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Handling
Destiny
Poems
by Adrian Castro
Chris Abani:
“Adrian
Castro weaves myth, history, music, courage, spirit
and heart deep with knowledge and tenderness into
a poetry that is all fire: an original and essential
voice.”
Praise for Adrian Castro
Atlanta Journal-Constitution:
“Castro
is a Whitman, not of America, but of all the Americas.”
New York Times Book Review:
“[Castro]
writes poems about the Caribbean melting pot in sinuous
and syncopated lines peppered with Spanish, Creole
and West African phrases. . . . His poems seem to
be trying to dance their way off the page as they
move through whiplash enjambments and elastic line
lengths, leaping over white space and letting out occasional
ecstatic yelps.”
Miami Herlad:
“Castro
has long been layering Spanish, English, and Yoruba
dialects, musical sound, and drum rhythms, Cuba,
Miami, Africa, and the Santeria religion. . . . he
seems well on the way to inventing a brand new Miami
patois.”
New Times Broward-Palm Beach:
“Called to the priesthood by verse and inspired by
African poets known as griots, Adrian Castro writes
and recites rhythmic tales of history, civilization,
and spirituality. . . . A self-described ‘poet of place'
who works best in tropical surroundings, [Castro] is
a babalao, or high priest of the Yoruba religion, from
which Santeria evolved. His pulsating recitals combine
the English, Spanish, and African languages and emphasize
myth and migration.”
QBR: The Black Book Review:
“[Castro's]
words are sharp, layered, musical, and . . . seem
influenced by hip hop as much as by bembes (Yoruba
ceremonies).”
Poetry
Flash:
“Castro
is a powerful, heartful performance poet, confecting
English, Spanish and Yoruba dialects, santeria, musical
and drum rhythms.”
Campbell McGrath:
“Adrian
Castro is fast becoming our foremost poet of the
Caribbean, that crossroad of the Americas whose multiple
cultures and languages he knows and speaks so fluently.
His poetry is ecstatic, drum-propelled, lyrically
empowered, spiritually questing, restlessly exploring
the flyways of diaspora and exile from Puerto Rico
to Haiti to Florida, from Cuba to Jamaica to Colombia,
yet the idiom it inhabits is purely American. For all
his journeying Adrian Castro is never away from home,
because, like the hermit crab, he carries it on his
back.”
Quincy Troupe:
“The poetry of Adrian Castro fuses Spanish, Spanglish,
and various dialects of the English/American language
in a dazzlingly lyrical way. Influenced by the poetry
of Victor Hernández Cruz, who pioneered this fascinating
linguistic mix and fusion, Castro's poetry breathes life
into and pulsates through the nexus of many cultural
crossroads: Cuban, Haitian, Puerto Rican, Dominican as
well as that of a cross-fertilized United States.”
Also
Available by this Author:
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