Floaters: Poems - Hardcover
Author: Espada, MartĂn
Publication Date: 01/19/2021
Format: Hardcover
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 Ăscar and Valeria, a Salvadoran father and daughter who drowned in the RĂo Grande, and allegations posted in the "Iâm 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 loveâeven in the voice of a cantankerous GalĂĄpagos 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 girlâs gently racist question.
Whether celebrating the visionariesâthe fallen dreamers, rebels and poetsâor condemning the outrageous governmental neglect of his fatherâs Puerto Rico in the wake of Hurricane MarĂa, Espada invokes ferocious, incandescent spirits.
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Author: Espada, MartĂn
Publication Date: 01/19/2021
Format: Hardcover
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 Ăscar and Valeria, a Salvadoran father and daughter who drowned in the RĂo Grande, and allegations posted in the "Iâm 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 loveâeven in the voice of a cantankerous GalĂĄpagos 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 girlâs gently racist question.
Whether celebrating the visionariesâthe fallen dreamers, rebels and poetsâor condemning the outrageous governmental neglect of his fatherâs Puerto Rico in the wake of Hurricane MarĂa, Espada invokes ferocious, incandescent spirits.
