Link On Espada

On September 24th, 2002 Martin Espada was interviewed by Ilan Stavans, about how he viewed himself as a champion for the Puerto Rican Community and how Pablo Neruda and Walt Whitman were big influences on his poetry. Here are some excerpts from that interview. The full interview can be viewed here.


IS: Poetry and politics. In you and your work, the two converge. What does a poem do?

ME: A professor of mine, Herbert Hill, used to say that ideas have consequences. I really believe that. Poems communicate ideas in a variety of ways. One never knows what kind of impact the poem is going to have, who it's going to reach, what change it might engender. I don't put too many expectations on an individual poem. Eduardo Galeano has written that it’s madness or arrogance to think a work of art, by itself, can accomplish social change, but it would be equally foolish to think that a work of art can’t contribute to making that change. Personally, I see what I do as my small contribution.

IS: Your Puerto Ricanness is at the core of your identity and of the poetry that you've been writing since 1981 or '82 when your first book was published. And yet, you were not born in Puerto Rico, you were born in Brooklyn. How did the Puerto Rican-ness come to you, from the neighborhood, from the family, when you were a child?

ME: New York is the largest Puerto Rican city in the world. There are more Puerto Ricans in New York than in San Juan. I was surrounded by that from the beginning. My father, Frank Espada, was an activist, a leader in the Puerto Rican community of New York in the 1960's, and his role in the community was reflected everywhere around me. Later on he made a transition and worked as a documentary photographer, recording the life of the Puerto Rican community; again, that had a big impact on me. It was quite natural to develop and to nurture that identity, even though I was born in Brooklyn and not in San Juan.

IS: There is often among Latino writers a perceived sense of burden. As a so-called ethnic writer, one is destined to become the spokesperson for your people. You're destined to use political tools and infuse your work with that. You don't share this concept of burden. It is for you something all together different. It comes naturally. It comes from also the tradition in Latin America of the writer that represents the voiceless. Do you feel a constraint for Latino writers forced to represent, forced to speak out for others? What does that create in you?

ME: I don't feel that this is a burden. I don't feel that it's something I'm forced to do. It's a privilege. It's a responsibility, but also an honor. I have a subject. I have something to say. For me one of the great dilemmas of contemporary poetry in this country is that most poets don't have anything to say. They're writing poems instead of putting down new tile in the bathroom, or horseback riding, or tending the garden, or something else that could have been done just as easily. I feel blessed with a certain kind of gift, which is the gift of a tale to tell. There is a story. That's a gift. It's not a burden at all.