The Poetry of Alberto O. Cappas
WEBSPAWNER TEST
DOÑA JULIA AND OTHER SELECTED POEMS
AuthorHouse - ISBN: 1-4033-0737-7 - 112 Pages
Available in Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble
Clear. Natural. Poignant. These words accurately describe Alberto O. Cappas’ work
Cappas understands the suffering and struggles of Puerto Ricans living in Mainland America as well as in Puerto Rico. His poetry traces their hopes, problems, and misconceptions from the island to the mainland where they discover that dreams do die hard.
In the poem "Suicide of a Puerto Rican Jibaro," one need not be Puerto Rican to identify with the alienation faced when entering a cold, foreign, and jungle-like world. Cappas successfully explores what such a drastic change can mean for a Puerto Rican away from his island, where he is the majority. In "...Jibaro", for the Puerto Rican man who emigrates to the United States, "A million times his body was raped by the unfriendly cold... to pursue the American Dream..."
Cappas is a relentless observer and commentator of what happens when a people leave their homeland, or forget where they come from, to pursue the uncertainties of the American Dream. His poetry, ironic at times, questions whether this dream does exist. In "A Spoken Secret", "Light skin Puerto Ricans forget to speak Spanish... and dark skin Puerto Ricans adopt hot combs to straighten their hair." In "Doña Julia", a woman is trapped like a mouse in America and so commits suicide as a last attempt to return to her homeland. And in "Maria" a young girl sits patiently thinking about her experiences in New York since leaving Puerto Rico and now waits "for the overdose (of a drug) to take effect."
This is not to say that all Puerto Ricans who emigrate to the United States end up killing themselves. It does show that Cappas is keenly aware of a sort of cultural and spiritual death that happens to Puerto Ricans and other Latinos when they leave the tropical scenes and adopt certain American values. In the ironic humorous poem, "Her Boricua", a woman buys the Moon, tax-free, and invites her relatives and friends on weekend nights to "admire the beauty of her new possession." She tells them that in America, "you have the freedom to buy anything you want."
"Haiti in Puerto Rico" explores the death theme even further. "I recited useless words of a poem to an audience of Puerto Ricans, turned into zombies, refusing to break the spell of all the misfortunes."
Doña Julia and Other Poems by Alberto O. Cappas is a book filled with poetic stories, forceful and powerful imagery and messages that will stimulate all minds that come into contact with it. Cappas’ language is original and refreshing, which makes his writing very natural and uncluttered with abstractions. Cappas is correct, knows what he needs to say and clearly makes his point.
Review By Jaira Placide
New York University
Alberto O. Cappas: Cappas is a poet and entrepreneur in several diverse areas. He is the author of Echolalia, a collection of poems, published in 1989, author of Disintegration of the Puerto Ricans, published in 1997, and author of The Pledge: A Guide for Everyday Living, published in 2001. His poetry has been included in many publications and anthologies in the United States and Canada. Cappas is the recipient of the "Keepers of Our Culture" Award for Literature, presented to him by the New York State Hispanic Heritage Month Committee -- on September 15, 1994. His talents and skills as a writer, interest in the human condition and concern for those socio-economic issues which impact the Puerto Rican/Latino community, have served to foster in him an active interest and involvement as a journalist. This has led to his role as co-publisher and co-editor of the Latino Village Press, a monthly publication designed to educate and inform the Puerto Rican/Latino community about the importance of going into business and developing their own economic institutions and infrastructures. His accomplishments and achievements lists him as the founder and Chairperson of the AOC Speakers Bureau, the only Latino and African American speakers bureau in the country (now known as A&L Speakers & Consultants). He is also founder and Chairperson of Don Pedro Enterprises, the makers of Don Pedro Cookies; and he was co-founder of A Place for Poets, a national publication which featured aspiring Latino and other emerging writers and poets. Further, his works have achieved wide interests, growing appeal and numerous accolades. It should be noted that his work has been featured and preserved in the City of Buffalo’s new Metro subway system, with a commissioned work by the Niagara Frontier’s Transportation Authority of an artistic "vignette" with two other Latino artists. The work is a thirty-foot steel tile mural that reflects the search for a sense of belonging in this city. Also, his early works have been included in the renowned Schomburg Library’s archives. Alberto O. Cappas is an alumnus of the State University of New York at Buffalo and a recipient of the NYC Urban League’s Charles Evans Hughes Award for Creative Writing -- presented to him by Harlem Preparatory School in 1967. Doña Julia is Alberto’s third book of poems.
By City Limits Magazine:
If more public officials and politicians could write poetry as visceral as the Human Resources Administration's Director of Community Affairs Alberto Cappas, the world would indeed be in a different place.
Cappas' third book of poetry, Doña Julia, explores the complexities of everyday life for the Puerto Rican immigrant in New York City. The poems are sometimes touching and nostalgic, sometimes painful and alienating, as Cappas speaks to the ways in which poverty and racism impact the lives of immigrants who try to incorporate the supposed American Dream into their realities--and their varying degrees of success and failure in doing so.
In "A Distant Despair," Cappas describes "the Building/With the graffiti/'Viva Puerto Rico Libre'/And other declarations/Woman and her three children/are evicted for not paying the rent." In the same building lives a Mrs. Garcia, who is "glued to the window/Looking from corner to corner/For stories to talk about and invent." The poem is
filled with images of what life is like for the tenants of this building. Its beauty (and that of Cappas' writing) lies in its ability to cause a tension for the reader, to leave us torn between those images that evoke a feeling of warmth for the people of the community and the ones that inspire anger, or sometimes hopelessness, over the living conditions that create such poverty.
It is this sort of complexity that keeps Doña Julia from being a book about feeling pity for the people and places it portrays. The book's characters are implicated in their own madness, too. In "Aguacate Power," Cappas shows his frustration with what he calls "unconscious Puerto Ricans" who "have made it in the USA/They exist without the ganas/Without a place in the sun/They sing songs for the politicians/With nothing to offer them in turn for their dedication/They do not know the harm they generate."
The standout poem in this collection is the title piece, "Doña Julia." The poem is about a woman who commits suicide, and leaves a note that baffles police, stating, "One way or the other, I'm going back to Puerto Rico." The poem starkly describes what led the woman to this place. "Doña Julia/Committed suicide last night/Cause the welfare department/Demanded too many documents she did not/know existed." It's quite the indictment coming from an employee of HRA.
In a city used to low voter turnout in most elections, where people feel increasingly alienated from their political and community leaders, it is refreshing to find someone working in the system who is sympathetic to the lives of ordinary citizens. Cappas' poetry, never overly sentimental, demonstrates both a talent for the written word and a deep understanding of people, their communities and the larger institutions that influence their lives. The next time you go to the polls, don't elect a politician; elect a poet.
Two Poems by Alberto O. Cappas, from his recent book
Letter for Iris
It was long ago yesterday.
The oldies, the gangs, the wine,
Trying to find definitions to everything,
Everyone refusing to speak Spanish,
Stupid heavy accents,
Keeping our welfare secrets to ourselves.
You didn’t reveal anything until years later.
It was long ago yesterday,
The oldies, the gangs, the wine,
Going to sets during school hours,
Drinking that terrible wine that you disliked so much.
And the Ricans and Dominicans from downtown,
Rapping to you behind my back.
The Latin Knights against the Young Lovers,
The Sinners against the Viceroys,
The Dragons against the Assassins,
Jitterbugging into oblivion.
Willie, a junkie on Columbus Avenue,
Eddie, a homo on 72nd Street,
Carlos, a revolutionary at Attica,
Sara, a community leader in Washington Heights,
Jose, a capitalist on Wall Street,
Mimi, a housewife in Puerto Rico,
Carmen, a puta in the South Bronx,
And Miguel,
Demonstrating in front of the United Nations
With fifty buttons on his jacket.
It was long ago yesterday,
The oldies, the gangs, the wine,
Remembering those wonderful nightmares.
The playground, the backyard, the roof,
The fire hydrant, the basement,
And those silent trips to the park where we called
For the plans that never came.
I leave you know,
The oldies, the gangs, the wine,
Hoping you found your definitions without regrets.
I only discovered new ignorance and stupidity
By many that refuse to open a new path
To our growth and development.
2
Suicide of a Puerto Rican Jìbaro
(In Mainland Buffalo)
They didn’t understand.
They were all Americans now.
He would smile sometimes,
Thinking about his youth in Ponce,
Carmen, Rosa, Teresa and Lisa.
Holding on to dreams
That helped him stay alive.
The tropical music that was killed
By the new sound of “salsa.”
But they didn’t understand,
His children didn’t understand.
A million times his body was raped
By the unfriendly cold.
The farm he sacrificed
To pursue the American Dream,
Trying to buy some dignity in the trade
Of the unemployment office,
Shoveling the snow that invaded
His tropical existence.
He would walk up Virginia Street
And down Hudson Street,
Searching
For some clues of understanding,
But
Only
Found
New inventions of nightmares
That wanted to destroy his dreams.
The dead dreams
That helped him stay alive
Were too weak
For the American nightmare.
They didn’t understand.
They were
All Americans now.
________________________________________
Visit VirtualBoricua - A great Boricua site: VirtualBoricua.org is a labor of love borne from our collective stateside experience created in the spring of 2004 soon after the deaths of Puerto Rican icons Pedro Pietri and Richie Perez. VirtualBoricua.org is about documenting, honoring—y, a veces, regañando—metropolitan Puerto Ricans of every persuasion. VirtualBoricua.org covers contemporary news from a progressive vantage point—and showcases community artists. While there are quite a number of excellent (quite beautiful and informative) websites on the history and culture of Puerto Ricans in America, there is always room for more voices to be heard. Please contact us by email (virtualboricua@verizon.net) with suggestions, photos, story leads or other ideas.
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