A poet once wrote memorable lines about the difficulty of getting the news. Today we are fortunate to have Spanish language journalism focused on culture, including 80grados prensa sin prisa (“80Degrees+ press without rush”). A column by Julio Marzán, published in July 2021, will be of interest to readers of William Carlos Williams and to the ongoing dialogue about Williams and twenty-first century literature and culture, and can be read in Spanish or in chapter form in English:
William Carlos Williams, Lin-Manuel Miranda y el enigma de la identidad (July 2021)
Julio Marzán, William Carlos Williams, Lin-Manuel Miranda and the enigma of identity (July 2021) published in The Labyrinth of Multitude and Other Reality Checks on Being Latino/x. Vernon Press, 2023
Photo credit: https://www.80grados.net/
Here is an abstract for the essay:
In 2016, a year after the premiere of the musical Hamilton at the Public Theater, playwright Lin-Manuel Miranda was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. Hamilton was still running on Broadway in 2017, the centennial year of the publication of Al Que Quiere (1917), the first book of poetry by William Carlos Williams, considered the most important American poet of the twentieth century and recipient of the Pulitzer Prize posthumously in 1963 for his final collection, Pictures from Bruegel and Other Poems (1961). Besides being the first author of Puerto Rican descent to receive this distinction, as a playwright Williams is a precursor to Miranda in writing dramatic works that reflect the same bicultural condition. In fact, it is impossible to discuss the work and lives of both without considering their respective Puerto Rican heritage, the component that most distinguishes them while challenging conventional notions of identity.
Julio Marzán is the author of The Spanish American Roots of William Carlos Williams (1974), The Numinous Site: The Poetry of Luis Palés Matos (1995) and The Labyrinth of Multitude and Other Reality Checks on Being Latino/x (2023). He has published the novels The Bonjour Gene (2005) and Don’t Let Me Die in Disneyland: The 3-D Life of Eddie Loperena (2018). As poet, he has published Translations without Originals (1986), The Glue Trap and Other Poems (2023), Puerta de Tierra (1998) and Días por aquí y otras diásporas.
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