Enclave is Tato Laviera’s second book of verse. As in his successful La Carreta Made a U-Turn, Laviera celebrates the Puerto Rican experience in New York. While the earlier book focuses on events and scenes, Enclave concentrates on the individual. Laviera provides a gallery of portraits of the indomitable inhabitants of the enclave, whose lives are evoked through the soulful rhythmic songs “en clave.”
“Enclave serves as a very timely manifestation of the modern Hispanic. It would probably be a very appropriate text in a high school or college Puerto Rican studies or Chicano studies class.” -Lector
“Laviera creates and vivifies his poetry with linguistic aptitude; he is fluent in standard dialects and street language. Laviera does not need shock tactics to get the reader’s attention: to form, melody, and vitality of his poetry suffices to convey his intense feelings.” -MELUS
“Laviera’s little book is “ethnic,” certainly, and, like so much of American literature, it is regional as well, but it is also much more. In that it appeals to that which makes us long for music it is universal. It captures, surely, the rhythm of all our dreams, and helps put the inexpressible into words, which, in Spanglish or Spencerian verse, is what poetry is all about.” -Inter-American Review
JESUS “TATO” LAVIERA (1950-2013) was a poet, playwright, novelist and community advocate. Born in Puerto Rico, he was raised in the Manhattan’s Lower East Side, or Loisaida. He is generally acknowledged to be the best selling Hispanic poet in the United States. He performed his works all over the U.S., the Caribbean, Europe and Africa. His books include La Carreta Made a U-Turn; Enclave, winner of the American Book Award; AmeRícan; Mainstream Ethics; and Mixturao and Other Poems, and Bendición: The Complete Poetry of Tato Laviera, all published by Arte Público Press. His plays have been produced in Chicago and New York City, and have been staged at The New Federal Theater, The Public Theater, the Delcourt Theatre in Central Park, Circle in the Square, and Theatro Cuatro.
