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Martin Espada

Author profile

born

January 01, 1957 in Brooklyn, The United States

gender

male

website

http://martinespada.net/

About this author

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Sandra 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 Not...more Sandra 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.(less)

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Books by Martin Espada

Average rating: 4.28 · 758 ratings · 70 reviews · 17 distinct works

	Alabanza: New and Selected Poems 1982-2003 4.45 avg rating — 126 ratings — published 2003 — 2 editions	My rating:
	Imagine the Angels of Bread: Poems 4.40 avg rating — 124 ratings — 2 editions	My rating:
	The Republic of Poetry 4.14 avg rating — 112 ratings — published 2006 — 4 editions	My rating:
	City of Coughing and Dead Radiators 4.15 avg rating — 71 ratings — published 1993 — 2 editions	My rating:
	A Mayan Astronomer in Hell's Kitchen: Poems 4.21 avg rating — 71 ratings — published 2000 — 2 editions	My rating:
	Poetry Like Bread: Poets of the Political Imagination from Curbstone Press 4.21 avg rating — 82 ratings — published 1994 — 2 editions	My rating:
	Rebellion Is the Circle of a Lovers Hands/Rebelio 4.53 avg rating — 49 ratings — published 1990	My rating:
	Zapata's Disciple: Essays 4.22 avg rating — 45 ratings — published 1998 — 2 editions	My rating:
	Trumpets from the Islands of Their Eviction 4.30 avg rating — 27 ratings — published 1987 — 2 editions	My rating:
	Now the Dead Will Dance the Mambo: The Poems of Martin Espada on Audio CD 4.38 avg rating — 13 ratings — published 2004	My rating:

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Quotes by Martin Espada

“Advice to Young Poets

Never pretend
to be a unicorn
by sticking a plunger on your head.”
― Martin Espada

tags: poetry

12 people liked it

“A poem is not a pop-tart.”
― Martin Espada

4 people liked it

“Even the most political poem is an act of faith.”
― Martin Espada

tags: latino , poetry

3 people liked it

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Polls

Who is your favorite poet? (add to this list if needed)

Charles Bukowski

40 votes, 14.5%

E. E. Cummings

23 votes, 8.4%

Edgar Allan Poe (write-in)

21 votes, 7.6%

Emily Dickinson

16 votes, 5.8%

Robert Frost (write-in)

15 votes, 5.5%

Sylvia Plath (write-in)

14 votes, 5.1%

Pablo Neruda (write-in)

11 votes, 4.0%

Langston Hughes

8 votes, 2.9%

Mary Oliver

7 votes, 2.5%

Walt Whitman (write-in)

7 votes, 2.5%

Allen Ginsberg

7 votes, 2.5%

william shakespear (write-in)

6 votes, 2.2%

Rumi (write-in)

6 votes, 2.2%

Rainer Maria Rilke (write-in)

5 votes, 1.8%

T.S. Elliot (write-in)

5 votes, 1.8%

William Blake (write-in)

4 votes, 1.5%

Fernando Pessoa (write-in)

4 votes, 1.5%

Dante (write-in)

4 votes, 1.5%

Lord Alfred Tennyson (write-in)

4 votes, 1.5%

D. H. Lawrence (write-in)

4 votes, 1.5%

Dorothy Parker (write-in)

4 votes, 1.5%

John Keats (write-in)

3 votes, 1.1%

Federico García Lorca (write-in)

3 votes, 1.1%

Charles Baudelaire (write-in)

3 votes, 1.1%

anne sexton (write-in)

3 votes, 1.1%

Nikki Giovanni

3 votes, 1.1%

Seamus Heaney (write-in)

2 votes, 0.7%

FERLINGHETTI, Lawrence

2 votes, 0.7%

Hart Crane (write-in)

2 votes, 0.7%

Dylan Thomas (write-in)

2 votes, 0.7%

Andrea Gibson (write-in)

2 votes, 0.7%

John Donne (write-in)

2 votes, 0.7%

Wallace Stevens (write-in)

2 votes, 0.7%

Sherman Alexie

2 votes, 0.7%

Adrienne Rich

2 votes, 0.7%

Ted Hughes (write-in)

1 vote, 0.4%

Naomi Shihab Nye

1 vote, 0.4%

Stephen Crane (write-in)

1 vote, 0.4%

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1 vote, 0.4%

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1 vote, 0.4%

Lewis Carroll (write-in)

1 vote, 0.4%

Li Young Lee

1 vote, 0.4%

Geoffrey Chaucer (write-in)

1 vote, 0.4%

Al Berto (write-in)

1 vote, 0.4%

Audre Lorde

1 vote, 0.4%

Dmitry Prigov (write-in)

1 vote, 0.4%

Wisława Szymborska (write-in)

1 vote, 0.4%

Mark Doty (write-in)

1 vote, 0.4%

Mario Benedetti (write-in)

1 vote, 0.4%

Percy Shelley (write-in)

1 vote, 0.4%

Arthur Rimbaud (write-in)

1 vote, 0.4%

Suheir Hammad (write-in)

1 vote, 0.4%

E.E. Cummings (write-in)

1 vote, 0.4%

Hiroyuki Nishigaki (write-in)

1 vote, 0.4%

Gwendolyn Brooks (write-in)

1 vote, 0.4%

Philip Levine (write-in)

1 vote, 0.4%

Rafał Wojaczek (write-in)

1 vote, 0.4%

Gérard de Nerval (write-in)

1 vote, 0.4%

A. Kamalei (write-in)

1 vote, 0.4%

Marge Piercy (Author)

1 vote, 0.4%

cesar vallejo (write-in)

1 vote, 0.4%

Alexander Pope (write-in)

1 vote, 0.4%

Stephen Dunn

0 votes, 0.0%

Martin Espada

0 votes, 0.0%

275 total votes

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Martin's Fans (13)

Martin Espada

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combine editions
Books by Martin Espada