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Willie Perdomo is the author of Where a Nickel Costs a Dime and Smoking Lovely, which received a PEN America Beyond Margins Award. He has also been published in The New York Times Magazine and Bomb and his children's book, Visiting Langston, received a Coretta Scott King Honor. He is a NYFA Arts Fellowship winner, Pushcart Prize nominee, a Urban Artists Initiative/NYC grant recipient and was recently a Woolrich Fellow in Creative Writing at Columbia University. He is currently Artist-in-Residence, Workspace, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and is co-founder/publisher of Cypher Books.
Paperback: 68 pages Smoking Lovely, Willie Perdomo's second volume of
poetry, confirms his hard won place in American letters.
Addiction, poverty, class and racial identity, love and recovery
are examined with a devastating and streetwise voice, marked
with irrefutable artistic integrity and craftsmanship. These
poems sing, howl, and heal with a sad and searing wisdom akin to
genius. Smoking Lovely is destined to become not
just one of the best books of the year but of the decade."
"Whether we're talking Puerto Rico or the US, the Poetry
Society of America or the corner of 123rd Street and Lexington
Avenue, there is no poet alive who can match the lyrical
intelligence, ferocious wit and searching humanity of Willie
Perdomo. Perdomo is the hurricane we all write home about. He is
to the word what lightning is to the sky. He is Langston and
Hector (Lavoe) and Whitman and M'r. He is the heart in struggle
with itself. Perdomo writes damnation as though it were heaven
and breaks the ordinary -- a mother calling her children home, a
weed-trip to Brixton, heartbreak -- into gold. He's the Puerto
Rican diaspora's unofficial poet laureate and what he knows
about being of color, being between languages, being poor, being
a man, being in trouble, could save your life."
Format: Paperback, 128pp. Drawing on rap, jazz, Langston
Hughes and the rhythms of the streets, this collection bristles with congas,
timbales, police sirens and wino oracles, "singing a celebration of the island/
that some of us will never see." In poems that are scalding, toxic and dizzying,
Perdomo reminds us that there is something wrong when feeling joy suggests
mangled sanity: "I didn't know whether to laugh or cry when I noticed I went to
more funerals than parties this summer."
Willie Perdomo (Author), Bryan Collier (Illustrator) ISBN: 0805067442 A 2003 Coretta Scott King Illustrator Honor Award Winner A little girl and her father visit the house where acclaimed African-American poet Langston Hughes lived. A poet herself, the girl is thrilled. This beautifully illustrated story is a great introduction to the legendary writer.
It's a special day when a little girl and her father go to visit the house
where the great poet Langston Hughes lived-especially when the little girl is a
poet herself!
Paperback: 105 pages La poes'a de Willie Perdomo se instaura con voz propia y singular. Cada poema se cuela en el canon de la literatura Nuyorican para impartirle una nueva vida. El va m's all' de la identidad que en un principio caracteriz' la obra de los poetas puertorrique'os en Nueva York. The poetry of Willie Perdomo places itself with his own and singular voice. Each poem reorganizes the cannon of Nuyorican poetry and gives it a new life. He goes beyond the issue of identity that in the beginning defined the works of New York based Puerto Rican poets.
Perdomo's work may also be found in:
Zoe Angelsey (Editor) Paperback: 224 pages "Today, the poetry scene flourishes at New York open-mic spots like the Nuyorican Poets Caf', Brooklyn's YWCA Tea Party and Harlem's Sugar Shack. Progeny of hip poets--the Beats of the 50s and protest poets of the 60s and 70s--these up-and-coming literati cast their diverse spells of word beats inspiring young contemporaries in Cleveland, Ohio, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Atlanta; later branching out internationally to poetry circuit venues in Tokyo, Rio de Janiero, London, Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam, and Istanbul." 'Zo' Anglesey Click to read more about this book
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