Languages and Literatures
St. John’s College of Liberal Arts and Sciences
El Paraguas de Manhattan
Publisher: Colección La Cruz Del Sur, Editorial Pre-Textos
Madrid, Spain
2004, 99 pages
El Paraguas de Manhattan (The Umbrella of Manhattan) is
the ninth volume of poems by Eduardo Mitre. The poems in this book
celebrate the urban body of Manhattan, its rivers, its parks and
other mythical sites of the city. They praise the city’s cultural,
ethnic and linguistic variety. The book also expresses the mourning
caused by the September 11, 2001, tragedy. There are poems inspired
by the paintings of Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Edward
Hopper.
“The Umbrella of Manhattan is a happy book of poems, I
mean to say: it is achieved and takes an affirmative air, as much
for the rhythm and rhyme of its verses as for what it has to say.
This Bolivian poet’s beautiful book continues a modern poetic
tradition… What I most have admired in this book is its freshness,
its balance between narrative and epiphany.”
—Juan Malpartida, ABC CULTURAL, Madrid