Description
Book SynopsisWinner of the 2021 National Book Award for Poetry
From the winner of the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize come masterfully crafted narratives of protest, grief and love.
Trade Review"A work of grace-laden defiance... Espada lands jabs of bright, hard wisdom... The verve and force of this poet's long career [are alive in
Floaters]." -- Nina MacLaughlin - Boston Globe
"Both elegiac and irrepressible, this is an essential read for anyone interested in poetry as a form of protest." -- Chicago Review of Books
"The visionary latest from Espada combines a sharp political awareness with a storyteller's knack for finding beauty and irony in the current moment... Drawing on history, personal experience, and keen observation, this impressive collection is unique for the way it captures the world-weary voice of a poet and political activist who doesn't simply call for change, but offers a sense of the long, difficult struggle toward justice." -- Publishers Weekly
"Vintage Espada—essential, topical, political, irrepressible; in his poems, mercy acquires muscle and close attention confers value—reminding us that protest and praise rise from the same source. Such eloquence in comradeship, elegy and homage to those who lit the path, and, oh, a fresh bounty of love poems, written 'not in lust but in astonishment.'" -- Eleanor Wilner
"Along with his trademark blend of gravitas, humor and raucous imagination, we get an Espada more vulnerable, a voice more intimate, than any we’ve heard from him before. Martín Espada has long established himself as one of our most prolific and important poets, his body of work a canon unto itself.
Floaters is another cannon in that canon." -- John Murillo
"In his dynamic new book, Martín Espada is a fierce activist in verse, decrying, with accuracy and urgency, the depravity of inhumane detention and acute bigotry. One of America’s most indelible voices, as always, Espada’s poetry is lionhearted." -- Cyrus Cassells
"If Martín Espada’s name weren’t on the book, I would still recognize the poems as his, the stories that so exactly capture the shaping moments of his life and the lives of others, resonant, particular and yet universal, rendered into a lovely, unique lyricism—with a hard-won maturity. The title poem does what Espada is called to do, naming the dead, saving the memory of their lives. This book disturbs in the best way, and still it sings." -- Wayne Karlin
