The Republic of Poetry:Hampshire College Commencement Address by Martín Espada; May 26, 2007

[laststeamtrain]

<snip>

In that spirit, I welcome you to the Republic of Poetry. The Republic of Poetry is a state of mind. It is a place where creativity meets community, where the imagination serves humanity. The Republic of Poetry is a republic of justice, because the practice of justice is the highest form of human expression. This goes beyond the tired idea of “poetic justice,” because all justice is poetic.

<snip>

To dwell in the Republic of Poetry you must continue to read and ask questions. You graduate today, but in fact, you should never stop being a student, never stop asking, doubting, dissenting, or the republic dies. This was never more true than today, in the age of the Illiterate Presidency.

<snip>


You who believe in this republic will be accused of daydreaming and utopianism. To these crimes you must plead guilty as charged. Tell them: Yes! I did it! I was daydreaming of a more just world instead of something more age-appropriate and consumer-oriented, like a $200 pair of Nikes.

<snip>



A century ago, when your father’s grandfather was a child, the eight-hour workday was utopian; the eradication of polio was utopian; the end of lynching and segregation in the South was utopian. The next generation writes the poetry of the impossible.



You will make the impossible possible. Yet, no change for the good ever happens without being imagined first. The last poem today is about the bread of the table, the bread of poetry, the bread of justice, the bread of this republic. It’s called, “Imagine the Angels of Bread:”



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.

<more>

http://www.zmag.org/content/print_article.cfm?itemID=12912§ionID=105

[govegan]

1. What a beautiful address that is.

Just read it yesterday, and again today.

This address, and the way he writes and speaks of Pablo Neruda, indicate to me that Espada's works should be checked out in more depth.

From a Library Journal Review comment on his book of essays, Zapata's Disciple.

Noted poet Espada (Imagine the Angels of Bread, LJ 6/1/96), a professor of English at the University of Massachusetts and editor of El Coro: A Chorus of Latino and Latina Poets (LJ 10/15/97), now displays his talent for passionate yet unsentimental prose in 11 essays on topics such as the right to speak Spanish in the United States and poetry at the service of political activism. With the vivid motif of an Anglo ventriloquist and his dummy--a Latino male--one essay points out that Puerto Rican males have been stereotyped as sexist and violent. While Espada calls this unfair, he feels that he, too, has acted out this role and admits that "sometimes a belly laugh is infinitely more revolutionary than the howl of outrage." Another essay, about the hostile "English Only" movement, relies on playfulness, anger, and compassion. Espada, whose activist father was likened to a disciple of Zapata, offers the same tough vision with these enlightening essays. Recommended.Rebecca Martin, Northern Illinois Univ., DeKalb Copyright 1998 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

:rofl: