Espada - The Republic of Poetry

These poems have appeared or will appear in the following publications, to whose editors grateful acknowledgment is made: The Bloomsbury Review : Black Islands, The Republic of Poetry Dance the Guns to Silence: 100 Poems for Ken Saro-Wiwa: The Soldiers in the Garden Hanging Loose : An Admirer of General Pinochet Writes to the Web Site of General Pinochet to Wish General Pinochet a Happy Birthday, Between the Rockets and the Songs, Blues for the Soldiers Who Told You, To the Burmese Albino Python in the Next Room, The God of the Weather-Beaten Face Illuminations: Stone Hammered to Gravel In The Grove: Rules for Captain Ahabs Provinceton Poetry Workshop, Advice to Young Poets, I Have an Eel in My Heart The Massachusetts Review : You Got a Song, Man Meena: A Bilingual Journal of Arts and Letters: Why My Bones Hate the Ice The New Yorker: City of Glass, Return Peacework: General Pinochet at the Bookstore Ploughshares: The Poets Coat The Progressive : Not Here Rattapallax: City of Glass, General Pinochet at the Bookstore, Not Here, Rain Without Rain, Something Escapes the Bonfire, Sonnet in Praise of Jaiva Pie Excerpt from Pastoral of Chile (IX) from Anteparadise by Ral Zurita, translated by Jack Schmitt, copyright 1986 by the Regents of the University of California. Reprinted by permission of the University of California Press. Many thanks to the following individuals and organizations: to Jack Ageros, for his translations of Julia de Burgos and his research on her life; to Doug Anderson and the other veteran writers of the Joiner Center; to Mara Luisa Arroyo, for proofreading; to Chris Brandt and the Medicine Show Theatre, for adapting three of the Chile poems for the stage in their production, The Republic of Poetry; to Ram Devineni, Bob Madey, Rodrigo Rojas, and Jos Ignacio Silva, for making the visit to Chile possible and memorable; to Ariel Dorfman, for reading the Chile poems; to Katherine and Klemente Gilbert-Espada, my wife and son; to George Evans, for his help with images of Marfa, Texas; to Frances Goldin, my heroic agent; to Sam Hamill and Poets Against War, for posting two of these poems on their Web site (poetsagainstwar.net), and for all their good work; to Joan Jara, for sharing her story with me at Estadio Vctor Jara; to Yusef Komunyakaa and Nathalie Handal, the poets who joined me on the journey to Nerudas Chile; to Oscar Sarmiento, for translating the Chile poems into Spanish; to the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and the AE Ventures Foundation, for their support; to compaero Ral Zurita, for the walk at La Moneda; and to the Acentos/LouderArts crew (Oscar, Rich, Fish, Jessica, Elial, Roger, y Lynne).

See also Notes on the Poems.