Review by Rigoberto González
El Paso
Times (Texas)
April 9, 2006
Poet's intellect, discontent
take on establishment
No person, place or idea is spared an irreverent word stomp by the literary
scene's most playful and imaginative Nuyorican bard, Urayoán Noel, in his latest collection of poetry "Kool Logic/ Lógica Kool" (Bilingual Review Press, $12 paperback).
A scholar and performance poet, Noel pours his interests on the page, producing
a unique poetics in which Dante's terza rima, the English sonnet, and even the limerick are given
new breath -- Boricua style. Consider "
Loose shoelaces plucked
in unison, form new fugues
for a fading day.
There are many gorgeous echoes
of Federico García Lorca's
"Poet in New York," since Noel too comes to know, love and critique
that cosmopolitan city as an adult. Poems such as "In the Faraway
Suburbs" and "Six Flags Over Brooklyn" take stock of the curious
and sometimes heartbreaking landscape, which, in the latter poem, extends his
vision to the West Coast and to the Beatniks:
Here I am,
posing for mental Polaroids,
showing the teeth of my remembrances
when I see the flags puff up once more,
smoke rises from Brooklyn's belly
above the fish markets
and kiosks full of rotten fruit.
As García Lorca employed
the ballad, Noel prefers the musicality of the Puerto Rican décima
in his homage to Nueva York and beyond. But in
English, Noel’s décima's create a counter-rhythm and
structure that mirror the letdown of arrival to the money culture:
It's not hard to sell your heart
For a penny sale at J.C.'s
I'm crazy with dreams of Macy's
But I can make do with Wal-Mart
Bloated brimful shopping cart
Mom and Pop's store kissed the grave
Heartland hopes too late to stave (off)
This big business jamboree...
Hip-hip: the land of the free!
Hooray: the home of the brave!
In this capitalistic environment, even the retired elderly are certainly
tainted by the light of economic depression. In the poem "Nursing Home
Blues," they are "dead starfish in a city of rust."
And to show that he can use that scrutinizing lens on his own Puerto Rican
pride, Noel includes a hilarious "victim identity" poem, which riffs
off every ethnic stereotype:
I've got no friends named Papo
who hang around street corners
"Vaya, mami" and
"Boricua one hundred
percent, represent!"
The poem, appropriately titled "Spic Tracts," concludes with the
disclaimer: "I'm not selling this sermon door to door." Indeed, it's
each person's job to defy the easy identity politics and aim for complexity.
The energy that pulses through the poems of "Kool
Logic / Lógica Kool"
is an anti-establishment battle cry (á la Allen Ginsberg) that comes from the depths of intellect and
discontent to turn conformity, convention and tradition upon its post-colonial
head. Urayoán Noel does so with audacity and panache
-- Boricua style.
Rigoberto González is an
award-winning writer and associate professor of English and Latino studies at
the