(Archive May 2018) Poet Stuns Audience with Personal Anecdotes

By Zach Pavlosky | Observer Correspondent

Esteemed poet, essayist, and editor, Martin Espada, mused a packed audience with tales of racism, change, and baseball during a poetry reading in April, held in the North Cafeteria on the Gardner campus.

The poetry reading was sponsored by the MWCC Humanities Project, which is funded by a Challenge Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH).

Espada opened with one of his better-known poems, “The Trouble Ball,” from his poetry book of the same name. “The Trouble Ball” is about Espada’s father, Frank, whom the poem is also dedicated to. In it, Espada speaks of lack of inclusion and his parents being a mixed-race couple.

Espada recites his poetry in a manner that I have never witnessed in person. Typically, when someone is reading a poem that is not their own, they will speak in a voice that they think accurately fits the narrative of the poem. 

Espada, on the other hand, puts his entire body, as well as his voice, into the poem which results in more of a performance than a simple reading. He’ll speak in a high pitch tone when imitating his mother or a childhood acquaintance, and a low, booming voice when channeling his father.

The unique way in which Espada structures his poems is what separates him from other poets. Having read a small handful of Espada’s work, I’ve noticed that he doesn’t use many of the conventional poetic devices normally found in poetry- rhyme, beat, alliteration- to name a few. To me, Espada’s poems are more like stories than they are poems. In fact, Espada recalls days on the cleaning crew at Sears in “My Heart Kicked Like a Mouse in a Paper Bag.”

“I was a wanderer,” Espada said, referring to the many low-level jobs he has worked. Much of Espada’s work celebrates, as well as laments, the experiences of the immigrant working class. He narrates the struggles of Puerto Ricans who must adjust to life in the U.S. Espada takes powerlessness and poverty, and crafts them into emotional and politically charged stories.

Espada ended the reading the same way he began- with a poem/story about his father. “Letter to My Father,” a new poem from Espada, is about his father’s hometown of Utuado, Puerto Rico and the devastating hurricanes that have been ravaging it. Espada spoke of his love for his father and his disdain towards the U.S. government for not doing more to help the citizens of Puerto Rico. At the very end of the poem Espada makes a promise to his father that he will scatter his ashes from atop the mountains of Utuado.

Espada prefaced the reading of “Letter to My Father” by addressing to the audience, “I wasn’t sure what to do with my father’s ashes. Maybe now I am.”