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edited by Daniela Gioseffi Featuring Miguel Algarin Miguel
Algarin is a prominent and innovative
American poet, critic, and entrepreneur who was born in Puerto Rico and grew
up in New York City’s Spanish Harlem and on Manhattan’s Lower Eastside. He
has lived most of his life in New York City and is the founder of the famed
Nuyorican Poets Café on Manhattan’s Lower Eastside. He served as the radio
host of The Café’s live broadcast on WBAI for more than eighteen years. A
distinguished poet and critic, with nine collections to his credit, he is the
editor, with Miguel Piñero, of Nuyorican
Poetry: An Anthology of Puerto
Rican Words and Feelings, published in 1975 by William Morrow & Co.,
New York. The book celebrates a golden coming of age of Puerto Rican poetry
in the USA. It was in 1974 that
Miguel Algarin began having a series of poetry readings in the living room of
his Lower East Side apartment, and when the apartment became too crowded,
Algarin and Miguel Piñero moved the scene to an abandoned Irish Pub and named
it “The Nuyorican Poets Café.” No one could have predicted that the readings
first held in Algarin’s home would be the launching pad for one of the most
profound avante guarde, cultural revolutions in American poetry. With its
varied programs of poetry, theatre pieces and music, the Nuyorican Poets
Café has come to represent the vitality of the multicultural movement. Willie
Correa, Lois Elaine Griffith, Bob Holman, Roland Legiardi-Laura, and Sonia
Lopez serve as members of the Board of Directors of The Café and they attest
to the fact that things didn’t exactly happen overnight, as it might seem in
retrospect. Much hard work went into founding and organizing The Café and
Miguel Algarin was the disciplined and diplomatic force behind it. For the first two
years, the night spot was sort of “underground,” a place where one could hear
the newest Latino and Black poets, as well as established poets of renown
like Allen Ginsberg. Then, The New York
Times published a feature story praising the “rise of raw energy and
third-world sensiblities” found at the Café. Joseph Papp, the producer of
the famed “Shakespeare in Central Park” venture and the Papp Theatre complex
near Astor Place Square downtown, discovered the work of playwrights Miguel
Piñero, Amiri Baraka, Pedro Pietri, and others who were regular highlights at
The Café. A few years later,
Miguel Algarin moved the Nuyorican Café to its present location at 236 East
Third Street in lower Manhattan and Joseph Papp was introduced to the work
of the late Rei Povod. Povod went on to write the critically acclaimed “Cuba
and his Teddy Bear,” which Robert De Niro starred in on Broadway. Today,
Miguel Algarin is proud to be the recipient of the Audelco Award for
“Dramatic Production of the Year” for three years: in 1991 for Sam Sharp’s
“Don’t Explain,” and in 1992 for Wesley Brown’s “Life During Wartime,” and in
1995 for “Shango de Ima.” Plays by Amiri Baraka, Sekou Sundiata, Rome Neal,
and others have received the prestigious awards and in 1993, The Café
received an OBIE award and a Municipal Arts Society Annual Award for the
rich contribution it has made to New York Theatre. Algarin has edited a new
anthology of plays, to be published in 1996 by Scribner’s, titled Action: The Nuyorican Poets Café Theatre
Festival. This collection is bound to make the sort of impact in the area
of theatre arts that Aloud, 1994,
created in the area of poetry. Today, The Café still
thrives and welcomes poets, playwrights, and musicians of every background,
including many members of The Italian American Writers Association who were
first brought to the scene by the initiative of playwright, Luciana Polney
and the grace of Lois Griffith. Miguel Algarin is a
poet of raw emotion and physicality, full of lively, earthy and imaginative
imagery. His best poems are rhapsodic and free spirited verses that spill
over the reader or listener with immense vitality. A case in point is “Father
at Zero-Point-Place.” Like “Sunday, August 11, 1974,” it comes from Aloud, a ground-breaking anthology
edited with Bob Holman for Henry Holt & Co., New York, 1994. Both poems
are copyrighted with full rights reserved by Miguel Algarin and he has kindly
granted permission for VIA to print them here. Among his books of poetry are Times’s Now / “Ya es tiempo,” a
collection written bilingually in both English and Spanish, as Algarin has been
fully bilingual since early childhood. His new book, Love Is Hard Work, will be published in 1996 by Scriber’s, and it
will be his ninth collection of prize-winning poetry. In addition to his many
varied activities in the arts, Miguel Algarin serves on the faculty of
Rutgers University, as a professor of English. He teaches Shakespeare, his
specialty, as well as Creative Writing and ethnic literature of the US.
Algarin is the winner of three American Book Awards and a rare individual on
the art scene: one who can write equally well in Spanish and English; one who
is well versed in the English Canon and multicultural literature. His career
proves, beyond a doubt, that such a phenomenon of intercultural
understanding and prowess is thoroughly possible. He is a poet, professor,
and entrepreneur who shows that a belief in, and prowess in, ethnic
literatures does not destroy the standard English canon in America, but
rather adds to and enriches it. Miguel Algarin is a true man of the world and
a worker in the human struggle for cultural equality who has done much to encourage
the work of his fellow artists of every age, sex, and background. The world
is very much in need of more poets like Algarin, a builder of bridges, a
creator of intercultural pride and peace. One who knows that “Love Is Hard Work.” Father at
zero-point-place Part
I My
mother’s pleading voice, not resigned, sang
a crying song wishing for a rebirth, my
uncle, weeping for the first time, in
my memory, sobbed about, “His
eyes are open he’s still looking at me, you
better get over here, I don’t know what to
do we’ve lost it.” I
transformed each telephone word into
concrete objects: I was there looking at father’s
soft skin, touching his gentle lips, caressing his still warm hands and
fingers, craving for a breath to escape
him, tricking myself into feeling his
air pressing, still, in my cheek, running my hands over his body, looking for the warm spots, his belly’s hot his armpits still lukewarm, his thighs, grown so thin,
beginning to be cold, my hands grab at his feet, not yet icy cold, I run my hands into his groin, and there I find body heat, I find his scrotum still simmers with an amber temperature, his penis still holds a glow, his buttocks are not room temperature, there
is still a chance for a revival, his
eyes involuntarily open, is
there here a miracle? will
he stand up and walk among
the sinners and the ill? will
he continue to walk the earth beatified spreading
saintliness just
as he had during my youth? a
kinder man lived only in books, father’s
feather-weight touch opened
all of us to a fault, because
nowhere else were we ever loved so
gently and so fairly he
was a judge with mercy and kindliness in
his heart and
understanding and balance were his law, he
knew that at the heart of law was generosity and
that mercy made human contracts work, here
was a Daniel, a Solomon, a
worthy homespun philosopher of family justice, yes,
there is still a chance for a revival, the
rebirth that takes place in the mind. Part II I’ve
already found my Deep-Nine photograph, but
mother spins an endless reel she
cannot stop to cradle a single frame, she
keeps on running the tape, the
tape of her fifty-seven years with him, the
tape of their never having slept a single night apart, the
reel to real joy of eternally rejuvenating
happiness in married partnership, the
video of never having been lonely, or
alone or without her man, or
without his warming her slippers so
that they wouldn’t be cold to her feet, or
his cooking her special diet to cure her ulcer, or
his buttoning her blouse, or
pulling up her zipper, or
his patience with her mental break-ups, or
the way in which he crossed his legs when
company arrived, but
the reel that drives mother hauntingly wild is
the empty bed, life without him, even
the seventy-five pound, more
fragile than frail body that
his wasted frame had become, even
that was her man, still
there, still needing pillows, still
needing his teeth brushed, his
feces cleaned and removed, needing
his enemas, needing his spit suctioned, needing
his liquid food, cleaning
his intestinal tube through
which travelled medication and nourishment, yes,
that’s the real reel, the
non-occupied space, the
zero-point-place, the
nobody in space and place, that’s
the terror of Uncle Al experienced
this morning, that’s
the tremor that rocked mother, they
both awoke hoping a dream had passed and
that the zero-point nobody-in-place-space, had
evaporated and that father’s more
fragile than frail body would
still be there. Part III Mother
and Uncle Al arose
hoping that the police had
not been there, that
the death certificate had
not been signed, hoping
that the body had
not been picked up by
the La Paz Funeral Parlor embalmer, who
made a southbound turn onto
the northbound traffic on Queens Boulevard with
my father’s cadaver neatly
tucked into a body bag in
the rear of his station wagon, which
I was following, furiously
blowing my horn, waving
my hands, screaming,
whistling, frantically
blinking my lights, fearing
a collision that
would catapult father’s corpse unceremoniously
into the chill, rainy night air, a
flying body bag and me, my
old man doing
triple somersaults in
the midst of his encroaching rigor mortis, finally,
the embalmer, dazed by the oncoming headlights, crossed
over the median divider, stopped
at the red light, looked
over at me, shrugged, and said, “Hey,
he’s at zero-point-place and
nothing else can get at him, only
the great blaze shines
on him now, he’s
at home plate and safe.” Then
the light turned green and
my father and the embalmer drove
off into the pure white light forever. Sunday,
August 11, 1974 Sunday afternoon
and it is one-thirty and all the churchgoing latinos have crossed themselves
and are now going home to share in the peace of the day, pan y mantequilla,
una taza de café and many sweet recollections of el rinconcito en Juncos,
donde Carmencita, María y Malén jugaban y peleaban. Sunday afternoon
and it is one-thirty and all the churchgoing latinos fuse each other with
love and the women dress so clean and pure and the children walk so straight
and pure and the fathers look so proud and pure and everything so right and
pure and even as I wake up to my nephew’s voice coming through the window,
there is pleasure in awakening. My mother and father and Grafton and Johnny
come in, there is light in their eyes, there is pleasure in living, there is no shame in being full of love, there is no shame in being nude while my mother’s eyes look in at me, looking at my nude body, body that she made mixing her
blood with my father’s, and there’s no rushing for
clothes just sweet openness in being loved by my family. Sunday afternoon and it is one-thirty and all the
church- going latinos have crossed
themselves and my body swings free. |