Puerto Rican Poetry Classic
Poems from Empire of Dreams
Poet Alicia Ostriker writes “Empire of Dreams is a masterpiece,” noting that the writing is “concerned with writing and language itself, its relation to memory and desire, its boundaries and genres and the possibilities of transgressing and crossing dressing them. Poetry here dresses itself in the garb of dramatic monologue, love letter, TV commercial, diary excerpt, movie criticism, celebrity confession, literary theory, bastinado, manifesto, etc. ‘Reality’ and ‘fantasy’ interpenetrate. The ‘I’ is an elusive entity, a ‘void that abhors the void’. Despair is handled with acute comedy. Eroticism is icily analyzed without losing its heat. ‘Poetry is this screaming madwoman’. And these cerebral and passionate games proceed with a relentless intensity one sees in no other writer.”
Academy of American Poets
POETS.ORG on Empire of Dreams
Empire of Dreams by Giannina Braschi
Translation by Tess O’Dwyer
Table of Contents
I. Assault on Time
II. Profane Comedy
Dedication of Warning
1. Book of Clowns and Buffoons
2. Poems of the World; or The Book of Wisdom
3. Pastoral; or The Inquisition of Memories
4. Song of Nothingness
III. The Intimate Diary of Solitude
1. Death of Poetry
> The Adventures of Mariquita Samper
> Life and Works of Berta Singerman
> The Things That Happen to Men in New York!
> The Queen of Beauty, Charm, and Coquetry Gossip
> Portrait of Giannina Braschi
> Mariquita Samper’s Childhood
> The Raise
> Manifesto on Poetic Eggs
2. Rosarios de la aurora
> The Building of the Waves of the Sea
> Mariquita Samper’s Financial Statement
> Requiem for Solitude
> The Movement of the Waves of the Sea
