Jailbreak of Sparrows

Praise

“Deeply affecting and sonically rich. . . . Throughout Jailbreak of Sparrows, Espada captures and releases the memories and stories of the Puerto Rican diaspora, of the unsung or impoverished. It does so tenderly and attentively, with curiosity and compassion—qualities that Espada’s poems cultivate masterfully, as they attempt and succeed to rescue the individuals and communities, struggles and songs that history too often elides.”
—Christopher Kondrich, The Washington Post

“Martín Espada’s beautiful, inconsolable, tender, and unrelenting poems of protest and testimony offer us a landscape where song bears witness and witness becomes a chant, which is to say: a state of being. A lyric narrative in Espada’s hands has long become a kind of healing ceremony of the ancients. A lyric narrative in his hands has long become a shield against the onslaught of the world’s sharper edges. Espada knows that words are never just words—words outlive us, words enter the bodies of others, words are an art of possession and Martín Espada is a brilliant practitioner of this art.”
—Ilya Kaminsky, author of Deaf Republic and Dancing in Odessa

“Martín Espada is a captivating storyteller and memoirist. His great subject is the drama of the Puerto Rican diaspora; his method is meticulously crafted portraiture of lives that intertwine with history, among them his own, radiantly defiant and fearless. One of our most important contemporary poets.”
—Joyce Carol Oates, author of Butcher

“I want to write like Martín Espada. His poems are flowers for the ‘rabble-rousers and hell-raisers, strikers / and muckrakers, poets and socialists,’ testimonies to his allegiance to those society ignores. He is the poet laureate of the forgotten.”
—Sandra Cisneros, author of Woman Without Shame

“Martín Espada’s poems not only hold song and wisdom, but they also reveal who we are through the narratives he shares from his life. We all would be lucky to have a friend like this, who can tell us both about the struggles of a generation before his own and about how those struggles live within him. And we all are fortunate to have Jailbreak of Sparrows now to walk with us like that friend whose, ‘words are always fireflies. . . . cup them in [your] hands, and see them glow, as I see them now.’ Whether sharing a tale about his childhood or a memory of his father or a perspective on the love of that which we think is beyond love—the disembodied head in a jar, an atheist marionette, or the unbeliever—Espada’s words pour through these poems with an urgency to tell us, ‘This is a song for you, a song of praise in your hands.’ Yes, put this book to your ear and take it in.”
—A. Van Jordan, author of The Cineaste

“What does history feel like? What process can slowly crack the scrim between the facts and the flesh, the official dates and the lives that moved through them? Only poetry, I thought, as I read Martín Espada’s impressive and necessary new book Jailbreak of Sparrows, and only this poet, now at the height of his powers, can make this sort of witness. And now the dust we walk on with this unflinching guide has a taste, and its taste, memory rectified, we take in like a healing tonic.”
—Cornelius Eady, author of Brutal Imagination

“Stirring and provocative, Jailbreak of Sparrows inspires contemplation and is a call to recognize and respond to the unseen and unheard within our communities. . . . Espada challenges his audience to see what’s been hidden, offering poignant remembrances of forgotten people and history as he reflects on the turmoil brought by injustice and hatred, but also the beauty and power to be found in love among family, friends and community.”
—BookPage