Whose Place

the long version

Product Description Cortés, the name means courtesy or court and there is royalty in these autobiographical poems. Cortés combs meaning out of her memories with epic style. By turns vulnerable and brash, she plumbs the labyrinth and finds her way back out. Mami, Papi, brother, and sister frame a Puerto Rican/Brooklyn lineage. Cortes often recounts her vignettes in rich, bubbling prose where everyday surroundings are magnified to reveal deep symbolism. Yellow kitchen walls from the past are parsed to impart notions of class, family, community, and spirituality as well as ambition, mystery, and independence. The little girl who believed in the magic power of language grows up. Her multi-lingual abilities flower, juxtaposing matte with sheen in a quest parched for aqua. A few experimental poems may prove to be transitional. They lack the subjectivity that gives Cortes her signature punch. Sexual exploits make for juicy reading and they are penned with masterful wordplay. I lay with Joe... and though he was thorough I thought only about Theo. Cortés was close to the late, great poète maudit Pedro Pietri. Two poems for the Reverend faithfully capture him in all his outsized glory. For those of us lucky enough to have known Pietri, her breath rekindles his spirit. Help me, I can see. Honesty and imagination grapple as Sandy Cisneros meets Charles Bukowski. Lydia Cortés should be on a stamp already. -Jeffrey Cyphers Wright, The Brooklyn Rail-