rev. of Rebellion Is the Circle of a Lover's Hands by Martin Espada

In this slender collection of ethnic and political poetry, Martín Espada does what many black poets of the Sixties did with the Broadside Poetry Series during the black arts movement. He writes for an audience not limited to poets and writers, but for the community at large, and
Rebellion Is the Circle of a Lover's Hands, Espada's second book, is a bilingual selection of recent work and themes.

For those unfamiliar with social writing in poetry, some poems will appear gritty and direct. Others, while still focused on social and historical injustice, are more romantic and heroic. The relative success of each will depend on what the reader expects from a poet. The contents of
Rebellion, like those of the writer's previous work (a pamphlet and a volume), consist of a series of portraits of the Latino community and the white world that surrounds it -- a kind of poetic naturalism once practiced by black writers before the prominence of poets like Michael Harper and Rita Dove.

Espada's work has integrity mingled with an ironic and sometimes bitter, well-articulated sense of alienation by class and language. The subjects of his poems range from political portraits to autobiographical and "found" poems (created by Espada and not merely discovered and rewritten for the book). As such, they read like conversation or photographic snapshots -- blunt and unsentimental -- such as the poem "Willie Fingers," about a fingerless man who tries to play basketball. These poems are a diligent attempt to make poetry reflect the lives and experiences of an American minority population. Even when a poem falls short of its goal, there is an extraordinary and distinctive voice at work.

All this is not to say, however, that
Rebellion should be approached with heart-on-sleeve, which would reduce its impact to a Hallmark card, designed for liberals who wish to creative another literary ghetto. Espada is too talented and promising for that. His work is deeply felt and sincere, and should be read with attendant sincerity.       --
Sam Cornish