00:00:01.301 --> 00:00:04.104
New York,
out of the ashes of the tumultuous

00:00:04.104 --> 00:00:08.308
1960s, rose a new school of poetry
and the Puerto Rican community.

00:00:08.641 --> 00:00:10.944
First, based on street corners
and in parks,

00:00:11.211 --> 00:00:14.247
it found a more permanent home
in the Nuyorican Poets Cafe.

00:00:19.285 --> 00:00:22.389
“Rebirth of Nuyorican”,
for Eddie Figueroa.

00:00:23.256 --> 00:00:25.658
As soon as I found you gasping

00:00:25.658 --> 00:00:28.161
in the projects on 114th and Madison,

00:00:28.728 --> 00:00:31.998
I knew you were passing
a living tradition on to me.

00:00:32.065 --> 00:00:35.468
‘We are a deep, dark story’, you groaned.

00:00:35.568 --> 00:00:39.239
‘Our people are a secret unto themselves’.

00:00:39.305 --> 00:00:42.308
You held on
so tightly to our belief in magic,

00:00:42.675 --> 00:00:46.746
in simultaneous
eternal time, in Botanica awareness.

00:00:47.380 --> 00:00:50.417
You made me believe that our culture is
the future,

00:00:50.550 --> 00:00:53.553
that our thoughts
don't proceed in straight lines.

00:00:53.853 --> 00:00:56.656
That we can take back
control of our lives.

00:00:56.923 --> 00:00:59.592
That we are no longer colonial subjects.

00:00:59.826 --> 00:01:02.095
Mixed race is the place.

00:01:02.095 --> 00:01:03.963
It feels good to be neither.

00:01:03.963 --> 00:01:06.866
It's a relief to deny racial purity.

00:01:07.400 --> 00:01:10.437
We're amused as America
slowly comes to see

00:01:10.670 --> 00:01:14.707
the beauty of Negritude
and the Native American attitude.

00:01:14.941 --> 00:01:18.278
We've been living
it day to day since 1492.

00:01:26.820 --> 00:01:28.054
For all All those thoughts that seem

00:01:28.054 --> 00:01:31.057
inappropriate for all those words
that have nowhere to go.

00:01:31.157 --> 00:01:34.160
Hey, it's poetry time.

00:01:52.946 --> 00:01:54.948
I want a fat lip.

00:01:54.948 --> 00:02:03.890
Buzzes in the jocose Jester.

00:02:03.990 --> 00:02:07.994
I was born in Puerto Rico, but I was
raised in the Lower East side of New York.

00:02:08.161 --> 00:02:11.097
I was raised and in the Lower East Side

00:02:11.097 --> 00:02:14.968
in the 1950s with was the range of

00:02:15.135 --> 00:02:18.705
immigrants from Eastern Europe
and from all over the world.

00:02:18.705 --> 00:02:19.305
Really.

00:02:19.672 --> 00:02:21.674
This was a living neighborhood.

00:02:21.674 --> 00:02:24.244
Every block was filled with people.

00:02:24.878 --> 00:02:27.547
I could leave the projects

00:02:27.881 --> 00:02:31.084
and in two blocks
be entirely this new world.

00:02:31.918 --> 00:02:36.656
But there is something culturally
that culturally binds Puerto Ricans a lot,

00:02:36.656 --> 00:02:40.927
and that's the use of poetry to express
feelings for each other.

00:02:40.927 --> 00:02:44.430
So like, you know, on any...

00:02:44.964 --> 00:02:50.503
every June 13th of my life as a child,
I knew it was my sister's

00:02:50.503 --> 00:02:54.440
birthday that before dinner,
when we sat down, moms would say, okay,

00:02:54.841 --> 00:02:56.976
everyone has to say something

00:02:57.443 --> 00:03:00.847
to Irma on her day, on her birthday.

00:03:01.181 --> 00:03:06.252
And no matter how mean or difficult
she’d been all day, you see, I had to come up

00:03:06.252 --> 00:03:09.422
with something that spoke about

00:03:09.422 --> 00:03:12.358
the value of having a sister in my life,

00:03:12.559 --> 00:03:16.329
the value of being loved by a sister,
you know?

00:03:16.529 --> 00:03:19.632
And it wasn't a time
where you could complain.

00:03:20.133 --> 00:03:22.468
Miguel Algarin coined the phrase ‘Nuyorican’.

00:03:22.468 --> 00:03:25.438
A Nuyorican is a Rican is a Puerto
Rican who's been raised in New York.

00:03:26.372 --> 00:03:29.342
We have a dual imagination.

00:03:29.909 --> 00:03:31.711
Me, I write in Spanish.

00:03:31.711 --> 00:03:34.180
But because the typewriter
was manufactured in the U.S.A.,

00:03:34.180 --> 00:03:38.251
it comes out in English and the Nuyorican,
we combine both languages,

00:03:38.251 --> 00:03:41.688
which is called Spanglish,
to express ourselves.

00:03:42.155 --> 00:03:48.261
Un negro bonito,
Tu sabes un mulato, Que al oir

00:03:48.261 --> 00:03:51.998
Las congas
Tru Cu tun ca ta, Le salia lo Africano.

00:03:51.998 --> 00:03:58.238
They dance Charanga, Pachanga
Se pasaban Charangueando,

00:03:58.238 --> 00:04:04.377
But in one of those sonetes, My papa
se fue Trucuteando.

00:04:04.377 --> 00:04:06.779
That's something that the
Negro Puerto Rican has had to deal with.

00:04:06.813 --> 00:04:12.151
You know, the island Puerto Rican
looking at him and creating schizophrenia,

00:04:12.318 --> 00:04:14.254
schizophrenic states of mind

00:04:14.254 --> 00:04:17.991
about whether you're a true Puerto Rican
when you speak English, you know.

00:04:18.191 --> 00:04:22.562
Maybe here
I have to do more with the racism.

00:04:22.562 --> 00:04:24.330
You know than in my country.

00:04:24.330 --> 00:04:27.033
But it's like this
these issues of identity

00:04:27.600 --> 00:04:28.501
that I've been struggle

00:04:28.501 --> 00:04:32.572
when I was in Puerto Rico
is kind of exacerbated here in New York.

00:04:32.705 --> 00:04:37.210
When I was in school and I read Piri
Thomas's, You know, “How to Be a Negro

00:04:37.210 --> 00:04:40.346
without really trying”
was one of the chapters in his book.

00:04:40.980 --> 00:04:44.117
And suddenly I felt the same way
because people did not know

00:04:44.117 --> 00:04:46.185
that I was Puerto Rican
until I started talking Spanish.

00:04:48.121 --> 00:04:49.956
And they
would look at me surprised and say, “I

00:04:49.956 --> 00:04:52.892
thought that you were....”
And they would say it, you know.

00:04:53.059 --> 00:04:54.227
And I said “ I know what you thought”.

00:04:54.227 --> 00:04:58.631
Willie has this sort of uptown thing
where he talks about,

00:04:58.698 --> 00:05:01.934
also about his

00:05:02.602 --> 00:05:06.372
his divided identity
between the African-American community

00:05:06.873 --> 00:05:09.008
and the Latin community,
which is interesting.

00:05:09.008 --> 00:05:10.677
And new.

00:05:10.677 --> 00:05:12.845
Na na na na na na na na na.

00:05:12.845 --> 00:05:15.214
You ain't no Puerto Rican.

00:05:16.382 --> 00:05:20.853
I keep telling you
that boy is a black man with an accent.

00:05:22.622 --> 00:05:24.757
If you look real close,

00:05:24.791 --> 00:05:28.361
you'll see that your spirits are standing
right next to my songs.

00:05:28.361 --> 00:05:29.629
Yo soy boricua.

00:05:29.629 --> 00:05:30.797
Yo soy africano.

00:05:30.797 --> 00:05:34.167
I aint lyin’, pero
my pelo is kinky curly, mi skin

00:05:34.167 --> 00:05:37.904
no es negro but, it can pass

00:05:38.004 --> 00:05:41.708
Latinos have two choices
when it comes to assimilation.

00:05:41.708 --> 00:05:45.511
I mean, they can choose to assimilate
into a European

00:05:45.812 --> 00:05:50.116
or white cultural values,
or they can also assimilate into

00:05:51.451 --> 00:05:54.620
African-American
structures and cultural values.

00:05:54.954 --> 00:06:01.027
Yo leave that boy alone, he got
what they call the Nigger-Reecan Blues.

00:06:01.294 --> 00:06:02.762
He a spic.

00:06:02.762 --> 00:06:04.163
He a nigger, spic, spic.

00:06:04.163 --> 00:06:07.967
You ain't no different than the nigger
you neglected, you rejected, you oppressed

00:06:08.134 --> 00:06:09.035
and dispossessed.

00:06:09.035 --> 00:06:12.972
From banana boats
to tenements, and street gangs to regiments;

00:06:13.072 --> 00:06:18.010
spic, spic, spic
You ain't noooooo different

00:06:18.111 --> 00:06:20.646
than a nigger.

00:06:25.284 --> 00:06:27.019
I came to Cafe in 1990.

00:06:27.019 --> 00:06:29.489
It was a good place for me to start

00:06:29.889 --> 00:06:31.657
reading poems.

00:06:31.657 --> 00:06:34.494
And, you know, there was a tradition

00:06:35.762 --> 00:06:39.899
that maybe when I got up here that I felt
that, you know, Miguel and Pedro

00:06:39.999 --> 00:06:44.137
and Bimbo, may he rest in peace, you know,
sort of felt that I was carrying on.

00:06:44.971 --> 00:06:47.340
When I came up here,
I started reading my poems

00:06:47.507 --> 00:06:51.010
about what it means to be like
a Puerto Rican male living in East Harlem.

00:06:51.711 --> 00:06:54.614
There were a couple of incidents
that occurred

00:06:55.181 --> 00:06:57.683
in my life when I started to write poetry.

00:06:58.484 --> 00:07:02.288
One of them was going to a prepetory
school

00:07:02.522 --> 00:07:06.392
called Friends seminary,
and there was this one

00:07:07.360 --> 00:07:07.627
white

00:07:07.627 --> 00:07:10.296
boy who
had called me a Puerto Rican bastard,

00:07:10.830 --> 00:07:14.267
and there was a poet who was working
as a receptionist there.

00:07:14.267 --> 00:07:16.369
His name was Ed Randolph.

00:07:16.602 --> 00:07:18.704
I started to beat the killer
as much as I could.

00:07:19.405 --> 00:07:22.241
Willie was very angry
at some points in here.

00:07:23.209 --> 00:07:24.177
He got in a few fights,

00:07:24.177 --> 00:07:26.245
and one one time I pulled him aside
I said ‘Willie, you know,

00:07:27.947 --> 00:07:30.850
you've got to channel your anger
into something’.

00:07:30.950 --> 00:07:32.251
You know, I wasn't necessarily

00:07:32.251 --> 00:07:34.854
thinking of poetry at that time,
but I said, Well, you know, you've got to

00:07:36.122 --> 00:07:38.691
turn that anger
into some kind of positive energy.

00:07:39.325 --> 00:07:42.462
And he chose to do it through poetry.

00:07:42.995 --> 00:07:45.765
Inviting me to a post
reading a couple of weeks later.

00:07:46.165 --> 00:07:49.168
And I went out of respect for him,
really touched me.

00:07:49.168 --> 00:07:51.571
And I knew I wanted to write some poetry

00:07:51.571 --> 00:07:53.673
and I knew what he did
with his his energy.

00:07:54.373 --> 00:07:56.476
So and I did the same thing.

00:07:56.476 --> 00:07:58.578
I'm going to bring you
to a different world

00:07:58.778 --> 00:08:02.949
and see if you can strip your skin color
off of your your beliefs, off

00:08:03.049 --> 00:08:07.253
strip them for a minute and come with me;
hear these sounds and look at all

00:08:07.253 --> 00:08:10.223
these colors and stuff like that, and look
at what these people are talking about.

00:08:10.790 --> 00:08:14.927
And a lot of the first waves
of the migration from the 1950s and so on,

00:08:14.927 --> 00:08:18.397
you know, came to this part of New York,
which is now East Harlem.

00:08:18.498 --> 00:08:32.912
{Song in background}

00:08:32.912 --> 00:08:39.418
There was more a sense of a community.

00:08:39.418 --> 00:08:41.521
When the drugs came into play.

00:08:41.521 --> 00:08:43.923
I mean, they were here, but they were more

00:08:43.923 --> 00:08:45.825
they weren't as prevalent as they are now.

00:08:45.825 --> 00:08:49.061
So there was just a more sense of community and of
course we had street gangs back then too.

00:08:50.396 --> 00:08:51.797
I'm stuck in this poem

00:08:51.797 --> 00:08:55.134
This sounds like the round of bullets
you expect after that

00:08:55.167 --> 00:08:57.703
sudden screech
that pulls up on the avenue.

00:08:58.571 --> 00:09:01.574
I'm stuck in a poem
that sneaks under my door,

00:09:01.574 --> 00:09:04.777
like the beginning of dinner
or the long cry that fills

00:09:04.777 --> 00:09:07.446
the empty hallways,
after that last explosion.

00:09:08.548 --> 00:09:11.484
I'm stuck in this poem
like a squealing rat

00:09:12.018 --> 00:09:16.789
caught in a discount glue trap
soaking in old piss.

00:09:16.856 --> 00:09:19.825
Psst! Psst!

00:09:19.992 --> 00:09:24.330
Mira Mommy,
I'm home in the street, of this poem,

00:09:24.430 --> 00:09:26.666
where I'm stuck.

00:09:28.935 --> 00:09:30.236
I'm stuck

00:09:30.236 --> 00:09:34.140
in a poem with Willie Perdomo,
I’m stuck in a poem With Reg E Gaines, I’m

00:09:34.140 --> 00:09:38.411
stuck in a poem with Pedro Pietri,
I’m Stuck in a poem.

00:09:38.477 --> 00:09:42.882
The cafe started in 74 because Miguel
Algarin had a bunch of friends

00:09:42.882 --> 00:09:47.253
who liked to come to his apartment
and read poetry.

00:09:47.720 --> 00:09:50.957
And it basically started
as as an extension of his living room.

00:09:50.957 --> 00:09:54.794
it was at that time that Miguel Pinero
was just rising as a

00:09:55.561 --> 00:09:57.797
as a renowned dramatist.

00:09:57.797 --> 00:10:00.566
And his play SHORT EYES was off Broadway,
Joseph Papp

00:10:00.900 --> 00:10:03.803
I had it produced at the Public Theater
at Astor Place.

00:10:04.036 --> 00:10:08.140
Between Miguel Algarin and Miguel Pinero.,
you had the nucleus

00:10:08.140 --> 00:10:12.278
of an artistic movement,
you know, in this neighborhood.

00:10:12.278 --> 00:10:14.180
We used to meet at Miguel Algarin’s house,

00:10:14.180 --> 00:10:16.916
all these poets; Jesús Papoleto Meléndez,
one of the original Nuyorican’s.

00:10:16.916 --> 00:10:22.421
Lucy Cienfuegos,
another Nuyorican, myself, who

00:10:22.421 --> 00:10:24.991
denied being a Nuyorican,
and there was Miguel

00:10:25.057 --> 00:10:28.427
Pinero and Miguel Algarin,
And there was T.C.

00:10:28.427 --> 00:10:31.230
Garcia, Bimbo Rivas. May he rest in peace.

00:10:31.230 --> 00:10:33.966
A lot of people rested in peace, now,
I'm, the only one who's restless.

00:10:34.367 --> 00:10:37.036
There's so much history
in this place, you know? And

00:10:38.771 --> 00:10:40.172
when you see Pedro Pietri

00:10:40.172 --> 00:10:43.576
reading,
and I mean, you have read all his poems

00:10:44.010 --> 00:10:48.314
and he's one of your idols is like,
it inspires you, you know.

00:10:48.414 --> 00:10:52.351
They worked,
They worked, they worked and they died.

00:10:52.418 --> 00:10:54.320
They died, broke.

00:10:54.320 --> 00:10:56.689
They died owing they died.

00:10:56.689 --> 00:11:01.127
Never knowing what the front entrance of
the First National City Bank looks like.

00:11:01.560 --> 00:11:06.499
Juan, Miguel, Milagros, Olga, Manuel.

00:11:06.932 --> 00:11:10.903
From the Nervous Breakdown streets
where the mice live like millionaires

00:11:11.103 --> 00:11:12.104
and the people do not.

00:11:12.104 --> 00:11:13.339
Live at all.

00:11:13.339 --> 00:11:16.175
All are dead and were never alive.

00:11:16.842 --> 00:11:19.445
Piri Thomas, helped me
get in touch with the confusion

00:11:19.812 --> 00:11:22.214
I was feeling as a young man
being Puerto Rican.

00:11:24.550 --> 00:11:26.419
Mikey Pinero

00:11:27.053 --> 00:11:29.422
let me know what it feels like

00:11:29.422 --> 00:11:32.391
to strip the skin off
something that's already raw.

00:11:32.491 --> 00:11:36.429
And he has his own experience
and Miguel has his own experience,

00:11:36.529 --> 00:11:39.065
and I have my own experience,
but there's a link.

00:11:39.565 --> 00:11:40.399
It goes through there.

00:11:40.399 --> 00:11:44.370
‘What’; that we’re Puerto Rican men,
and we're writing about what it feels like

00:11:44.370 --> 00:11:45.938
to be that way in New York City

00:11:47.506 --> 00:11:49.909
in different time periods.

00:11:49.909 --> 00:11:54.814
25 years ago,
there was no Nuyroican villages,

00:11:54.814 --> 00:11:59.518
there were no poets cafes,
there was no El Museo del Barrio,

00:11:59.585 --> 00:12:02.655
There was no Puerto Rican
traveling theater.

00:12:02.755 --> 00:12:06.625
In the past 25 years, we have created

00:12:06.625 --> 00:12:08.227
a Latino aesthetic.

00:12:09.962 --> 00:12:13.833
Miguel Pinero died on June 17th, 1988.

00:12:14.266 --> 00:12:19.138
There's a famous poem that Miguel wrote,
and in the poem he said, When I die,

00:12:19.438 --> 00:12:22.708
scatter my ashes throughout the Lower
East Side because he wanted to

00:12:22.742 --> 00:12:27.079
to be near the shooting
and all the nasty stuff that goes on here.

00:12:27.346 --> 00:12:31.117
In a way, it's like a ultimate Nuyorician
statement, because it's not about,

00:12:31.851 --> 00:12:34.620
you know, bring me back home
to Puerto Rico and bury me

00:12:34.620 --> 00:12:37.957
in the pineapple plants or whatever,
you know, so I will smell

00:12:37.957 --> 00:12:40.593
sweet like the island
for the rest of my eternal life.

00:12:40.960 --> 00:12:43.763
I mean, it was about, you know,
this is my home.

00:12:43.763 --> 00:12:47.032
I mean, good or bad or ugly or whatever,

00:12:47.032 --> 00:12:49.535
You know,
this is what where my passion is.

00:12:50.236 --> 00:12:53.339
Just once before I die,

00:12:54.006 --> 00:12:56.776
I want to climb up on a tenement sky

00:12:56.776 --> 00:12:59.912
to dream my lungs out till I cry,

00:13:00.179 --> 00:13:04.416
then scatter
my ashes throughout the Lower East Side.

00:13:05.050 --> 00:13:07.386
So let me sing my song tonight.

00:13:07.453 --> 00:13:09.321
Let me feel out of sight.

00:13:09.321 --> 00:13:11.657
And then all eyes be dry.

00:13:11.891 --> 00:13:13.592
When they scatter my ashes.

00:13:13.592 --> 00:13:15.694
Through the Lower East Side.

00:13:17.696 --> 00:13:19.832
There's no other place for me to be.

00:13:19.832 --> 00:13:22.134
There's no other place that I can see.

00:13:22.635 --> 00:13:26.071
There's no other town around
that brings you up or keeps you down.

00:13:26.071 --> 00:13:32.011
No food, Little heat, sweeps by fancy cars
and pimps, bars and juke saloons.

00:13:32.211 --> 00:13:33.846
And greasy spoons Make my.

00:13:33.846 --> 00:13:38.951
Spirits fly with my ashes
scattered through the Lower East Side.

00:13:39.752 --> 00:13:42.988
I don't want to be buried in Puerto Rico.

00:13:43.722 --> 00:13:47.626
I don't want to rest in Long Island
Cemetery.

00:13:48.027 --> 00:13:50.696
I want to be near the stabbing,
shooting, gambling,

00:13:50.696 --> 00:13:53.732
fighting and unnatural dying

00:13:54.834 --> 00:13:57.703
and new birth crying.

00:13:58.437 --> 00:14:03.442
So please, please, when I die,

00:14:04.376 --> 00:14:06.378
don't take me far away.

00:14:07.646 --> 00:14:10.015
Keep me nearby,

00:14:10.015 --> 00:14:13.619
take my ashes and scatter them throughout

00:14:14.086 --> 00:14:17.590
the Lower East Side.

00:14:21.827 --> 00:14:22.027
Done.