{"product_id":"vivas-to-those-who-have-failed-poems-9780393353952","title":"Vivas to Those Who Have Failed: Poems","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn this powerful new collection of poems, Mart n Espada articulates the transcendent vision of another, possible world. He invokes the words of Whitman in \"Vivas to Those Who Have Failed,\" a cycle of sonnets about the Paterson Silk Strike and the immigrant laborers who envisioned an eight-hour workday. At the heart of this volume is a series of ten poems about the death of the poet's father. \"El Moriviv \" uses the metaphor of a plant that grows in Puerto Rico to celebrate the many lives of Frank Espada, community organizer, civil rights activist, and documentary photographer, from a jailhouse in Mississippi to the streets of Brooklyn. The son lyrically imagines his father's return to a bay in Puerto Rico: \"May the water glow blue as a hyacinth in your hands.\" Other poems confront collective grief in the wake of the killings at the Sandy Hook Elementary School and police violence against people of color: \"Heal the Cracks in the Bell of the World\" urges us to \"melt the bullets into bells.\" Yet the poet also revels in the absurd, recalling his dubious career as a Shakespearean \"actor,\" finding madness and tenderness in the crowd at Fenway Park. In exquisitely wrought images, Espada's poems show us the faces of Whitman's \"numberless unknown heroes.\"\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eBinding Type:\u003c\/b\u003e Paperback\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e W. W. Norton \u0026amp; Company\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 04\/04\/2017\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN:\u003c\/b\u003e 9780393353952\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 96\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 0.35lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 8.00h x 6.00w x 0.50d","brand":"Mart\u0026#237;n Espada","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":43112003403957,"sku":"9780393353952","price":13.56,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0473\/0804\/6492\/files\/img_500e1654-1093-4276-8e8e-0a31266bac92.jpg?v=1693926588","url":"https:\/\/pastforward.org\/products\/vivas-to-those-who-have-failed-poems-9780393353952","provider":"Past Forward","version":"1.0","type":"link"}