Imagine the Angels of Bread: Poems - Tapa dura

Combining the personal with the political in his fifth collection of poems, Martin Espada celebrates the bread of the imagination, the bread of the table, and the bread of justice. The heart of the collection is a series of autobiographical poems, recalling family, school, neighborhood, and work experiences - from bouncer to tenant lawyer. There are moments of revelation here, digging latrines in Nicaragua or dealing with the life-threatening illness of an infant son. Other poems embrace themes of political persecution and transcendence; the cast of characters includes a friend from Chile who talked his way out of being shot by a firing squad. The culminating poem of the collection is an elegy for the Puerto Rican poet Clemente Soto Velez, imprisoned for his advocacy of independence for Puerto Rico: "Hands Without Irons Become Dragonflies."

Martin Espada teaches in the Department of English at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.