Pedro Pietri-El Extreme Cock Tales https://vimeo/80421172 Pedro meant the world to me since meeting him at age 17 at the original poets Cafe. I am honored he let me play the lead role in his last play COCK TALES. He believed in me that much. Dubbed the Sun Ra of Puerto Rican letters and the Poet Laureate of the Young Lords Party, Pedro Juan Pietri embodied the emerging sensibility of a generation of Puerto Ricans with one foot planted in the rhythms and culture of Puerto Rico and the other in the multicultural/ethnic urban ethos of New York City. Bridging the gap between the two islands, Pietri and his contemporaries learned to negotiate the vicissitudes of cultural belonging, creating a hybrid sensibility that merged decidedly Puerto Rican elements with those found on the streets and barrios of New York City. A poet, playwright and performer of prolific talent, Pietri stands out as one of the premiere exemplars of a distinctly Nuyorican aesthetic and has become a seminal figure in both the history of Puerto Rican letters and that of the downtown poetry scene in New York. Born in Ponce, Puerto Rico on March 21, 1943 to Francisco and Petra Pietri, Pedro Juan Pietri came to New York City in 1945. Three years later, his maternal grandfather committed suicide owing to what Pietri has noted in several interviews as a sense of hopelessness and isolation brought on by his disappointment with the promise of New York and his break with Puerto Rico. In 1949, his father died from pneumonia, which he contracted while walking the wintry streets of New York severely underdressed, leaving Pietris mother alone to raise Pietri and his four siblings – Brothers José (Joe), William (Willie) and Francisco (Frank) and Sister Carmen – along with her own widowed mother and sister. Raised in a five-story walkup on Amsterdam Avenue in Harlem and in the General Ulysses S. Grant Houses, a public housing development in the area, Pietri graduated from Haaran High School in the Hells Kitchen section of Manhattan in 1960. The following year he began work at Columbia Universitys Butler Library. It is here where he claims his real education in poetry and literature began. Taking advantage of the ready availability of books, Pietri, who already had a penchant for poetic verse and had dabbled in the writing of doo-wop songs, immersed himself in reading the works of Langston Hughes, Federico García Lorca, William Faulkner and W.B. Yeats, among others. He started writing more poetry and made the acquaintance of such noted poets as Allen Ginsberg, Amiri Baraka, Ted Joans and Gregory Corso, as well as that of one his early mentors, Roger Parris. As a youth, Pietri had already been exposed to a rich oral tradition and to creativity through the popularity of song and radio dramas in his household, and the readings of his Aunt Irene at the First Spanish Methodist Church in East Harlem. The formalization of his poetic education and acquaintanceship with some of New Yorks more experimental poets only served to reinforce his early forays into the writing of poetry and encourage the development of his distinctive aesthetic. In addition, Pietri notes that his discovery of the poet Jorge Brandon in Manhattans Union Square in the early 1960s presented him with the embodiment of a poetic style informed by the performative aspects of the song and radio-novelas of his youth and by the experimental declarations of the Beat and Umbra poets of the era. Moreover, the fact that Brandon was Puerto Rican and radically untraditional and irreverent deeply influenced the young Pietri and contributed to the formation of his poetic persona. El Extreme Luis Chaluisan Salsamagazine 2014 Recognition Awards WEPAwebTV Roughrican Productions WEPAwebTV - New Edge Theater https://facebook/EspirituSalsa reverbnation/luischaluisan — with L.f. Chaluisan Batlle Federico Chaluisan Mayaguez Rocker Roller Rican Luis Chaluisan
Posted on: Sat, 06 Dec 2014 17:20:56 +0000
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