“Puerto Rican Obituary”
Pedro Pietri, 1973
Originally published in Puerto Rican Obituary
Editor’s Note: The excerpt(s) in this chapter is considered a transformative fair use. Please see the annotations section in How to Use this Book for an explanation of the author’s pedagogy on creating conversation within a text.
Hashtags
#multilingual, #immigration, #poetry, #death, #protest, #assimilation, #experimental, #personal is political, #music, #exclusion, #self-hatred, #audio, #complicity, #identity
Frame
DU: Pedro Pietri (1944-2004) was born in Ponce, Puerto Rico and moved to Manhattan when he was three-years-old. A few years after graduating from high school, he was drafted into the Army and served in the Vietnam War. The discrimination he and his community faced in the Army and in NYC in the ‘60s and ‘70s influenced his poetry and politics. Upon his return to New York from war, Pietri joined the Young Lords, a Puerto Rican Civil rights activist group. In the early 1970s, he co-founded the Nuyorican Poets Café with Miguel Piñero, Miguel Algarín, and others. Pietri was a pioneer of one of the most important literary and spoken word movements in US Latinx Culture and is perhaps the most notable “Nuyorican” writer of the twentieth century. Pietri’s legacy lives on in many ways in Latinx literature. Notable contemporary Latinx author Xochitl Gonzalez, for example, echoes his work in the title of her celebrated novel, Olga Dies Dreaming (2022).
I would suggest speaking at length with students about the historical and literary context before teaching the poem. It may be more challenging for the instructor if this text is taught without considering the historical context in which this poem was produced.
To make sense of the orality of this spoken word poem, read the text as you listen to a performance.
“PEDRO PIETRI” — Video by Jose Rivera 1986
Excerpts
Juan
Miguel
Milagros
Olga
Manuel
All[1] died yesterday today[2]
and will die again tomorrow
Hating fighting and stealing
broken windows from each other[3]
Practicing a religion[4] without a roof
The old testament
The new testament
according to the gospel
of the internal revenue
the judge and jury and executioner
protector and eternal bill collector
Secondhand shit for sale
learn[5] how to say Como Esta Usted
and you will make a fortune
They are dead
They are dead
and will not return from the dead[6]
until they stop neglecting
the art of their dialogue —
for broken english lessons
to impress the mister goldsteins—
who keep them employed
as lavaplatos
porters messenger boys[7]
factory workers maids stock clerks
shipping clerks assistant mailroom
assistant, assistant assistant
to the assistant’s assistant
assistant lavaplatos and automatic
artificial smiling doormen
for the lowest wages of the ages
and rages when you demand a raise
because is against the company policy
to promote SPICS[8] SPICS SPICS
Juan
died hating[9] Miguel because Miguel’s
used car was in better running condition
than his used car
Miguel
died hating Milagros because Milagros
had a color television set
and he could not afford one yet
Milagros
died hating Olga because Olga
made five dollars more on the same job
Olga
died hating Manuel because Manuel
had hit the numbers more times
than she had hit the numbers
Manuel
died hating all of them
Juan
Miguel
Milagros
and Olga
because they all spoke broken english
more fluently than he did
And now they are together
in the main lobby of the void
Addicted to silence[10]
Off limits to the wind
Confine to worm supremacy
in long island cemetery
This is the groovy hereafter
the protestant collection box
was talking so loud and proud about
Here lies Juan[11]
Here lies Miguel
Here lies Milagros
Here lies Olga
Here lies Manuel
who died yesterday today
and will die again tomorrow
Always broke
Always owing
Never knowing
that they are beautiful people
Never knowing
the geography of their complexion
You may access the full text here on the Poetry Foundation website.
Text Version
Wide Shots:
- Have you read an obituary? What did you notice about how it was written? How did it capture a person, their life, and character? If you haven’t read an obituary, think of someone you admire and how you could distill what you see in them.
- Write an obituary documenting how you would want to be remembered.
- How do you think about your responsibility as a worker? What does having a work ethic mean to you? How does it help and hurt you?
- Why would one write political poetry or poetry of social protest?
- How do you see the relationship between language and politics?
Close Shots:
- As you read the poem, pay attention to verb tense and representations of time. For example, in the first stanza, Pietri writes: “They worked / ten days a week / and were only paid for five.” He repeats the lines “All died yesterday today / and will die again tomorrow” four times. His last stanza is in shockingly present present tense.
- Juan, Miguel, Milagros, Olga, Manuel. How is each defined by their descriptions when you gather up all their epithets throughout the poem? Whom are they defined against?
Mid Shots
- See “Dialogues Over Time” to read “How Beautiful They Really Are” as a contemporary response to Pietri’s poem.
- See “Work Culture Reexamined” to explore the disconnects between how talk versus action about valuing self-care differ in institutional spaces.
Possible Transitions
ET: I would connect Pietri’s poem with Bassey Ikpi’s “Connecting the Dots” to draw out a range of feelings around assimilation and isolation. Another compelling connection would be pairing this poem with Audre Lorde’s “The Transformation of Silence into Action” to think about death and voicelessness together.
JS: To elaborate a discussion of the politics of “broken English,” I would pair this poem with Jamila Lyiscott’s “Three Ways to Speak English,” which also leans into poetry as performance.
- JS: Reading this poem in our current moment I'm thinking about the way the BLM movement has amplified the call to "say their names" as a collective act of mourning in defiance of the normalized killings of black people. What is the effect of beginning with individual names like this, especially when we know little else about them? ↵
- DU: Take note of how temporality works throughout the poem. ↵
- DU: What are some other ways of describing the relationships between these five departed, fictional Puerto Ricans? How do we unpack the concept of "self-hatred" in minoritized communities in the US? ↵
- DU: Is Pietri talking strictly about "religion" or is this image more expansive? What does the image of "practicing religion without a roof" evoke? Describe the kind of "religion" that is being represented here. ↵
- DU: Who is the poetic "I" referring to with command tense of "to learn" here? Who will make this fortune and why? Listen to Pietri's performance of Spanglish in this passage and try to take note of the nuances in his voice. ↵
- JS: What could this "return from the dead" mean? How does this transform the earlier line that asserts they "will die again tomorrow"? ↵
- DU: What are the complexities here around language, labor and "assimilation"? ↵
- DU: Research the etymology of this slur. This article is a good place to start: https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2015/03/03/388705810/spic-o-rama-where-spic-comes-from-and-where-its-going ↵
- DU: How do we make sense of the self-hatred of these individuals? What concrete socio-historic and cultural factors produce this self-hatred in some immigrant communities in the US? ↵
- JS: how does this silence underpin the poem's message? why is it "addicted" to silence in this line? ↵
- DU: How does the poem take a dramatic turn at this point - and through the end - regarding questions of self-hatred and authenticity? ↵
See:
“As a Child in Haiti, I Was Taught to Despise My Language and Myself”
“Gun Bubbles”
“How to Tame a Wild Tongue”
“Place Name: Oracabessa”
“Puerto Rican Obituary”
“Saving a Language You’re Learning to Speak”
“Three Ways to Speak English”
"To Speak is to Blunder"
“Vão/Vòng A Conversation with Katrina Dodson"
Against the Grain: Listening for Controversy (exploration)
Historical Contexts (exploration)
Parsing Themes (exploration)
Translations Across and Within Languages (exploration)
written or spoken form that typically uses metered language and structure to highlight sound and rhythm
See:
“The Contract Says: We’d Like the Conversation to be Bilingual”
“Place Name: Oracabessa”
“Puerto Rican Obituary”
“Three Ways to Speak English”
Insufficient Definitions (exploration)
Tracing Citations (exploration)
Translations Across and Within Languages (exploration)
See:
“As a Child in Haiti, I Was Taught to Despise My Language and Myself”
“The Contract Says: We’d Like the Conversation to be Bilingual”
“How to Tame a Wild Tongue”
“Place Name: Oracabessa”
“Puerto Rican Obituary”
“Three Ways to Speak English”
“The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action”
Dialogue Over Time: A New Boogaloo: “How Beautiful We Really Are” (exploration)
challenges conventions of language, genre, and structure in how the piece is written
See:
“How to Tame a Wild Tongue”
“Place Name: Oracabessa”
“Puerto Rican Obituary”
“Skin Feeling”
"To Speak is to Blunder"
Poetry and Science: Epistemology through Language (exploration)
See:
“The Contract Says: We’d Like the Conversation to be Bilingual”
“How to Tame a Wild Tongue”
“Place Name: Oracabessa”
“Puerto Rican Obituary”
“Saving a Language You’re Learning to Speak”
“Skin Feeling”
“Three Ways to Speak English”
"To Speak is to Blunder"
“The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action”
Body as Metaphoric Space (exploration)
Emotion in Language (exploration)
Historical Contexts (exploration)
Juxtapositions of Silence (exploration)
Self Reflection, Collective Change (exploration)
Transculturation, Language and South-South Migration (exploration)
See:
“How to Tame a Wild Tongue”
“Puerto Rican Obituary”
“Skin Feeling”
Music Trails (exploration)
recorded text delivered orally rather than in writing
See:
"Asters and Goldenrod"
“Grammar, Identity, and the Dark Side of the Subjunctive”
“Place Name: Oracabessa”
"Puerto Rican Obituary"
“Saving a Language You’re Learning to Speak”
“Three Ways to Speak English”
Dialogue Over Time: A New Boogaloo: “How Beautiful We Really Are” (exploration)
Historical Contexts (exploration)
Indigenous Perspectives of Western Science (exploration)
Music Trails (exploration)
Reading the “Fine Print” (exploration)
See:
"Asters and Goldenrod"
"Connecting the Dots"
“Grammar, Identity, and the Dark Side of the Subjunctive”
“How to Tame a Wild Tongue”
“Saving a Language You’re Learning to Speak”
“Puerto Rican Obituary”
“The Transformation of Silence into Language and Action”
“Vão/Vòng A Conversation with Katrina Dodson"
DU: https://wagingnonviolence.org/2017/10/puerto-rico-vietnam-war-hurricane-maria-independence/ This resource could also be shared with students to think about the buried legacy of Caribbean conscription for US wars.
