Scope and Contents

This exhibition, Text as Image: An Homage to Lorenzo Homar and the Reverend Pedro Pietri, was assembled for the El Museo del Bario by Margarita Agiiuilar. Both are Puerto Rican poets, Homar a more conventional printmaker and Pietri a founding member of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

Scope and Contents

In this book of poetry, Pietri writes about the harsh life of Puerto Ricans in NYC. This is the first published collection of poems by Pieri ncluding the title poem "Puerto Rican Obituary" - Pietri's best-known work, and something of an anthem for the Nuyorican Poetry movement. Pietri (1944-2004) was a co-founder, with Miguel Pinero and Miguel Algarín, of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe in 1973. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.

Scope and Contents kenning editions: The Masses Are Asses is a one-act whiteface agitprop farce"”an avant garde tragedy of errors, the only error being its own theatricality. A "Lady" and a "Gentleman" of audacious sophistication extol their superiority and smear "the poor" over champagne in a Parisian bistro that doubles as a South Bronx toilet (or is it the other way around?). A supposed lust for prestige stokes the terrorist group A.B.C.D.E.F.G.H.I. ("Armed / Brave / Comrades / Determined / Efficient / Fighters / Gonna / Humiliate / Imperialism!"), whose bullets and bombs punctuate the night. Needing an effective distraction from the ambient siege (which sounds an awful lot like a characteristic evening in the burrough), the couple "pretend" to be common, drink straight from the bottle, and grind to the rhythm of the telephone as it rings and rings (presumably by would-be patrons of the establishment they insist to inhabit). But when the lady fails to snap out of the masque, the gentleman...