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(More customer reviews)Martin Espada's tumultous language rushes forward in this unforgettable sixth collection of firey work: white heat surrounded by the cooler, blue streaks of history. Rather than hold a mirror up to the broken time-barrier of his people's seemingly eternal struggle, he captures it by the hair of its head and drags it onto the page where it still lives, thrashing. Emotive and layered with textural surreal images, his words continue to carry the torch through the subterranean tunnels of fresh consciousness, where the shadows first cast by Neruda still dance. He is a worthy carrier of that kind of genuine magic. His is a poetry of sharp blades that cuts through the toughest-rooted dream territory, as we see in "The Shiny Aluminum of God:" "The scar carves her husband's forehead/ where the doctors scooped the tumor out,/ where cancer cells scramble like a fistful of ants." No other present-day Mayan, or present-day prophet, for that matter, writes with such warp and texture. Warning: the poet talks texture at the table: the communion table of collective consciousness. Because he seems to hear more and see more than other spiritual chroniclers, his readers can be with "the preacher who first heard the savior's voice/ bleeding through the plaster of the jailhouse." He is one who has a gift to let the blood speak-- to let the truth seep through. The title is appropriate; he may well chart the stars of the past and future, and his poems are our hotline to his vision in Hell's Kitchen. Espada never shies away from the drama of his subject matter. Each poem is loaded with the special energy that only he can impart. The message is usually violent, requiring a sizeable talent which has yet to let us down.
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