The Trouble Ball: Poems Contributor(s): Espada, Martín (Author) |
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ISBN: 039308003X ISBN-13: 9780393080032 Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company OUR PRICE: $22.46 Product Type: Hardcover - Other Formats Published: April 2011 |
Additional Information |
BISAC Categories: - Poetry | American - Hispanic American |
Dewey: 811.54 |
LCCN: 2010041046 |
Physical Information: 0.6" H x 6.2" W x 8.3" (0.52 lbs) 66 pages |
Themes: - Ethnic Orientation - Hispanic - Ethnic Orientation - Latino |
Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
Publisher Description: In this collection of poems, Martín Espada crosses the borderlands of epiphany and blasphemy: Ebbets Field, Brooklyn, in 1941, where his Puerto Rican father realizes, at the age of eleven, that dark-skinned players are not allowed on the field; the swimming pool for guards and their families at Villa Grimaldi, a center of interrogation, torture, and execution in Pinochet's Chile; the city park where the poet clumsily buries the ashes of a friend; the tomb of Frederick Douglass, now a place of pilgrimage. Espada also traces the footsteps of his own history, from his brawls in the schoolyard to his days selling encyclopedias door-to-door. He observes the tender gestures of worlds half in shadow, where an "illegal immigrant" gazes at the snapshots of her wedding to a stranger, or a high school wrestler helps to carry an evicted neighbor's couch back into her apartment. And he urges us to envision justice, to bury what we call / the impossible, the unthinkable, the unimaginable, now and forever. |
Contributor Bio(s): Espada, Martin: - Martín Espada is the author of fourteen collections of poetry, including the Pulitzer Prize finalist The Republic of Poetry and, most recently, Vivas to Those Who Have Failed. His many honors include the Ruth Lilly Prize, the Shelley Memorial Award, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He teaches at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst. |