{"product_id":"espada-martin-vivas-to-tpb","title":"Espada, Martín: Vivas To Those Who Have Failed","description":"\u003cp\u003eNorton, paperback\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePublication Date: April 04, 2017\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003ePublisher Marketing:\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cspan data-mce-fragment=\"1\"\u003eIn this powerful new collection of poems, Martín Espada articulates the transcendent vision of another, possible world. He invokes the words of Whitman in \"Vivas to Those Who Have Failed,\" a cycle of sonnets about the Paterson Silk Strike and the immigrant laborers who envisioned an eight-hour workday. At the heart of this volume is a series of ten poems about the death of the poet's father. \"El Moriviví\" uses the metaphor of a plant that grows in Puerto Rico to celebrate the many lives of Frank Espada, community organizer, civil rights activist, and documentary photographer, from a jailhouse in Mississippi to the streets of Brooklyn. The son lyrically imagines his father's return to a bay in Puerto Rico: \"May the water glow blue as a hyacinth in your hands.\" Other poems confront collective grief in the wake of the killings at the Sandy Hook Elementary School and police violence against people of color: \"Heal the Cracks in the Bell of the World\" urges us to \"melt the bullets into bells.\" Yet the poet also revels in the absurd, recalling his dubious career as a Shakespearean \"actor,\" finding madness and tenderness in the crowd at Fenway Park. In exquisitely wrought images, Espada's poems show us the faces of Whitman's \"numberless unknown heroes.\"\u003c\/span\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Open Books: A Poem Emporium","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":41016219140119,"sku":"9780393353952","price":15.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0004\/6497\/7956\/files\/view_archive_a8ea0803-1b31-45dc-9c7c-dec671519546.jpg?v=1711573638","url":"https:\/\/open-books-a-poem-emporium.myshopify.com\/products\/espada-martin-vivas-to-tpb","provider":"Open Books: A Poem Emporium","version":"1.0","type":"link"}