of the gym.
Maybe he was a ghost, haunting the gym as I would sometimes haunt
the gym, standing in the corner, or maybe he wasn’t dead at all. They
never put the stoplight there, at the corner where somebody had to die,
where the guy in the car never saw him, where the boy heard the bells.
As the old saying goes: They don't throw around National Book Awards (2021) for nothing.
OK, how about narrative poetry written more in blocks than lines? (Some people who are cool with "prose poetry" say it ain't prose poetry once you get more than two blocks, the blockheads.)
Good grief, man. Instead of looking at the hand, these folks need to look at the poetic license. Martin Espada is at home with political poetry too. Blatantly so. And it works.
Here are a pair from the book that should tempt you to dive in (apologies that line length limits at GR screw up the formatting):
Love is a Luminous Insect at the Window
for Lauren Marie Espada
July 13, 2019
The word love: there it is again, indestructible as an insect,
fly faster than the swatter, mosquito darting through the net.
How the word love chirps in every song, crickets keeping
city boy up all night. I wish I could fry and eat them.
How the word love buzzes in sonnet after sonnet. I am
the beekeeper who wakes from a nightmare of beehives.
To quote Durȧn, the Panamanian brawler who waved a glove
and walked away in the middle of a fight: No mȧs. No more.
Then I see you, watching the violinist, his eyes shut, the Russian
composer’s concerto in his head, white horsehair fraying on the bow,
and your face is bright with tears, and there it is again, the word love,
not a fly or a mosquito, not a cricket or a bee, but the Luna moth
we saw one night, luminous green wings knocking at the screen
on the window as if to say I have a week to live, let me in, and I do.
And watch how effectively Espada uses repetition in the following:
The Stoplight at the Corner Where Somebody Had to Die
They won’t put a stoplight on that corner till somebody dies, my father
would say. Somebody has to die. And my mother would always repeat:
Somebody has to die. One morning, I saw a boy from school facedown
in the street, there on the corner where somebody had to die. I saw
the blood streaming from his head, turning the black asphalt blacker.
He heard the bells from the ice cream truck and ran across the street,
somebody in the crowd said. The guy in the car never saw him.
And somebody in the crowd said: Yeah. The guy never saw him.
Later, I saw the boy in my gym class, standing in the corner of the gym.
Maybe he was a ghost, haunting the gym as I would sometimes haunt
the gym, standing in the corner, or maybe he wasn’t dead at all. They
never put the stoplight there, at the corner where somebody had to die,
where the guy in the car never saw him, where the boy heard the bells.
As the old saying goes: They don't throw around National Book Awards (2021) for nothing.
November 19, 2021
Update 11/19/2021 - Floaters is a well deserved winner of the 2021 National Book Award for poetry.
There is a lot of rage and grief and truth in this slim volume of poems, language being used to make sense of tragedy and senseless prejudice and structural inequalities. It is raw and smart and searing and I am better for reading words like in the first two stanzas of the titular poems:
"Like a beer bottle thrown into the river by a boy too drunk to cry,
like the shard of a Styrofoam cup drained of coffee brown as the river,
like the plank of a fishing boat broken in half by the river, the dead float.
And the dead have a name: floaters, say the men of the Border Patrol,
keeping watch all night by the river, hearts pumping coffee as they say
the word floaters, soft as a bubble, hard as a shoe as it nudges the body,
to see if it breathes, to see if it moans, to see if it sits up and speaks.
And the dead have names, a feast day parade of names, names that
dress all in red, names that twirl skirts, names that blow whistles,
names that shake rattles, names that sing in praise of the saints:
Say Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez. Say Angie Valeria Martínez Ávalos.
See how they rise off the tongue, the calling of bird to bird somewhere
in the trees above our heads, trilling in the dark heart of the leaves."
Some of my favorite poems were in the middle section, elegies and memorials for departed friends and mentors. I've not read Espada before, but I will be reading more.
**Thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for a free copy in exchange for an honest review.
There is a lot of rage and grief and truth in this slim volume of poems, language being used to make sense of tragedy and senseless prejudice and structural inequalities. It is raw and smart and searing and I am better for reading words like in the first two stanzas of the titular poems:
"Like a beer bottle thrown into the river by a boy too drunk to cry,
like the shard of a Styrofoam cup drained of coffee brown as the river,
like the plank of a fishing boat broken in half by the river, the dead float.
And the dead have a name: floaters, say the men of the Border Patrol,
keeping watch all night by the river, hearts pumping coffee as they say
the word floaters, soft as a bubble, hard as a shoe as it nudges the body,
to see if it breathes, to see if it moans, to see if it sits up and speaks.
And the dead have names, a feast day parade of names, names that
dress all in red, names that twirl skirts, names that blow whistles,
names that shake rattles, names that sing in praise of the saints:
Say Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez. Say Angie Valeria Martínez Ávalos.
See how they rise off the tongue, the calling of bird to bird somewhere
in the trees above our heads, trilling in the dark heart of the leaves."
Some of my favorite poems were in the middle section, elegies and memorials for departed friends and mentors. I've not read Espada before, but I will be reading more.
**Thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for a free copy in exchange for an honest review.
October 24, 2021
This collection was incredible!! Loved.
December 5, 2021
Floaters
Ok, I’m gonna go ahead and ask . . . have ya’ll ever seen floaters this clean. I’m not trying to be an a$$ but I HAVE NEVER SEEN FLOATERS LIKE THIS, could this be another edited photo. We’ve all seen the dems and liberal parties do some pretty sick things. —ANONYMOUS POST, “I’M 10-15” BORDER PATROL FACEBOOK GROUP
Like a beer bottle thrown into the river by a boy too drunk to cry,
like the shard of a Styrofoam cup drained of coffee brown as the river,
like the plank of a fishing boat broken in half by the river, the dead float.
And the dead have a name: floaters, say the men of the Border Patrol,
keeping watch all night by the river, hearts pumping coffee as they say
the word floaters, soft as a bubble, hard as a shoe as it nudges the body,
to see if it breathes, to see if it moans, to see if it sits up and speaks.
And the dead have names, a feast day parade of names, names that
dress all in red, names that twirl skirts, names that blow whistles,
names that shake rattles, names that sing in praise of the saints:
Say Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez. Say Angie Valeria Martínez Ávalos.
See how they rise off the tongue, the calling of bird to bird somewhere
in the trees above our heads, trilling in the dark heart of the leaves.
Say what we know of them now they are dead: Óscar slapped dough
for pizza with oven-blistered fingers. Daughter Valeria sang, banging
a toy guitar. He slipped free of the apron he wore in the blast of the oven,
sold the motorcycle he would kick till it sputtered to life, counted off
pesos for the journey across the river, and the last of his twenty-five
years, and the last of her twenty-three months. There is another name
that beats its wings in the heart of the trees: Say Tania Vanessa Ávalos,
Óscar’s wife and Valeria’s mother, the witness stumbling along the river.
Now their names rise off her tongue: Say Óscar y Valeria. He swam
from Matamoros across to Brownsville, the girl slung around his neck,
stood her in the weeds on the Texas side of the river, swore to return
with her mother in hand, turning his back as fathers do who later say:
I turned around and she was gone. In the time it takes for a bird to hop
from branch to branch, Valeria jumped in the river after her father.
Maybe he called out her name as he swept her up from the river;
maybe the river drowned out his voice as the water swept them away.
Tania called out the names of the saints, but the saints drowsed
in the stupor of birds in the dark, their cages covered with blankets.
The men on patrol would never hear their pleas for asylum, watching
for floaters, hearts pumping coffee all night on the Texas side of the river.
No one, they say, had ever seen floaters this clean: Óscar’s black shirt
yanked up to the armpits, Valeria’s arm slung around her father’s
neck even after the light left her eyes, both face down in the weeds,
back on the Mexican side of the river. Another edited photo: See how
her head disappears in his shirt, the waterlogged diaper bunched
in her pants, the blue of the blue cans. The radio warned us about
the crisis actors we see at one school shooting after another; the man
called Óscar will breathe, sit up, speak, tug the black shirt over
his head, shower off the mud and shake hands with the photographer.
Yet, the floaters did not float down the Río Grande like Olympians
showing off the backstroke, nor did their souls float up to Dallas,
land of rumored jobs and a president shot in the head as he waved
from his motorcade. No bubbles rose from their breath in the mud,
light as the iridescent circles of soap that would fascinate a two-year-old.
And the dead still have names, names that sing in praise of the saints,
names that flower in blossoms of white, a cortege of names dressed
all in black, trailing the coffins to the cemetery. Carve their names
in headlines and gravestones they would never know in the kitchens
of this cacophonous world. Enter their names in the book of names.
Say Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez; say Angie Valeria Martínez Ávalos.
Bury them in a corner of the cemetery named for the sainted archbishop
of the poor, shot in the heart saying mass, bullets bought by the taxes
I paid when I worked as a bouncer and fractured my hand forty years
ago, and bumper stickers read: El Salvador is Spanish for Vietnam.
When the last bubble of breath escapes the body, may the men
who speak of floaters, who have never seen floaters this clean,
float through the clouds to the heavens, where they paddle the air
as they wait for the saint who flips through the keys on his ring
like a drowsy janitor, till he fingers the key that turns the lock and shuts
the gate on their babble-tongued faces, and they plunge back to earth,
a shower of hailstones pelting the river, the Mexican side of the river.
Ok, I’m gonna go ahead and ask . . . have ya’ll ever seen floaters this clean. I’m not trying to be an a$$ but I HAVE NEVER SEEN FLOATERS LIKE THIS, could this be another edited photo. We’ve all seen the dems and liberal parties do some pretty sick things. —ANONYMOUS POST, “I’M 10-15” BORDER PATROL FACEBOOK GROUP
Like a beer bottle thrown into the river by a boy too drunk to cry,
like the shard of a Styrofoam cup drained of coffee brown as the river,
like the plank of a fishing boat broken in half by the river, the dead float.
And the dead have a name: floaters, say the men of the Border Patrol,
keeping watch all night by the river, hearts pumping coffee as they say
the word floaters, soft as a bubble, hard as a shoe as it nudges the body,
to see if it breathes, to see if it moans, to see if it sits up and speaks.
And the dead have names, a feast day parade of names, names that
dress all in red, names that twirl skirts, names that blow whistles,
names that shake rattles, names that sing in praise of the saints:
Say Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez. Say Angie Valeria Martínez Ávalos.
See how they rise off the tongue, the calling of bird to bird somewhere
in the trees above our heads, trilling in the dark heart of the leaves.
Say what we know of them now they are dead: Óscar slapped dough
for pizza with oven-blistered fingers. Daughter Valeria sang, banging
a toy guitar. He slipped free of the apron he wore in the blast of the oven,
sold the motorcycle he would kick till it sputtered to life, counted off
pesos for the journey across the river, and the last of his twenty-five
years, and the last of her twenty-three months. There is another name
that beats its wings in the heart of the trees: Say Tania Vanessa Ávalos,
Óscar’s wife and Valeria’s mother, the witness stumbling along the river.
Now their names rise off her tongue: Say Óscar y Valeria. He swam
from Matamoros across to Brownsville, the girl slung around his neck,
stood her in the weeds on the Texas side of the river, swore to return
with her mother in hand, turning his back as fathers do who later say:
I turned around and she was gone. In the time it takes for a bird to hop
from branch to branch, Valeria jumped in the river after her father.
Maybe he called out her name as he swept her up from the river;
maybe the river drowned out his voice as the water swept them away.
Tania called out the names of the saints, but the saints drowsed
in the stupor of birds in the dark, their cages covered with blankets.
The men on patrol would never hear their pleas for asylum, watching
for floaters, hearts pumping coffee all night on the Texas side of the river.
No one, they say, had ever seen floaters this clean: Óscar’s black shirt
yanked up to the armpits, Valeria’s arm slung around her father’s
neck even after the light left her eyes, both face down in the weeds,
back on the Mexican side of the river. Another edited photo: See how
her head disappears in his shirt, the waterlogged diaper bunched
in her pants, the blue of the blue cans. The radio warned us about
the crisis actors we see at one school shooting after another; the man
called Óscar will breathe, sit up, speak, tug the black shirt over
his head, shower off the mud and shake hands with the photographer.
Yet, the floaters did not float down the Río Grande like Olympians
showing off the backstroke, nor did their souls float up to Dallas,
land of rumored jobs and a president shot in the head as he waved
from his motorcade. No bubbles rose from their breath in the mud,
light as the iridescent circles of soap that would fascinate a two-year-old.
And the dead still have names, names that sing in praise of the saints,
names that flower in blossoms of white, a cortege of names dressed
all in black, trailing the coffins to the cemetery. Carve their names
in headlines and gravestones they would never know in the kitchens
of this cacophonous world. Enter their names in the book of names.
Say Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez; say Angie Valeria Martínez Ávalos.
Bury them in a corner of the cemetery named for the sainted archbishop
of the poor, shot in the heart saying mass, bullets bought by the taxes
I paid when I worked as a bouncer and fractured my hand forty years
ago, and bumper stickers read: El Salvador is Spanish for Vietnam.
When the last bubble of breath escapes the body, may the men
who speak of floaters, who have never seen floaters this clean,
float through the clouds to the heavens, where they paddle the air
as they wait for the saint who flips through the keys on his ring
like a drowsy janitor, till he fingers the key that turns the lock and shuts
the gate on their babble-tongued faces, and they plunge back to earth,
a shower of hailstones pelting the river, the Mexican side of the river.
January 9, 2022
This volume won the 2021 National book Award for Poetry. Espada has already received a number of honors including a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Ruth Lily Prize for Poetry, and was a finalist for a Pulitzer. Born in Brooklyn of Puerto Rican parents, he began his career as a tenant lawyer in Boston, where he attended law school. In the early 80’s I was aware of him as a friend of friends, and a poet. Boston was a city with a strong tenants’ rights movement that I, as a renter, supported. His first volume was ‘The Immigrant Iceboy’s Bolero’, published in 1982, illustrated with photographs by his father, Frank Espada, creator of The Puerto Rican Diaspora Documentary Project.
Espada’s poetry has always focused on social justice, the lives of working class immigrants, and Puerto Rican history. In this volume, many of the poems are prose poems. In my opinion, prose poems are challenging to write, and they may be particularly appropriate for political poems. I am reminded of Carolyn Forché’s famous poem ‘The Colonel’ written in 1978 when she spent months in El Salvador during its civil war. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem...
The title poem ‘Floaters’ is the story of the death of 25-year-old Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez and his 23-months-old daughter Angie Valéria Martínez Ávalos. “Floater” is the term some Border Patrol agents use for migrants who drown trying to cross into the U.S. Espada reminds us that these are people who had dreams, and people who loved them.
And the dead have a name: floaters, say the men of the Border Patrol, keeping watch all night by the river, pumping coffee …
And the dead have names, a feast day parade of names, names that
dress all in red, names that twirl skirts, names that blow whistles,
names that shake rattles, names that sing in praise of the saints:
Say Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez. Say Angie Valéria Martínez Ávalos .
Poems in this volume are often based on actual events, in Espada’s life, his parents’ lives, in Boston, Brooklyn, Italy and France. My favorite is his poem in the volume ‘Letter to My Father’.
His father was from Utuado, a town in the central part of Puerto Rico, in the Cordillera Central mountain range. It was hard hit by Hurricane Maria in September, 2017, as were many of the small towns and villages in the mountains. Mudslides added to the devastation and death toll, and cut people off from aid. No one in Puerto Rico will forget Trump's visit to the island after the hurricane, when he threw rolls of paper towels to devastated, hungry citizens who had come for relief from the President of the United States.
I know you are not God. I have the proof: seven pounds of ashes in a box
on my bookshelf. Gods do not die, and yet I want you to be God again.
Stride through the crowd to seize the president’s arm before another roll
of paper towels sails away. Thunder Spanish obscenities in his face.
Banish him to a roofless rainstorm in Utuado, so he unravels, one soaked
sheet after another, till there is nothing left but his cardboard heart.
At the end of the volume, there are extensive notes that provide background on themes of some poems, as well as the inspiration for various poems. There is a fair amount to be learned about Puerto Rican history and culture in his poems and notes. The poems are very rich and I am ready to sit down and reread this volume almost immediately.
Highly recommended.
Espada’s poetry has always focused on social justice, the lives of working class immigrants, and Puerto Rican history. In this volume, many of the poems are prose poems. In my opinion, prose poems are challenging to write, and they may be particularly appropriate for political poems. I am reminded of Carolyn Forché’s famous poem ‘The Colonel’ written in 1978 when she spent months in El Salvador during its civil war. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem...
The title poem ‘Floaters’ is the story of the death of 25-year-old Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez and his 23-months-old daughter Angie Valéria Martínez Ávalos. “Floater” is the term some Border Patrol agents use for migrants who drown trying to cross into the U.S. Espada reminds us that these are people who had dreams, and people who loved them.
And the dead have a name: floaters, say the men of the Border Patrol, keeping watch all night by the river, pumping coffee …
And the dead have names, a feast day parade of names, names that
dress all in red, names that twirl skirts, names that blow whistles,
names that shake rattles, names that sing in praise of the saints:
Say Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez. Say Angie Valéria Martínez Ávalos .
Poems in this volume are often based on actual events, in Espada’s life, his parents’ lives, in Boston, Brooklyn, Italy and France. My favorite is his poem in the volume ‘Letter to My Father’.
His father was from Utuado, a town in the central part of Puerto Rico, in the Cordillera Central mountain range. It was hard hit by Hurricane Maria in September, 2017, as were many of the small towns and villages in the mountains. Mudslides added to the devastation and death toll, and cut people off from aid. No one in Puerto Rico will forget Trump's visit to the island after the hurricane, when he threw rolls of paper towels to devastated, hungry citizens who had come for relief from the President of the United States.
I know you are not God. I have the proof: seven pounds of ashes in a box
on my bookshelf. Gods do not die, and yet I want you to be God again.
Stride through the crowd to seize the president’s arm before another roll
of paper towels sails away. Thunder Spanish obscenities in his face.
Banish him to a roofless rainstorm in Utuado, so he unravels, one soaked
sheet after another, till there is nothing left but his cardboard heart.
At the end of the volume, there are extensive notes that provide background on themes of some poems, as well as the inspiration for various poems. There is a fair amount to be learned about Puerto Rican history and culture in his poems and notes. The poems are very rich and I am ready to sit down and reread this volume almost immediately.
Highly recommended.
March 4, 2023
I remember the tale of my grandfather the gambler, tipped off
that the cops would raid his speakeasy, selling the club to another
gambler, fleeing Puerto Rico before somebody could press a gun
to his skull and scatter his brains through his white straw hat.
That is the story of how the Espada family came to America.
My father one said: 'That never happened, and besides, you
should wait till people are dead to tell stories like that.'
Now people are dead, and I am telling stories like that."
- The Story of How We Came to America
First Espada collection after a long-time seeing his work in compilations. Majority prose storytelling poetry with clear realistic themes of migration, identity, situational, and some lighter fare like the "Love Song of the Kraken" and "Love Song of the Galapagos Tortoise", about Lonesome George.
that the cops would raid his speakeasy, selling the club to another
gambler, fleeing Puerto Rico before somebody could press a gun
to his skull and scatter his brains through his white straw hat.
That is the story of how the Espada family came to America.
My father one said: 'That never happened, and besides, you
should wait till people are dead to tell stories like that.'
Now people are dead, and I am telling stories like that."
- The Story of How We Came to America
First Espada collection after a long-time seeing his work in compilations. Majority prose storytelling poetry with clear realistic themes of migration, identity, situational, and some lighter fare like the "Love Song of the Kraken" and "Love Song of the Galapagos Tortoise", about Lonesome George.
April 16, 2022
Moving and impactful poems of social conscience, sweet and bitter remembrances, and imaginative odes. He confronts racism, discrimination, injustices, brutalities, and death whether in a taxi cab, at the border, at the boxing arena, by a bridge, or in a soccer field. He writes insightfully of a beating in Boston, bombings in Beruit, floating bodies of a daughter and father at the Mexican border, a black man falsely accused of a car jacking and attacking a married couple, and the governmental abandonment after Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico. He speaks of growing up as a Puerto Rican in New York, fighting for the evicted as a tenant lawyer, and loving his wife and heritage. They are of hope, rage, beginnings, and endings. He is a fierce activist and voice worth reading.
February 1, 2022
4.5 stars
I really enjoyed the first two poems: 'Jumping Off the Mystic Tobin Bridge' and the eponymous 'Floaters'.
In fact these are destined to be classics and each is about as perfect as unrhymed and unmetered poetry can get. I might even add 'Be There When They Swarm Me' to the list.
The other twenty-seven poems are closer to four stars. Quite a lot of detail and prose-like by nature.
I really enjoyed the first two poems: 'Jumping Off the Mystic Tobin Bridge' and the eponymous 'Floaters'.
In fact these are destined to be classics and each is about as perfect as unrhymed and unmetered poetry can get. I might even add 'Be There When They Swarm Me' to the list.
The other twenty-seven poems are closer to four stars. Quite a lot of detail and prose-like by nature.
December 16, 2021
Sobbed through 90% of this.
August 19, 2022
Deserving of its National Book Award, Floaters puts Espanda's strengths on full display. Primarily written as prose poems with moments of lyrical luminescence, Floaters documents the grim realities of the Trump era with a sense of the historical forces behind them. The final section consists of eulogies for Espada's colleagues whose work illuminates the issues he's concerned with.
The title poem is brilliant, but there are many others to look at if you're frazing: Jumping Off the Mystic Tobin Bridge; Ode to the Soccer Ball Sailing Over a Barbed-Wire Fence; Boxer Wears American 1st Shorts in Bout With Mexican, Finishes Second; Death Rides the Elevator in the Bronx; and "The Assassination of the Landlord's Purple Vintage."
The title poem is brilliant, but there are many others to look at if you're frazing: Jumping Off the Mystic Tobin Bridge; Ode to the Soccer Ball Sailing Over a Barbed-Wire Fence; Boxer Wears American 1st Shorts in Bout With Mexican, Finishes Second; Death Rides the Elevator in the Bronx; and "The Assassination of the Landlord's Purple Vintage."
March 21, 2022
.
"Los olvidados wait seven hours in line for a government meal of Skittles and Vienna sausage, or a tarp to cover the bones of a house with no roof, as the fungus grows on their skin from sleeping on mattresses drenched with the spit of the hurricane. They drink the brown water, waiting for microscopic monsters in their bellies to visit plagues on them. A nurse says: These people are going to have an epidemic. These people are going to die. The president flips rolls of paper towels to a crowd at a church in Guaynabo, Zeus lobbing thunderbolts on the locked ward of his delusions."
Floaters by Martín Espada has already accumulated a number of awards including the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize and is a National Book Award Winner. and rightfully so.
This is a collection of mostly prose poetry where most of the pieces are political with no rhyme or meter. Focusing on social justice, immigrants, and Puerto Rican history, Brooklyn born Espada has written something so smart and poignant that I know I will be revisiting often and recommending to many.
My favorite poems are the eponymous, 'Floaters', 'The Five Horses of Doctor Ramón Emeterio Betances', and 'Letter to My Father'.
Floaters was written in response to the viral photo os Óscar and Valleria, father and daughter who died trying to cross the Río Grande. The term "floaters" is used by certain Border Patrol agents to describe migrants who have drowned. There is an actual post from "I'm 10-15" Border Patrol Facebook group included that is just so disgusting that I had to set the volume down for a while.
The last poem, 'Letter to My Father' was written as an ode to his father who is from the Utuado, a town in the Cordillera Central mountain range that was hard hit by Hurricane Maria in 2017. I don't think any of us will forget the recordings of the former president on his visit the ravaged region.
I think the beginning and ending poems were the strongest and most searing while the poems written in memorial in the middle section were ones that I just didn't love as much. However, I can not recommend this compilation enough.
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#floaters #martínespada #martinespada #poems #poetry #nationalbookawardwinner #wwnortonandcompany #Norton #wwnorton #readmore #readmorebooks #ruthlillypoetryprize
"Los olvidados wait seven hours in line for a government meal of Skittles and Vienna sausage, or a tarp to cover the bones of a house with no roof, as the fungus grows on their skin from sleeping on mattresses drenched with the spit of the hurricane. They drink the brown water, waiting for microscopic monsters in their bellies to visit plagues on them. A nurse says: These people are going to have an epidemic. These people are going to die. The president flips rolls of paper towels to a crowd at a church in Guaynabo, Zeus lobbing thunderbolts on the locked ward of his delusions."
Floaters by Martín Espada has already accumulated a number of awards including the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize and is a National Book Award Winner. and rightfully so.
This is a collection of mostly prose poetry where most of the pieces are political with no rhyme or meter. Focusing on social justice, immigrants, and Puerto Rican history, Brooklyn born Espada has written something so smart and poignant that I know I will be revisiting often and recommending to many.
My favorite poems are the eponymous, 'Floaters', 'The Five Horses of Doctor Ramón Emeterio Betances', and 'Letter to My Father'.
Floaters was written in response to the viral photo os Óscar and Valleria, father and daughter who died trying to cross the Río Grande. The term "floaters" is used by certain Border Patrol agents to describe migrants who have drowned. There is an actual post from "I'm 10-15" Border Patrol Facebook group included that is just so disgusting that I had to set the volume down for a while.
The last poem, 'Letter to My Father' was written as an ode to his father who is from the Utuado, a town in the Cordillera Central mountain range that was hard hit by Hurricane Maria in 2017. I don't think any of us will forget the recordings of the former president on his visit the ravaged region.
I think the beginning and ending poems were the strongest and most searing while the poems written in memorial in the middle section were ones that I just didn't love as much. However, I can not recommend this compilation enough.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
#floaters #martínespada #martinespada #poems #poetry #nationalbookawardwinner #wwnortonandcompany #Norton #wwnorton #readmore #readmorebooks #ruthlillypoetryprize
December 16, 2022
wow, what a beautiful and refreshingly different collection with one of the most important themes:: migration and activism — action for humanity. very prose like, but kind of a fun format for storytelling. appreciate and surprised by the notes on the poems, very nice touch and inspiring for my own use of quotes and real events in writing. inspiring anecdotes of the migration experience and identity.
like all collection, not every piece grabbed me but i still left with a feeling and knowledge.
like all collection, not every piece grabbed me but i still left with a feeling and knowledge.
August 7, 2024
the titular poem will haunt me until i die. this is the best collection of poetry i’ve ever read, easily. espada is a true inspiration.
September 20, 2025
worthy of the praise it’s been bestowed. I’ve had it open reading pages here and there for a while, but read it from start to back today and that’s definitely the way I’d recommend. Moving and full - one of my favs below
Love is a Luminous Insect at the Window
for Lauren Marie Espada
July 13, 2019
The word love: there it is again, indestructible as an insect,
fly faster than the swatter, mosquito darting through the net.
How the word love chirps in every song, crickets keeping city boy up all night. I wish I could fry and eat them.
How the word love buzzes in sonnet after sonnet. I am
the beekeeper who wakes from a nightmare of beehives.
To quote Durán, the Panamanian brawler who waved a glove
and walked away in the middle of a fight: No más. No more.
Then I see you, watching the violinist, his eyes shut, the Russian composer’s concerto in his head, white horsehair fraying on the bow,
and your face is bright with tears, and there it is again, the word love,
not a fly or a mosquito, not a cricket or a bee, but the Luna moth we saw one night, luminous green wings knocking at the screen on the window as if to say I have a week to live, let me in,
and I do.
Love is a Luminous Insect at the Window
for Lauren Marie Espada
July 13, 2019
The word love: there it is again, indestructible as an insect,
fly faster than the swatter, mosquito darting through the net.
How the word love chirps in every song, crickets keeping city boy up all night. I wish I could fry and eat them.
How the word love buzzes in sonnet after sonnet. I am
the beekeeper who wakes from a nightmare of beehives.
To quote Durán, the Panamanian brawler who waved a glove
and walked away in the middle of a fight: No más. No more.
Then I see you, watching the violinist, his eyes shut, the Russian composer’s concerto in his head, white horsehair fraying on the bow,
and your face is bright with tears, and there it is again, the word love,
not a fly or a mosquito, not a cricket or a bee, but the Luna moth we saw one night, luminous green wings knocking at the screen on the window as if to say I have a week to live, let me in,
and I do.
November 22, 2022
Totally worth reading within a day. Espada's prose poems are incredibly clear but offer some surprising turns of phrase and an unflinching ability to not turn away from the grotesqueness of the American state as someone who is Puerto Rican American. The intersection of history, current events, personal experiences both past and present, as well as some elegies come together for a collection that feels like a clear-headed call to action. This also feels like a collection I could easily recommend to someone who never reads poetry or feels that reading poetry is a dauntingly cerebral task. I think anyone can understand the appeal of Espada's employment of repetition, both on a sonic and symbolic level.
Here's a good poem of the many included:
Ode to the Soccer Ball Sailing Over a Barbed Wire Fence
Tornillo . . . has become the symbol of what may be the largest U.S. mass detention of children not charged with crimes since the World War II internment of Japanese Americans.
—Robert Moore, Texas Monthly
Praise Tornillo: word for screw in Spanish, word for jailer in English,
word for three thousand adolescent migrants incarcerated in camp.
Praise the three thousand soccer balls gift-wrapped at Christmas,
as if raindrops in the desert inflated and bounced through the door.
Praise the soccer games rotating with a whistle every twenty minutes,
so three thousand adolescent migrants could take turns kicking a ball.
Praise the boys and girls who walked a thousand miles, blood caked
in their toes, yelling in Spanish and a dozen Mayan tongues on the field.
Praise the first teenager, brain ablaze like chili pepper Christmas lights,
to kick a soccer ball high over the chain link and barbed wire fence.
Praise the first teenager to scrawl a name and number on the face
of the ball, then boot it all the way to the dirt road on the other side.
Praise the smirk of teenagers at the jailers scooping up fugitive
soccer balls, jabbering about the ingratitude of teenagers at Christmas.
Praise the soccer ball sailing over the barbed wire fence, white
and black like the moon, yellow like the sun, blue like the world.
Praise the soccer ball flying to the moon, flying to the sun, flying to other
worlds, flying to Antigua Guatemala, where Starbucks buys coffee beans.
Praise the soccer ball bounding off the lawn at the White House,
thudding off the president’s head as he waves to absolutely no one.
Praise the piñata of the president’s head, jellybeans pouring from his ears,
enough to feed three thousand adolescents incarcerated at Tornillo.
Praise Tornillo: word in Spanish for adolescent migrant internment camp, abandoned by jailers in the desert, liberated by a blizzard of soccer balls.
Here's a good poem of the many included:
Ode to the Soccer Ball Sailing Over a Barbed Wire Fence
Tornillo . . . has become the symbol of what may be the largest U.S. mass detention of children not charged with crimes since the World War II internment of Japanese Americans.
—Robert Moore, Texas Monthly
Praise Tornillo: word for screw in Spanish, word for jailer in English,
word for three thousand adolescent migrants incarcerated in camp.
Praise the three thousand soccer balls gift-wrapped at Christmas,
as if raindrops in the desert inflated and bounced through the door.
Praise the soccer games rotating with a whistle every twenty minutes,
so three thousand adolescent migrants could take turns kicking a ball.
Praise the boys and girls who walked a thousand miles, blood caked
in their toes, yelling in Spanish and a dozen Mayan tongues on the field.
Praise the first teenager, brain ablaze like chili pepper Christmas lights,
to kick a soccer ball high over the chain link and barbed wire fence.
Praise the first teenager to scrawl a name and number on the face
of the ball, then boot it all the way to the dirt road on the other side.
Praise the smirk of teenagers at the jailers scooping up fugitive
soccer balls, jabbering about the ingratitude of teenagers at Christmas.
Praise the soccer ball sailing over the barbed wire fence, white
and black like the moon, yellow like the sun, blue like the world.
Praise the soccer ball flying to the moon, flying to the sun, flying to other
worlds, flying to Antigua Guatemala, where Starbucks buys coffee beans.
Praise the soccer ball bounding off the lawn at the White House,
thudding off the president’s head as he waves to absolutely no one.
Praise the piñata of the president’s head, jellybeans pouring from his ears,
enough to feed three thousand adolescents incarcerated at Tornillo.
Praise Tornillo: word in Spanish for adolescent migrant internment camp, abandoned by jailers in the desert, liberated by a blizzard of soccer balls.
Read
November 19, 2022I’ve heard the story many times before, but tell me again about the first time we sat together and you knew what all the crooners of all the ballads on all the car radios in history could never find the words to sing: I felt my blood flinch, you say.
Grim, important, vivid, visceral, and witness to the world in a way that I can sense and hear so I witness, but I am not a witness, I do not see it happen, but know it does. I wasn’t moved by the poems, and there was no sentimentality, no brush of the human that moves me when trying to read activist poetry. Grim is the word. However. This poet should be a poet laureate of the US. Forever.
JUMPING OFF THE MYSTIC TOBIN BRIDGE
Last night, still more landed here, clothing stuffed in garbage bags, to flee the god of hurricanes flinging their houses into the sky or the god of hunger slipping his knife between the ribs, not a dark tide like the tide of the Mystic River, but builders of bridges. You can walk across the bridges they build. Or you can jump.
ODE TO THE SOCCER BALL SAILING OVER A BARBED-WIRE FENCE
Praise Tornillo: word for screw in Spanish, word for jailer in English, word for three thousand adolescent migrants incarcerated in camp. Praise the three thousand soccer balls gift-wrapped at Christmas, as if raindrops in the desert inflated and bounced through the door.
Praise the soccer ball sailing over the barbed-wire fence, white and black like the moon, yellow like the sun, blue like the world. Praise the soccer ball flying to the moon, flying to the sun, flying to other worlds, flying to Antigua Guatemala, where Starbucks buys coffee beans. Praise the soccer ball bounding off the lawn at the White House, thudding off the president’s head as he waves to absolutely no one.
I WOULD STEAL A CAR FOR YOU
I may be sixty-two, but I wish I could steal a car for you. You would spin the wheel and parallel park, graceful as an ice skater gliding backwards in a figure eight. I would have a story to tell, not a story where I play all the parts with all the voices, only to learn that you’ve heard the story a dozen times before. I would steal a car to hear your stories, the tale of the boy who stole a car so he would not be late for school. I’ve heard the story many times before, but tell me again about the first time we sat together and you knew what all the crooners of all the ballads on all the car radios in history could never find the words to sing: I felt my blood flinch, you say. Tell me again how you offered up a bag of raw almonds in your hand and my fingers dipped into the bag. Tell me again and again how we slow-danced in the parking lot to the crooning of a Cuban ballad singer on the car radio.
THAT WE WILL SING
Yet, in poetry class today, you gave the addicts a poem and they sang the poem back to you, Lift Every Voice and Sing, and so they did, even the man with one arm, and so their voices became human again, not the baying of wolves to be shot on sight by police after sundown, but church voices, school voices, voices before the needle flooded their bodies and drowned all the songs, all the poems they knew.
LOVE IS A LUMINOUS INSECT AT THE WINDOW
Then I see you, watching the violinist, his eyes shut, the Russian composer’s concerto in his head, white horsehair fraying on the bow, and your face is bright with tears, and there it is again, the word love, not a fly or a mosquito, not a cricket or a bee, but the Luna moth we saw one night, luminous green wings knocking at the screen on the window as if to say I have a week to live, let me in, and I do.
BE THERE WHEN THEY SWARM ME
We will win, though we know we cannot win. You called me brother in the hallway as my brother never would, spoke the word poet like a benediction, and so we wait together for the next wave of winged demons. Be there when they swarm me.
I heard somebody ask you once what Puerto Rico needed to be free. And you said: Tres pulgadas de sangre en la calle: Three inches of blood in the street. Now, three inches of mud flow through the streets of Utuado, and troops patrol the town, as if guarding the vein of copper in the ground, as if a shovel digging graves in the backyard might strike the ore below, as if la brigada swinging machetes to clear the road might remember the last uprising.
Grim, important, vivid, visceral, and witness to the world in a way that I can sense and hear so I witness, but I am not a witness, I do not see it happen, but know it does. I wasn’t moved by the poems, and there was no sentimentality, no brush of the human that moves me when trying to read activist poetry. Grim is the word. However. This poet should be a poet laureate of the US. Forever.
JUMPING OFF THE MYSTIC TOBIN BRIDGE
Last night, still more landed here, clothing stuffed in garbage bags, to flee the god of hurricanes flinging their houses into the sky or the god of hunger slipping his knife between the ribs, not a dark tide like the tide of the Mystic River, but builders of bridges. You can walk across the bridges they build. Or you can jump.
ODE TO THE SOCCER BALL SAILING OVER A BARBED-WIRE FENCE
Praise Tornillo: word for screw in Spanish, word for jailer in English, word for three thousand adolescent migrants incarcerated in camp. Praise the three thousand soccer balls gift-wrapped at Christmas, as if raindrops in the desert inflated and bounced through the door.
Praise the soccer ball sailing over the barbed-wire fence, white and black like the moon, yellow like the sun, blue like the world. Praise the soccer ball flying to the moon, flying to the sun, flying to other worlds, flying to Antigua Guatemala, where Starbucks buys coffee beans. Praise the soccer ball bounding off the lawn at the White House, thudding off the president’s head as he waves to absolutely no one.
I WOULD STEAL A CAR FOR YOU
I may be sixty-two, but I wish I could steal a car for you. You would spin the wheel and parallel park, graceful as an ice skater gliding backwards in a figure eight. I would have a story to tell, not a story where I play all the parts with all the voices, only to learn that you’ve heard the story a dozen times before. I would steal a car to hear your stories, the tale of the boy who stole a car so he would not be late for school. I’ve heard the story many times before, but tell me again about the first time we sat together and you knew what all the crooners of all the ballads on all the car radios in history could never find the words to sing: I felt my blood flinch, you say. Tell me again how you offered up a bag of raw almonds in your hand and my fingers dipped into the bag. Tell me again and again how we slow-danced in the parking lot to the crooning of a Cuban ballad singer on the car radio.
THAT WE WILL SING
Yet, in poetry class today, you gave the addicts a poem and they sang the poem back to you, Lift Every Voice and Sing, and so they did, even the man with one arm, and so their voices became human again, not the baying of wolves to be shot on sight by police after sundown, but church voices, school voices, voices before the needle flooded their bodies and drowned all the songs, all the poems they knew.
LOVE IS A LUMINOUS INSECT AT THE WINDOW
Then I see you, watching the violinist, his eyes shut, the Russian composer’s concerto in his head, white horsehair fraying on the bow, and your face is bright with tears, and there it is again, the word love, not a fly or a mosquito, not a cricket or a bee, but the Luna moth we saw one night, luminous green wings knocking at the screen on the window as if to say I have a week to live, let me in, and I do.
BE THERE WHEN THEY SWARM ME
We will win, though we know we cannot win. You called me brother in the hallway as my brother never would, spoke the word poet like a benediction, and so we wait together for the next wave of winged demons. Be there when they swarm me.
I heard somebody ask you once what Puerto Rico needed to be free. And you said: Tres pulgadas de sangre en la calle: Three inches of blood in the street. Now, three inches of mud flow through the streets of Utuado, and troops patrol the town, as if guarding the vein of copper in the ground, as if a shovel digging graves in the backyard might strike the ore below, as if la brigada swinging machetes to clear the road might remember the last uprising.
July 25, 2022
This slim volume of prose poems has a rough fifth of its length dedicated to explanatory notes in the back, which prompts a sense for the reading and lived experiences captured by the brief stories. Espada writes many of these pieces from the I perspective, and it was my impression that most of these works are more real than fictive. If this is incorrect, then I was fooled, but either true or false, the poet writes here like an expansive journalist/reporter, giving a fresh sense of what social realism can mean in the context of poetics. When Espada isn't sharing an account of some personal memory, as the opener does ("Jumping Off the Mystic Tobin Bridge"), he writes odes to the dead, both recent ("Floaters") and long deceased ("The Five Horses of Doctor Ramón Emeterio Betances"). The collection is both socially conscious, with words dedicated to protests and state-sanctioned violences, and personally reflective, with space for memories of people he knew, loved, and even those who seemingly brought him into the world of poetry. This is an important volume that enriches the prose poem while also motivating me to explore more Puerto Rican literature.
July 10, 2021
This superb collection deals with themes ranging from the immigration crisis at the U.S. border to personal reflections on family history and elegies for old friends. The poems are simply dazzling. They gain momentum like an ocean wave, rolling out in long sentences dense with stunning imagery and startling juxtapositions. If you can imagine the ghosts of Allen Ginsberg and Pablo Neruda conversing in a spit-and-sawdust Puerto Rican bar, you have the tone of this collection. A masterpiece.
November 26, 2021
Worthy of the accolades bestowed on it. Gut-wrenchingly honest. Highly recommend.
December 6, 2021
Extraordinary tributes and words from poet Martin Espada.
He pays tributes to immigrants who experienced unjust treatment and death, activists and revolutionaries who stood up to these injustices (sometimes with their lives) and also tributes to his family from Puerto Rico.
You are able to feel the experiences through his poetry.
He pays tributes to immigrants who experienced unjust treatment and death, activists and revolutionaries who stood up to these injustices (sometimes with their lives) and also tributes to his family from Puerto Rico.
You are able to feel the experiences through his poetry.
January 26, 2022
13 pages in and you can easily see how this won the National Book Award last year. Make sure y'all get a copy of this!
September 1, 2025
“Love Song of the Kraken” is my favorite piece from this collection.
May 3, 2022
Urgent and moving.
Hell of a collection. Read it. Read it. Share it.
wow!!
Hell of a collection. Read it. Read it. Share it.
wow!!
January 23, 2021
E-Arc provided by NetGalley.
Floaters is a poignant collection of poetry. The title is taken from the term for people who are found drowned having attempted to cross to enter the U.S. This is a moving collection of works dedicated to the immigrant and migrant workers' experiences, social injustice, scattered with Espada's personal narrative as well as works inspired by true events, "ripped from the headlines" like my favorite "Boxer wearing 'America 1st' trunks with wall pattern defeated by Mexican boxer" Francisco Vargas. The imagery is vivid and moving (there may or may not have been tears shed during the poem "Floaters"...) evoking the spirits of the natural world such as with the poem "Love Son of the Galapagos Tortoise." The "Notes on the Poem" section added more valuable details to the poetry, which I appreciated. Wonderfully heart-wrenching and visceral work!
Floaters is a poignant collection of poetry. The title is taken from the term for people who are found drowned having attempted to cross to enter the U.S. This is a moving collection of works dedicated to the immigrant and migrant workers' experiences, social injustice, scattered with Espada's personal narrative as well as works inspired by true events, "ripped from the headlines" like my favorite "Boxer wearing 'America 1st' trunks with wall pattern defeated by Mexican boxer" Francisco Vargas. The imagery is vivid and moving (there may or may not have been tears shed during the poem "Floaters"...) evoking the spirits of the natural world such as with the poem "Love Son of the Galapagos Tortoise." The "Notes on the Poem" section added more valuable details to the poetry, which I appreciated. Wonderfully heart-wrenching and visceral work!
January 1, 2022
I regret that I only heard of Espada's work for the first time after this book won the National Book Award for Poetry, but no time like now to discover a new writer. I was really intrigued by the copy for this book and the themes and topics it sought to tackle, like immigration, discrimination, racism, family, and many others. Espada's style was unexpected — more free-flowing than I expected, but it really worked for this collection, where many of the poems felt very narrative. There's a great balance between some of the more devastating influences that Espada pulls from (notably, the title term and its origins) and the poems that look more inward, that find hope and light in that same devastation. I especially loved the poems about his father and reading about how his own work as a photographer influenced the poet from an early age.
I will definitely be checking out Espada's extensive backlist of poetry, essays, and nonfiction. Even if I was late to the party, I'm keen to stick around!
I will definitely be checking out Espada's extensive backlist of poetry, essays, and nonfiction. Even if I was late to the party, I'm keen to stick around!
September 5, 2022
The only thing I worry about with this book is that it won't be read by the people who need to see and hear what it bears witness to. Not all the poems work for me, but the ones that do should be mailed out for free to every citizen in a border state.
These poems give us something needful about the personal:
Asking Questions of the Moon
Some blind girls
ask questions of the moon
and spirals of weeping
rise through the air.
-- Lorca
As a boy, I stood guard in right field, lazily punching my glove,
keeping watch over the ballgame and the moon as it rose
from the infield, asking questions of the moon about the girl
with long blonde hair in the back of my classroom, who sat with me
when no one else would, who talked to me when no one else would,
who laughed at my jokes when no one else would, until the day
her friend sat beside us and whispered to her behind that long hair,
and the girl asked me, as softly as she could: Are you a spic?
And I, with a hive of words in my head, could only think to say:
Yes, I am. She never spoke to me again, and as I thought of her
in the outfield, the moon fell from the sky, tore through the webbing
of my glove, and smacked me in the eye. Blinded, I wept, kicked
the moon at my feet, and loudly blamed the webbing of my glove.
....and the political. I remember hearing about it when this happened, btw....
Not For Him the Fiery Lake of the False Prophet
"When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best...they're bringing drugs, they're bringing crime, they're rapists." -- DJT 6/16/15
They woke him up by pissing in his face. He opened his mouth
to scream in Spanish, so his mouth became a urinal at the ballpark.
Scott and Steve: the Leader brothers, celebrating a night at Fenway
where the Sox beat the Indians and a rookie named Rodriguez spun
the seams on his changeup to hypnotize the Tribe. Later that night,
Stever urinated on the door of his cell and Scott told the cops why
they did it. Donald Trump was right. All these illegals need to be deported.
He was a Mexican in a sleeping bag outside JFK station on a night
in August, so they called him a wetback and emptied their bladders
in his hair. In court, the lawyers spoke his name: Guillermo Roderiguez,
immigrant with papers, crop-picker in the fields, trader of bottles
and cans collected in his cart. Two strangers squashed the cartilage
in his nose like a can drained of beer. In dreams, he would remember
the shoes digging into his rib cage, the pole raked repeatedly across
his cheek bones and upraised knuckles, the high-five over his body.
Donald Trump was right, said Scott. And Trump said: The people
that are following me are very passionate. His hands fluttered
as he spoke, a demagogue's hands, no blood under the fingernails,
no whiff of urine to scrub away. He would orchestrate the chant
of Build The Wall at rally after rally, bellowing till the blood rushed
to his face, red as a demagogue in the grip of masturbatory dreams:
a tribute to the new conquistador, the Wall raised up by Mexican hands.
Mexican hair and fingernails bristling in the brick, Mexican blood
swirling in the cement like raspberry syrup on a vanilla sundae.
On the Cindo De Mayo, he leered over a taco bowl at Trump Tower.
Not for him the fiery lake of the false prophet, reddening
his ruddy face. Not for him the devils of Puritan imagination,
shrieking in a foreign tongue and climbing in the window
like the immigrant demons he conjures for the crowd.
Not even for him ten thousand years of the Leader brothers,
streaming a fountain of piss in his face as he sputters forever.
For him, Hell is a country where the man in a hard hat
paving the road to JFK station sees Guillermo and dials 911:
Hell is a country where EMTs kneel to wrap a blanket around
the shivering shoulders of Guillermo and wipe his face clean;
Hell is a country where the nurse at the emergency room
hangs a morphine drip for Guillermo, so she can go back to sleep.
Two thousand miles away, someone leaves a trail of water bottles
in the desert for the border crossing of the next Guillermo.
We smuggle ourselves across the border of a demagogue's dreams.
Confederate generals on horseback tumble one by one into
the fiery lake of false prophets; into the fiery lake crumbles
the demolished Wall. Thousands stand, sledgehammers in hand,
to await the bullhorns and handcuffs, await the trembling revolvers.
In the full moon of the flashlight, every face interrogates the interrogator.
In the full moon of the flashlight, every face is the face of Guillermo."
March 3, 2021
Ruth Lilly Prize-winning poet Martin Espada draws on a deep well of experiences as a Puerto Rican activist, lawyer, and poet in this electrifying latest collection Floaters. The book runs the gamut from scathing socio-political commentaries on the state of cultural affairs, particularly during the Trump era, to the poignant homages to family, love, and poetic influence. These visceral poems, at turns both sardonic and breathtaking, reflect the author’s commitment to immigrants’ rights, social justice, and Puerto Rico.
The astonishing poems in the first section of the book offer caustic social commentaries on such racially charged events as the Charles and Mary Stuart case (“Jumping Off the Mystic Tobin Bridge”), the caging of immigrant children at the Texas-Mexico border (“Ode to the Soccer Ball Sailing Over a Barbed-Wire Fence”), and the drowning deaths of immigrant border crossers (“Floaters”). The eponymous poem, illuminating the death of two Salvadoran border crossers found washed ashore on the banks of the Rio Grande River, derives its title from Border Patrol agents who callously refer to drowned border crossers as “floaters.” Espada writes poignantly, “Like a beer bottle thrown into the river by a boy too drunk to cry, like the shard of a styrofoam cup drained of coffee brown as the river. . . the dead float. And the dead have a name: floaters say the men of the Border Patrol.”
Later sections explore themes of family and love. An origin poem (“The Story of How We Came to America”) and a wry poem (“Why I Wait for the Soggy Tarantula of Spinach”) recount Espada’s parents’ first date. Love is aptly expressed in “I Would Steal a Car for You.” This affecting collection lays bare the author’s vulnerability and in doing so restores our faith in humanity. It is a necessary, evocative read.
The astonishing poems in the first section of the book offer caustic social commentaries on such racially charged events as the Charles and Mary Stuart case (“Jumping Off the Mystic Tobin Bridge”), the caging of immigrant children at the Texas-Mexico border (“Ode to the Soccer Ball Sailing Over a Barbed-Wire Fence”), and the drowning deaths of immigrant border crossers (“Floaters”). The eponymous poem, illuminating the death of two Salvadoran border crossers found washed ashore on the banks of the Rio Grande River, derives its title from Border Patrol agents who callously refer to drowned border crossers as “floaters.” Espada writes poignantly, “Like a beer bottle thrown into the river by a boy too drunk to cry, like the shard of a styrofoam cup drained of coffee brown as the river. . . the dead float. And the dead have a name: floaters say the men of the Border Patrol.”
Later sections explore themes of family and love. An origin poem (“The Story of How We Came to America”) and a wry poem (“Why I Wait for the Soggy Tarantula of Spinach”) recount Espada’s parents’ first date. Love is aptly expressed in “I Would Steal a Car for You.” This affecting collection lays bare the author’s vulnerability and in doing so restores our faith in humanity. It is a necessary, evocative read.
February 26, 2023
An intricate and experiential look into a timeless narrative, Espada’s verse in stream of consciousness is a grim reminder of the xenophobia, prejudice and overall plight generations of immigrants have faced. The title is a reference given by Border Patrol to drowned migrants found floating in the Rio Grande in their attempt to cross into the United States. But if we’re being honest with ourselves, even those that survive the grueling journey into the “land of opportunity”, immigrants are often metaphorically floaters anyway. They drown in poverty. They drown in language barriers. They drown in discrimination. And so on. Espada notes several cultural references, often of a historical nature, to enhance the rendering of the immigrant experience. One poem denigrates the destructive “America First” platform of a recent president. The famed witch hunt of Sacco and Vanzetti is referenced. Others include boxer Roberto Durban’s famous “No mas” fight, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory tragedy, and a 19th C. cholera epidemic in Puerto Rico. Collectively, the language is unflinchingly honest, a prolapse of reality to refute the myth that immigrants only bring crime, disease and welfare seekers. Jumping Off the Mystic Tobin Bridge, Floaters, and The Five Horses of Doctor Ramón Emeterio Betances were personal favorites.
March 30, 2021
Absolutely astounding. I cannot recommend this book highly enough.
Opening with the full rage and grief of modern America, Espada gives heartbreaking and powerful voice to immigrants and the children of immigrants in the modern age--capturing the details of individual stories while painting a picture of America as it exists today. From this opening, the collection turns toward more personal topics, speaking of love and loss, memory and art. Full of lingering lines and images drawn in sharp detail, Espada's art shines through every page. The collection closes with poems dedicated to many who are now gone, speaking their names and paying tribute to their dreams, their lives, and the marks they left on the world. It is a journey from the social and the historical, through the individual connections of vibrant lives, and back again.
Explosively political and deeply intimate, Floaters is a beautiful and powerful collection of poems that stretch across lives and history while also speaking directly to the time we live in today.
Opening with the full rage and grief of modern America, Espada gives heartbreaking and powerful voice to immigrants and the children of immigrants in the modern age--capturing the details of individual stories while painting a picture of America as it exists today. From this opening, the collection turns toward more personal topics, speaking of love and loss, memory and art. Full of lingering lines and images drawn in sharp detail, Espada's art shines through every page. The collection closes with poems dedicated to many who are now gone, speaking their names and paying tribute to their dreams, their lives, and the marks they left on the world. It is a journey from the social and the historical, through the individual connections of vibrant lives, and back again.
Explosively political and deeply intimate, Floaters is a beautiful and powerful collection of poems that stretch across lives and history while also speaking directly to the time we live in today.
October 20, 2022
Perhaps it's because language is being used for an entirely different purpose here, to different and noble ends (exposing injustice, etc.), rather than purely aesthetic, that this didn't work for me. Perhaps I am too-biased in coming into poetry and art with the idea that it will provide an aesthetic experience, which in a way can't be too-much based on what we perceive to be reality. To me, this just felt like a sad, somber reflection on the gruesome age we live in. But at the end of the day it doesn't impact me all too much, because it seems overwhelming to tackle, and depressing. A counterpoint, though, is something like "Gravity's Rainbow," which deals with social issues as inextricable from the aesthetic experience, that by the end of it, I was basically ready to be a full-fledged leftist. I guess, a unique vision of reality is what I seek in art, rather than what, like here in "Floaters," can seem to be a poetic reflection on current injustice, which just doesn't affect me that much; at least, no less than a journalism article does.
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