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Photo Credit: VONA
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.
Smoking
Lovely
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Paperback: 68 pages
Publisher: Rattapallax Press (January 15, 2004)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 1892494612
ISBN-13: 978-1892494610
Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.5 x 0.3 inches
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."
—
Sapphire, author of Push and Black
Wings & Blind Angels
"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 Mír. 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."
—
Junot Díaz, author THE BRIEF WONDROUS LIFE OF
OSCAR WAO, Winner of the Pulitzer Prize
Where
a Nickel Costs a Dime: Poems
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Format: Paperback, 128pp.
ISBN: 0393313832
Publisher: Norton,Ww
Pub. Date: January 1996
Edition Desc: BOOK & CD
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."
―excerpted from
Publishers Weekly Review
Visiting
Langston
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Willie Perdomo
(Author), Bryan Collier (Illustrator)
ISBN: 0805067442
Format: Hardcover, 32pp
Pub. Date: January 2002
Publisher: Henry Holt & Company, Incorporated
Edition Description: 1ST
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.
"Today I'm going to wear My favorite pink blouse
I'm going with my daddy To visit Langston's house."
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!
This rhythmic tale is a wonderful introduction to the work and world of Langston
Hughes, who was a central figure of the Harlem Renaissance and an American
cultural hero.
Postcards of El
Barrio
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Paperback: 105 pages
Publisher: Isla Negra Editores (2002)
Language: Spanish
ISBN-10: 1881715906
La poesía 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 más
allá de la identidad que en un principio caracterizó la obra de
los poetas puertorriqueños 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:
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Step
into a World: A Global Anthology of the New Black
Literature
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Kevin
Powell, Editor
Format:
Hardcover, 470pp.
ISBN: 0471380601
Publisher: Wiley, John & Sons, Incorporated
Pub. Date: October 2000
Read more about
the contributors to this fantastic volume of work
The best work of hip-hop
generation writers captured in a single volume
From fiction writers,
poets, journalists, and commentators, this absorbing
anthology captures, for the first time, the new school
of black writing, including established and
award-winning authors like Junot Diaz,
Edwidge Danticat, Danyel Smith, and
Paul Beatty, as well as emerging voices from around
the world. In addition to showing today's literary
flowering, Step Into A World provides a window into the
crucial issues of contemporary black life, including
racial and sexual identity, post-civil rights politics,
and hip-hop culture. Compiled by critically acclaimed
poet, journalist, and essayist Kevin Powell, this
groundbreaking book is a revelation.
Kevin Powell (Brooklyn,
NY) is a critically acclaimed poet, journalist, and
essayist. He is the former senior editor for Vibe, and
has been published in dozens of periodicals, including
the New York Times, the Washington Post, Rolling Stone,
George, Essence, and One World.
"Kevin Powell is pushing
to bring, as he has so brilliantly done before, the
voices of his generation: the concerns, the cares, the
fears, and the fearlessness. Step into a World is a
kaleidoscope into the world not bound by artificial
constructs like nation. John Coltrane recorded ‘Giant
Steps,’ which is a riff on the sight and sounds in his
muse. Powell plays the computer with equal astuteness."
–Nikki
Giovanni
"Those of us who pay
attention were aware that the younger generation of
blackwriters was being smothered by the anointment of
talented tenth Divas and Divuses, and their commercial
accommodationist ‘Fourth Renaissance. ’This anthology is
indeed a breakthrough! It combines the boldness and
daring of hip-hop with the intellectual keenness of a
Michele Wallace or a Clyde Taylor." –Ishmael
Reed
"In a culture where
videos, the Internet, and other high-tech communication
is being consumed like the latest mind-altering drug,
how does great literature grow and survive? These
writers will answer that all-important question. This
anthology provides a clue, a hint, as to where we might
be going. They are resisting all this vacant,
empty-minded nothingness. Read them. Listen to them. If
you don’t, you do so at your peril." –Quincy
Troupe |
Listen
up!: Spoken Word Poetry
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via
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Zoe Angelsey (Editor)
Paperback: 224 pages
Publisher: One World/Ballantine; 1 edition (March 30, 1999)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0345428978
"Today, the poetry scene flourishes at New York
open-mic spots like the Nuyorican Poets Café, 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." —Zoë Anglesey
Click to read more about this book
Related Links
http://willieperdomo.com/
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