The University of Arizona Press
Ameriscopia
Paperback ($18.00), Ebook ($18.00)
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In this vibrant reflection of sound and word, poet Edwin Torres reignites the possibilities of poetry. From poems like “Me No Habla Spic,” a rumination of life’s major moments, to “Fixative,” which exercises shifting vantage points, Torres is nimble—surfing through memory, definition, and forms of social address. In this new collection, Torres offers some signature performance pieces for the first time in print.
Ameriscopia reimagines New York City and its expansive inspirations, which for Torres capture the contradictions of America. Allusions to the Twin Towers, Coney Island hot dogs, and the Nuyorican Poet’s Cafe continuously recolor the pages. But even as he makes these iconic references, Torres allows his poems to invert and refract the identities they evoke—New-Yorker-American-Latino-Dad-Performer-Boy-Writer—to invigorate poetry out of its slumber into a deep cultural urgency. Torres’s kaleidoscopic vision is borne of decades of poetic experimentation. Audiences have delighted in his spontaneous mashups of disparate topic matters; writers have studied his skilled technique at synthesizing—for example, from a mundane curbside view to an imagined conversation with artists Marcel Duchamp and Yves Tanguy.
Torres writes, “I discovered that, this world uncovered / is like the soul / of The Puerto Rican man — occupied / by the weight of his balance.” Ameriscopia is Torres’s statement on growing up and the inspirational facets that accompany his journey into fatherhood. From conversations in cars to fast-beat lullabies, Torres’s poetry taps into rhythms both distinctive and dynamic. In Ameriscopia Torres is at full force, a poet in control, a writer emboldened by the page—in flight.
Ameriscopia reimagines New York City and its expansive inspirations, which for Torres capture the contradictions of America. Allusions to the Twin Towers, Coney Island hot dogs, and the Nuyorican Poet’s Cafe continuously recolor the pages. But even as he makes these iconic references, Torres allows his poems to invert and refract the identities they evoke—New-Yorker-American-Latino-Dad-Performer-Boy-Writer—to invigorate poetry out of its slumber into a deep cultural urgency. Torres’s kaleidoscopic vision is borne of decades of poetic experimentation. Audiences have delighted in his spontaneous mashups of disparate topic matters; writers have studied his skilled technique at synthesizing—for example, from a mundane curbside view to an imagined conversation with artists Marcel Duchamp and Yves Tanguy.
Torres writes, “I discovered that, this world uncovered / is like the soul / of The Puerto Rican man — occupied / by the weight of his balance.” Ameriscopia is Torres’s statement on growing up and the inspirational facets that accompany his journey into fatherhood. From conversations in cars to fast-beat lullabies, Torres’s poetry taps into rhythms both distinctive and dynamic. In Ameriscopia Torres is at full force, a poet in control, a writer emboldened by the page—in flight.
“Edwin Torres’s poetry is more than a high energy-construct—it is words and sounds gone wild, like dancers straining to break free of pattern. His prose poems are clusters of dazzling density that let ‘every sound in.’ And out. Everywhere, the borders have broken down. There is no other poet who writes like Torres. Elaborate, chanting, pointed, and granite in their ‘octaves of shine,’ his poems have it all. They are a real and gritty pleasure to read, a necessary tonic to these toxic times.”—John Yau, author of Further Adventures in Monochrome
“In Ameriscopia, Edwin Torres—lingo maestro of the ‘whyknows’—casts a passionate, ironic, diasporic lens from symbolic hair to linguistic heart; where nothing fits in everything, where disparate beauty finds a space in the most beautiful of Nuyorican hazes. The brain’s language takes on a new lexicon undefined by sentiment, mercurial, and too quick to pin down into facile categorization. When poets say that language should be created, they mean ‘read Edwin Torres.’ ”—Willie Perdomo, author of The Essential Hits of Shorty Bon Bon
“In Ameriscopia, Edwin Torres—lingo maestro of the ‘whyknows’—casts a passionate, ironic, diasporic lens from symbolic hair to linguistic heart; where nothing fits in everything, where disparate beauty finds a space in the most beautiful of Nuyorican hazes. The brain’s language takes on a new lexicon undefined by sentiment, mercurial, and too quick to pin down into facile categorization. When poets say that language should be created, they mean ‘read Edwin Torres.’ ”—Willie Perdomo, author of The Essential Hits of Shorty Bon Bon
“I have always hung with what hovers between sound and song in Torres’ work, there, where the human 'I' is born and quivers. In that place, this poet fills the void with voice.”—Eleni Sikelianos, author of The Loving Detail of the Living and the Dead
“No one does what Edwin Torres does. He has always been a master of earnest incantatory narrations of life, love, and culture. But that's only part of the deal. Ameriscopia is a testament to the way his art has evolved over twenty years. Here the alternating streams of the chilling, the comic, and the mesmerizing sweep the reader up into a landscape familiar but entirely new.”—Lisa Jarnot, author of Joie de Vivre, Selected Poems 1992-2012
112 Pages
6 x 9
Published: February 2014Paperback ISBN: 9780816530755
Published: February 2014Ebook ISBN: 9780816598991