Sammy and Beckett's Book Blog » Recommended Reading

Survival Supervivencia Review

JBernardini — Thu, 07 May 2009 21:00:31 +0000

Today the Avenues of A, B and C are full of sushi restaurants, cafes and bars that serve martinis for double digit prices. It is a far cry from the place that Miguel Algarin grew up in and remained in. The neighborhood still has its charm that separates it completely from the rest of the island of Manhattan. All day and all night the artists, the junkies, the drunks, the misplaced, and the curious still pace the blocks looking for something. Algarin’s friend and contemporary Miguel Pinero gave these instructions upon his death:

Just once before I die
I want to climb up on a
tenement sky
to dream my lungs out till
I cry then scatter my ashes
thru the Lower East Side

The Lower East Side, or Loisaida, still has a very vibrant pulse and that’s why Mr. Algarin still lives here. Algarin’s latest work Survival Supervencia surveys the neighborhood through all of its changes for the good and the bad.

Survival Supervencia is an anthology of poetry and prose by the critically-acclaimed and “King of Loisaida,” Miguel Algarin. The poems range from 1974 to the present day. Most of them deal with the problems that Puerto Rican immigrants and their children had to deal with in the last half of the 20th century. While Algarin’s works focus on the small area of the world that exists between 14th Street and Houston Street, between 1st Avenue and Avenue D, his words ring a very universal tone.

Algarin often speaks of the language of Nuyorican (New York + Puerto Rico). It is the language of the streets. It is a raw language, one that has a rhythm and a soul and should not be cast aside by the elite as a cop-out for immigrants. Algarin is a master and one of the fore fathers of Nuyorican. Despite the fact that he is known for having a keen ear to the street and a hand to the heart of the city he is also a professor of English at Rutgers University and is in love with Keats, Shelley and Shakespeare.

Keats knew that he was going to die at a very young age and his writing reflected that. Every word was true and it meant something. With Algarin it is almost the same thing. He lived in a place and time where people that were close to him were dying at an alarming rate. Algarin lived through the heroin epidemic, the crack epidemic, the AIDS epidemic and the poverty and violence that he endured while living in Loisaida. His writing reflects this. Reading his poetry is like seeing a man have his head held under water and then taken out, but he knows that he’s going back under, and he spouts out every emotion that’s in his heart.

The Lower East Side of Manhattan is an ever changing neighborhood that Algarin has seen go through some dramatic changes since his arrival there in 1951. Last week I sat with an iced coffee at outdoor café on Avenue B and 6th street. Thirty-three years ago Algarin wrote:

when Bimbo shows the anguish on his mind
and despairs that living on Avenue B between
6th and 7th streets keeps him delivering his child to
Bellevue’s emergency room for lung treatment
because too much ghetto dirt has clogged his lungs,
cold chills invade his little body…

After reading this passage, I felt bad that I had enjoyed my iced coffee on the same block that this poem took place. Like everything neighborhoods change and life keeps moving. More than anything Algarin is aware of this. He deals with the four major events in life extremely well; birth, lust, love and death.

As someone who is fascinated by New York City neighborhoods and their evolution I was enthralled by this anthology of life in Loisaida. Survival Supervivencia gives tremendous insight into a world that has not been exposed to middle America.

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Jason Hinkley — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 15:40:23 +0000

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Nick Harkaway’s debut novel, The Gone-Away World, brings magical realism to the post apocalyptic genre. A well written vision for futurists and luddites alike.

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