3 thoughts on “Pedro Pietri and the Nuyorican legacy… Giving thanks!”
Nuyorican poet king dies
Nuyorican poet king dies
Originally published in NY Daily News, March 5, 2004
By MAITE JUNCO
DAILY NEWS DEPUTY METRO EDITOR
Pedro Pietri, at reading in December –>Poet Pedro Pietri, whose trailblazing 1973 book “Puerto Rican Obituary” gave voice to the struggles and hopes of Nuyoricans, died Wednesday of stomach cancer. He was 59.
Pietri was on a plane on his way back to New York from Tijuana, Mexico, where he was seeking alternative treatment, when he died.
“He embraced and identified what it was to be a Nuyorican, a Puerto Rican growing up in New York,” said Latin culture historian Aurora Flores, a friend since 1975. “He empowered an entire movement. … He was one of a kind.”
Born in Ponce, Puerto Rico, Pietri’s family moved to Harlem in the late 1940s. He served in Vietnam from 1965-67 and returned fiercely opposed to the war.
In the 1970s, he helped start the legendary Nuyorican Poets Cafe on the lower East Side. His readings where a staple in the city’s Latin cultural scene for decades.
“He was really the quintessential Nuyorican poetic voice,” said Juan Flores, a professor at Hunter College
and the CUNY Graduate Center who’s working on an anthology of Pietri’s works. “It’s an immense loss.”
Pietri’s legacy includes more than 20 books of poetry and plays, but “Puerto Rican Obituary” remains his most haunting work.
The satirical and witty tragicomic poem that gives the book its name describes the lives of Juan, Miguel, Milagros, Olga and Manuel, five Puerto Ricans who think they have to forget their island roots to reach the anyway unattainable American Dream.
He is survived by three children, Diana Mercedes, 22; Ivava, 19, and Speedo Juan, 8. And also by a sister, Carmen Pietri-Diaz, and a brother, Jose, all from New York.
A public viewing will be held Sunday from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. at the church where he first read his “Puerto Rican Obituary,” 1st Spanish Methodist Church (The People’s Church), 163 E. 111th St. in East Harlem. A funeral Mass will be celebrated Monday. Details of the service were not available last night.
The family asks that in lieu of flowers donations be made to the
Pedro Pietri Health Benefit Fund, c/o
Nuyorican Poets Cafe, P.O. Box 20794, New York, N.Y. 10009, to help defray the cost of his medical care.
He was and is
He was and is one of the most important interpreters of Puerto Rican life in New York. Born in Puerto Rico, he spent most of his life in New York City and helped forge the Nuyorican literary and theatrical presence of the city. However much absurd his writings were, there was a tremendous amount of passion, sympathy and sense of loss without the sentimentality which is all too common or easy for a writer to fall into. There was a toughness, a resilience that cloaked and protected a deep sensitivity.
I once heard him remark that after serving in Vietnam he was given a job as a janitor for the Transit Authority –that he would have been cleaning public toilets had he not taken to writing poetry.
I love Nueva York, I know the strives Puerto Ricans have faced being set-up by the kangaroo courts, but as a people God has bless us to have achieved the highest development amoug peoples -people from very low income streams. I agree and disagree knowing that our work within the US has not stopped and that we will over come even more obstacles placed before us. My desire that we would be soooo creative this 2011, that we can send some of those creative ideas and profits back to the people that really need it – those that stayed behind fighting the invaders within our island… Lets agree that that even if we get hit time after time we will not focus on us, right now; but on the bigger good that blesses the next generation of Puerto Ricans – New Yoricans!
Nuyorican poet king dies
Nuyorican poet king dies
Originally published in NY Daily News, March 5, 2004
By MAITE JUNCO
DAILY NEWS DEPUTY METRO EDITOR
Pedro Pietri, at reading in December –>Poet Pedro Pietri, whose trailblazing 1973 book “Puerto Rican Obituary” gave voice to the struggles and hopes of Nuyoricans, died Wednesday of stomach cancer. He was 59.
Pietri was on a plane on his way back to New York from Tijuana, Mexico, where he was seeking alternative treatment, when he died.
“He embraced and identified what it was to be a Nuyorican, a Puerto Rican growing up in New York,” said Latin culture historian Aurora Flores, a friend since 1975. “He empowered an entire movement. … He was one of a kind.”
Born in Ponce, Puerto Rico, Pietri’s family moved to Harlem in the late 1940s. He served in Vietnam from 1965-67 and returned fiercely opposed to the war.
In the 1970s, he helped start the legendary Nuyorican Poets Cafe on the lower East Side. His readings where a staple in the city’s Latin cultural scene for decades.
“He was really the quintessential Nuyorican poetic voice,” said Juan Flores, a professor at Hunter College
and the CUNY Graduate Center who’s working on an anthology of Pietri’s works. “It’s an immense loss.”
Pietri’s legacy includes more than 20 books of poetry and plays, but “Puerto Rican Obituary” remains his most haunting work.
The satirical and witty tragicomic poem that gives the book its name describes the lives of Juan, Miguel, Milagros, Olga and Manuel, five Puerto Ricans who think they have to forget their island roots to reach the anyway unattainable American Dream.
He is survived by three children, Diana Mercedes, 22; Ivava, 19, and Speedo Juan, 8. And also by a sister, Carmen Pietri-Diaz, and a brother, Jose, all from New York.
A public viewing will be held Sunday from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. at the church where he first read his “Puerto Rican Obituary,” 1st Spanish Methodist Church (The People’s Church), 163 E. 111th St. in East Harlem. A funeral Mass will be celebrated Monday. Details of the service were not available last night.
The family asks that in lieu of flowers donations be made to the
Pedro Pietri Health Benefit Fund, c/o
Nuyorican Poets Cafe, P.O. Box 20794, New York, N.Y. 10009, to help defray the cost of his medical care.
He was and is
He was and is one of the most important interpreters of Puerto Rican life in New York. Born in Puerto Rico, he spent most of his life in New York City and helped forge the Nuyorican literary and theatrical presence of the city. However much absurd his writings were, there was a tremendous amount of passion, sympathy and sense of loss without the sentimentality which is all too common or easy for a writer to fall into. There was a toughness, a resilience that cloaked and protected a deep sensitivity.
I once heard him remark that after serving in Vietnam he was given a job as a janitor for the Transit Authority –that he would have been cleaning public toilets had he not taken to writing poetry.
I love Nueva York, I know the strives Puerto Ricans have faced being set-up by the kangaroo courts, but as a people God has bless us to have achieved the highest development amoug peoples -people from very low income streams. I agree and disagree knowing that our work within the US has not stopped and that we will over come even more obstacles placed before us. My desire that we would be soooo creative this 2011, that we can send some of those creative ideas and profits back to the people that really need it – those that stayed behind fighting the invaders within our island… Lets agree that that even if we get hit time after time we will not focus on us, right now; but on the bigger good that blesses the next generation of Puerto Ricans – New Yoricans!