Abstract
This article explores Martín Espada’s poetic reflection on the photographic legacy of his photographer father as it takes place in the poem “Mad Love” from the collection Vivas to Those Who Have Failed (2016). The eerie moment when the corneas Frank Espada donated are being extracted triggers in the poet the need to write a poem to, once again, advocate for others; only this time, the poet interrogates the ethics of sight against historical blindness to advocate for his father’s legacy. To better appreciate Martín Espada’s critical appraisal of his father’s photography, I complement his poetic rendition of Frank Espada’s photographs with observations of selected photos included in The Puerto Rican Diaspora: Themes in the Survival of a People (2006) and two other photos from Frank Espada’s personal collection.
Resumen
Este artículo explora la reflexión poética que hace Martín Espada sobre el legado fotográfico de su padre, que tiene lugar en el poema “Mad Love” de la colección Vivas to Those Who Have Failed (2016). El momento escalofriante en el que las córneas donadas por Frank Espada son extraídas de su cuerpo provoca en el poeta la necesidad de escribir un poema para—una vez más—abogar por otros, solo que esta vez el poeta cuestiona la ética de la visión versus la ceguera histórica para abogar por el legado de su padre. A fin de apreciar mejor la valoración crítica de Martín sobre la obra fotográfica de su padre, complementamos su interpretación poética de las fotos de Frank Espada con observaciones de fotos seleccionadas de The Puerto Rican Diaspora: Themes in the Survival of a People (2006) y otras dos fotos de la colección personal de Frank Espada.
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Notes
To gauge the magnitude of this effort at dissenting visibility, what Lisa Sánchez González writes regarding the impossibility of representation of the diasporan Puerto Rican in literary discursive strategies may serve as a sobering reminder: “These are particularly important when I talk of Boricuas as a subaltern community, or a group that has not only been invisible in national discourses of culture, but has been depicted in ways that make it impossible for the community to render itself visible in these discourses” (2001, p. 3, italics original).
For an exploration of progressive Latino masculinity in Martín Espada’s poetry, see my “Undoing Macho: Martín Espada’s Poetry against Domestic Violence” chapter in the Acknowledged Legislator (pp. 99–112).
In “Muse on First” from Acknowledged Legislator, Eric B. Salo and Edward Carvalho state, “Though the link between Frank Espada and the central character is not made overtly clear in the poem, ‘Tato’ is an old sobriquet for Espada’s father” (p. 115). In “Letter to My Father,” a recent unpublished poem, Martín Espada returns to the street strife in “Waiting for the Cops” and reveals that the third man in the poem was Frank Espada. Three of the photographs in The Immigrant Iceboy’s Bolero are from The Puerto Rican Diaspora.
The boy in the cover photograph is neither the poet nor the photographer. The subject, according to Martín Espada, is unknown. The title of the photograph is “Young Boy with Baby Carriage, East New York, Brooklyn, 1965.”
Noted Swiss photographer Jean Mohr describes a similar situation he experienced in his introduction to After the Last Sky: Palestinian Lives. A photographer friend from New York asks him the customary question about what is the current project he is working on. Mohr tells this person that he is actually working on several projects and one book on Palestinians that is closest to his heart. The individual from New York replies, “It is really sad! But these days, who’s interested in people who eat off the ground with their hands? And then there’s all that terrorism. … I’d have thought you’d be better off using your energy and capabilities on something more worthwhile!” (Said 1986, p. 7). After quoting what this person said, Mohr states, “It is precisely in response to this kind of foolishness that I have persevered with the project of this book” (p. 7).
For representative autobiographical poems by Espada, see “Watch Me Swing” from Trumpets from the Islands of Their Eviction, “The Saint Vincent de Paul Food Pantry Stomp” from Rebellion Is the Circle of a Lover’s Hands, and “Who Burns for the Perfection of Paper” from City of Coughing and Dead Radiators, all in Alabanza (Espada 2003). Also, “My Heart Kicked Like a Mouse in a Paper Bag” from The Trouble Ball (Espada 2011).
Frank Espada’s At the Races (2008b) shows a different side of the photographer. This is a book of sixteen black-and-white photographs that depict the lives of common people who come to bet on horses at the reopening of the Aqueduct Racetrack in New York in 1959.
Frank Espada also explored color photography. See the images of landscapes, hang gliders, and dogs and birds on the Galleries section of his website.
LCLAA stands for Labor Council for Latin American Advancement.
In his book The Lover of a Subversive Is Also a Subversive: Essays and Commentaries, Espada writes a detailed tribute to Agüeros, the executive director of the Museo del Barrio in East Harlem from 1977 to 1986. In this essay, Martín Espada comments on several psalms from Agüeros’s Lord, Is This a Psalm?, published in 2002. The psalm he alludes to when linking the grinning of Agüeros to a utopian vision that will one day supersede extreme poverty is called “Psalm of Distribution.”
For an 1898 Philadelphia Inquirer cartoon of, among others, Puerto Ricans as “pygmylike adults with African appearances, including earrings” who will not become “educated,” see cartoon 61 in John J. Johnson’s Latin America in Caricature (1980, p. 162). For contemporary media representations of Latinos, and Puerto Ricans in particular, see Latinos beyond Reel: Challenging a Media Stereotype (Picker and Sun 2012).
In this case the interpreter does not even have a chance to speak because the judge makes his decision to evict before he can even translate into English the words Mrs. Lopez, the Spanish-speaking defendant, cannot utter. The only proof that the law should be on her side are the snapshots of rats, water frozen in a toilet, and a door without doorknob she holds in her hands. “(No rent for this. I know the law./and I want to speak,/she whispered to the interpreter)” (Espada 2003, p. 142). Mrs. Lopez, as well as the speaker in “Mad Love,” is positive that photographs are the documents she needs to help her win her case in court.
In the poem “Offerings to an Ulcerated God” (Espada 1996) the poet refrains from presenting himself explicitly in the role of the interpreter. Using the third person, he positions himself as a detached observer at the court session to thus produce a contained but poignant description of the absolute disadvantage of the defendant, to reveal the shameful circumstance in which he—as in several other poems—finds himself when unable to advocate for others, and to signify the imperviousness of The Law regarding the voices of disenfranchised others asking for justice.
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Sarmiento, O.D. Mad Love: Martín Espada’s homage to Frank Espada’s photographic legacy. Lat Stud 17, 288–303 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41276-019-00191-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41276-019-00191-1