I'm honored to be introducing Urayoán Noel tonight.
Ura is a literary citizen par excellence, a poet, performer,
scholar--
sorry, that's better-- translator,
an associate professor of English and Spanish at NYU.
He's the author of the critical study
In Visible Movement, Nuyorican Poetry
from the Sixties to Slam, published by the University
of Iowa Press in 2014.
It was the winner of the Latina/Latino Studies Book
Prize from the Latin American Studies Association.
And several books of poetry in English and Spanish,
the most recent of which is Buzzing Hemisphere,
Rumor Hemisférico, University of Arizona Press.
Forthcoming is a translation of the Chilean poet Pablo de
Rokha from Shearsman Books.
He's also produced poetry in a range of alternative formats,
including the artist's book, the digital archive,
and the multimedia installation.
A contributing editor to NACLA Report on the Americas, Noel
has been a fellow of the Ford Foundation in CantoMundo,
and his creative and critical writings
have appeared in BOMB, Contemporary Literature, Fence,
Lana Turner, Latino Studies, Small Acts, and in
numerous anthologies.
Originally from San Juan, Puerto Rico,
Urayoán Noel earned his BA from the University of Puerto Rico,
Rio Piedras, his MA from Stanford, and his PhD from NYU.
What it is to be American, to be a citizen,
gets contested generation after generation
for different populations, especially
in relation to borders and territories.
And Ura's poetics are centered in how
identity containment and contamination are
the figurative basis of the late capitalist American sublime.
In an article about Ura, Kristin Dykstra
writes, "I am writing technically
about a thoroughly American writer,
but one who happens to have been born in San Juan, Puerto
Rico, another American city long left off
the maps of the mainland, and consequently out
of our knowledge bases about American culture.
While activists have explored platforms for independence
and resisted the nation's colonizing embrace,
another facet of this problematic
involves the reluctance of mainstream US culture
to acknowledge that Puerto Ricans have
a significant place, resistant or otherwise, in the nation's
history."
He is ur American, uber American, and gay American.
A little bit Willie Carlos Williams,
and a little bit Willie Colón, his work relishes
in amalgamating the currents of sound and meaning making
of Americanism as a moving target or a constantly shifting
organism formed by the endless antimeaning machine
of capitalism.
Ura's favorite material is the sound flotsam
of punk, the vernacular, and market noise.
And I'm just going to read a little bit of-- he's
just fantastic.
"After a few palabras and true dats,
we explore poets, channel Dora, no map, no app,
surveying ahora, where are the bodegas and laundromats
amid the loft conversion ziggurats?
What gives a place its iconic aura?
Hint, it's not about ironic flannel, artisanal cupcakes,
or IPAs, a meme workshop, or a hashtag panel
for zombie PhDs and MFAs.
Our dream streets broadcast on a bat channel whose bat
signal reverberates for days."
Ura's poetry exalts in the good fun of signs, signs, signs.
But he's also making a careful critique of our overreliance
on a corrupt system for meaning.
He has an incredible ear, and his poetry
gives me the visceral pleasure I derive
from music, the goosebumps, for what my pulse hungers.
I also deeply value his commitment
to preserving the traditions of the Nuyorican poets,
both as a practitioner and scholar.
In this respect, he is a singular human being
and artist.
His latest collection, Buzzing Hemisphere,
published here by the University of Arizona Press,
is an impressionistic illustration of the racial
and class based mélanges of New York.
This book is not so much concerned with identity
as selfhood, but as soundscape.
Adopting the strategies of both the 20th century modernism
and the verbal dexterity and play of Nueva York,
Noel writes about the liminal space of his American identity
while delighting in the fragmentation and tension that
emerges.
He's also a captivating reader and performer,
and we're so lucky to have him here tonight.
So with no further ado, Urayoán Noel.