Pedro Pietri said of himself: “Born 1944, Ponce, Puerto Rico. Uneducated in three public schools. Worked on and off for ten years in various jobs (menial). Got drafted in 1966, blew two years in military service. Return to odd jobs, last one as an orderly for old helpless men in Brooklyn state mental institution. In these ten years, wrote many things in the downtown train.”

What happens in Pietri’s poems is what happened on the streets in 1973 and in 2020. He delivers wickedly funny lines and intent silences, and in both is a recognition of life in the lower class—no aspiration, no academic influences, just the United States as it looks from the view at the bottom.

First edition of a beautiful and rare volume, in very good condition, minor wear to jacket.

Monthly Review Press, New York, 1973.