Art: January 2004 Archives

In today's NY Times: Pedro Pietri has stomach cancer and is trying to get to Mexico for holistic healing. He founded the Nuyorican poets. This is where my academic training has left me stranded . . . in the canonical towers of western European (and to some degree, Pacific Rim) literary tradition. I am, as my friends and former teachers know, a devotee of the New York School. So small a crowd it is for the noise it once made in that noisome city, and still makes from time to time. This term "nuyoricans," I was familiar with, if only vaguely. But Pedro Pietri? Never heard of him. Despite his "fame" and world reknown. And his most famous poem, "Puerto Rican Obituary," why, I know absolutely nothing of it. The Times quotes the opening lines, of which these are the first few . . .

Juan
Miguel
Milagros
Olga
Manuel
All died yesterday today
and will die again tomorrow
passing their bill collectors
on to the next of kin
All died
waiting for the garden of eden
to open up again
under a new management
All died dreaming about america . . .

Pedro went to Vietnam in the '60s, then donned all black clothing to mourn the loss of self he endured there--a self that finally saw no enemy in the Vietcong but only in the powers that invade small countries on the basis of lies (sound familiar?). Well, you get the picture. He came back to America to live the dual life of the Carribean in the northern city, and to write about it. Not his, or not just his, but of his fellow Puerto Ricans in New York: nuyoricans. And to found a literary movement which, to paraphrase the article's author, is no less a movement for being Puerto Rican, for not being western European or PacRim.

The photo of him in his Bronx apartment is disheartening. Go to today's Times and look at it. Look at it. Not just the poetically black garb, "applejack" hat included, but the apartment. Look.