Brooklyn -- in our time: Three brothers, young, in a family with stresses.  Puerto Rican father, white mother.  Never enough.  Of anything.  Brothers building their own world- or worlds, contiguous; laughing, fightng, playing, building experience.  Taking life and the larger world as it comes.  Taking life on.

 

All right.  Personal opinion alert: I have a problem with some definitions of poetry.  Pretty radical, huh?  Lots of people try to set rules for what makes a poem.  Broken lines, and rhymes, and poetic techniques like onomatopoeia and alliteration. 

 

No.  Just: Concentration.  There is no boundary between prose and poetry.  Only ranging concentration.  Poetry is essential communication.  Like coffee: is coffee weak?  Or strong?  Or verging on the limits of caffein medication?  Langauge is like that: a range of concentration, of intensity.  This novel runs only one hundred twenty-five pages, but there's so much here. 

 

If you like espresso:  

 

Brief.  Intense.  Remarkable.  

 

 

 

 

.