group 1: Jonathan Castillo, Nathan Lati, Alvaro Castro, Gabriel Bush
Miguel Piñero was an actor and a playwright. Piñero was raised in the Lower East Side in New York, so he was brought up in a harsh environment. He has admitted that he was involved in petty crimes as a little boy in order to gather food to eat. Piñero continued his life in crime, and his first literary works were conceived in jail. Piñero died on June 16, 1988, and his ashes were scattered in the Lower East Side in New York as he had wished in the poem.
He is known for being a co-founder of the Nuyorican Poets Café movement.
The characters in this poem reflect the harsh reality of life that many minorities face when they suffer from poverty. The narrator embraces the environment of violence, crime, and poverty in which he grew up and confesses to having committed crimes, but also admits that this is what defines him.
The narrator tells the audience that his culture helped him move forward to a better future and he is proud of what he has accomplished today because of his culture, but he still remembers the days he spent in poverty. This shows that Latino culture is not focused on drugs or violence, but rather on the search for a better future.
In spite of being relatively short and detailed the poem, it is loaded with feelings, experiences, and situations that the best way to identify it is to analyze it verse by verse.
| 1: 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. | When referring to death, Piñero reflects his incredible attachment to the lower east side, in such a way that he even emphasizes the fact that he wants his ashes to be scattered there when he dies. By using this metaphor, he implies that his soul is attached to this place |
| 2: So let me sing my song tonight let me feel out of sight and let all eyes be dry when they scatter my ashes thru the Lower East Side. | Let me sing my song: the song of the soul is a full, clear, and precise form that emphasizes a call from within, which takes your breath away and takes you out of orbit. By using the resource of “the ashes” emphasizes the fact of the union. |
| 3: From Houston to 14th Street from Second Avenue to the mighty D here the hustlers & suckers meet the faggots & freaks will all get high on the ashes that have been scattered thru the Lower East Side. | It is interesting that this strophe precisely marks the geographical boundaries of the lower east side, not only using them as a literary resource but also adding meaning and veracity. He uses the “stereotypes” of people who normally transit or live in this area, without redounding much on these without denigrating but enlarging, he does it in a vague and despicable way. |
| 4: There’s no other place for me to be there’s no other place that I can see there’s no other town around that brings you up or keeps you down no food little heat sweeps by fancy cars & pimps’ bars & juke saloons & greasy spoons make my spirits fly with my ashes scattered thru the Lower East Side . . . | Piñero uses repetition to emphasize that there is no other place in the world for him, that despite the flaws he cites, these same flaws make the lower east side an amazing and unique place where his spirit is. A place where he would like to stay until after he dies |
| 5: A thief, a junkie I’ve been committed every known sin Jews and Gentiles . . . Bums & Men of style . . . run away child police shooting wild . . . mother’s futile wails . . . pushers making sales . . . dope wheelers & cocaine dealers . . . smoking pot streets are hot & feed off those who bleed to death . . . | It is very interesting how Piñero does not focus on the positive or the beautiful of the lower east side. He speaks clearly, he is precise, he embraces the daily problems of a society that lives in the urban, in the suburb and he expresses it in a certain way “proud” but sober. |
| 6: all that’s true all that’s true all that is true but this ain’t no lie when I ask that my ashes be scattered thru the Lower East Side. | By using repetition again as a resource you are implying that you are not being sarcastic, that your request is clear, that you are not confused or joking. |
| 7: So here I am, look at me I stand proud as you can see pleased to be from the Lower East a street fighting man a problem of this land I am the Philosopher of the Criminal Mind a dweller of prison time a cancer of Rockefeller’s ghettocide this concrete tomb is my home to belong to survive you gotta be strong you can’t be shy less without request someone will scatter your ashes thru the Lower East Side. | Piñero uses this verse in response to the above. By specifying his own pride, he shows that he has not been sarcastic all this time, but even though these characteristics could be negative, with the passage of time they have become the author’s own and he already embraces them as part of him, it is his being, his home. |
| 8: I don’t wanna be buried in Puerto Rico I don’t wanna rest in Long Island Cemetery I wanna be near the stabbing shooting gambling fighting & unnatural dying & new birth crying so please when I die . . . don’t take me far away keep me near by take my ashes and scatter them thru out the Lower East Side . . . | When you live and interact in a place of conflict, it becomes part of you, so much so that your mind is used to it. Piñero expresses this quite well and gives a solid conclusion to the poem, death has been a main and recurrent theme in the poem and the author sets the parameters of this by saying that he loves the site so much that he educated it that despite its negative virtues it is part of it and wants to be in it forever. |
The influence of the Lower East Side on Piñero’s life was significant not only for the fact that a poem and different mentions in other poems were given to him but also for the foundation of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, founded around 1973, which began to function in the apartment of the writer, poet, and professor, Miguel Algarín, located in the East Village with the help of Miguel Piñero as well as Bimbo Rivas and Lucky Cienfuegos.
And in only two years after its foundation, the number of members and poets surpassed the limits of the place.
