Tapping into his ancestral Puerto Rico and his 1960s Brooklyn childhood, Martín Espada’s poems weave stories of immigrants, family, music, racism and baseball. As this fall’s Bingham Visiting Reader, he read—with passion and humor—from selected works to students in King Theatre, framing his poems with stories of how they came to be. Mr. Espada has published more than 15 books as a poet, editor, essayist and translator. His latest collection of poems, The Trouble Ball, is the recipient of the Milt Kessler Award, a Massachusetts Book Award and an International Latino Book Award. The Republic of Poetry was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. He has received other recognition, such as the American Book Award, the National Hispanic Culture Center Literary Award, and a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship. A former tenant lawyer, Mr. Espada is a professor in the Department of English at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
His one-line poem titled “Advice to Young Poets”:
Never pretend to be a unicorn by sticking a plunger on your head.
“Another poet said it much better than I did, many years ago: ‘To thine own self be true.’”