"There was no one in this country as ferocious, as brilliant, or as necessary as Pedro Pietri. In these days of growing inequality it is to his rebel vision I turn to for hope and for strength. A towering poet, absolutely peerless, explosively talented, a pioneer, and iconoclast, and activist, to whom the entire spoken word movement owes a debt beyond calculation."--Junot Diaz "One of the great American poets of the twentieth century, a leader of the Nuyorican poetry movement that ignited at Miguel Algarin's Nuyorican Poet's Cafe. Perhaps the most progressive and at the same time funniest poet of the period."--Amiri Baraka Pedro Pietri's often playfully absurd poems chronicle the joys and struggles of Nuyoricans--urban Puerto Ricans whose lives straddle the islands of Puerto Rico and Manhattan--and define the Latino experience in urban America. By turns angry, heartbreaking, and hopeful, his writings are imbued with a sense of pride and nationalism and were embraced by the generation of Latino poets that followed him.
Pedro Pietri: Selected Poetry gathers the most enduring and treasured work among his published books, Puerto Rican Obituary, Traffic Violations, and Out of Order, along with a generous selection of his previously unpublished works. Pedro Pietri (1944--2004) was born in Ponce, Puerto Rico, and raised in Manhattan. In the early '70s he was a featured poet at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe. Juan Flores (1943-2014) was a professor and director of Latino Studies at New York University, and author of many books on Puerto Rican and Latino culture. Pedro Lopez Adorno is a professor in the Department of Africana and Puerto Rican/Latino Studies of Hunter College since 1987, and a published poet.