We Live by What We See at Night (Critical Overview)

Critical Overview

“We Live by What We See at Night” was first published in Espada’s second collection Trumpets from the Islands of Their Eviction in 1987. Many critics praise Espada for his rich and nostalgic voice while recounting an “insistent theme of migration,” as Robert Creeley writes in the book’s introduction. As the title of the book suggests, the poems from this collection often serve as “songs” of a dislocated Puerto Rican people, recounting the stories, hardships and longings of those islanders forced from their homeland. Concerning the book’s title, Diana Vélez, in her essay included in Espada’s book, points out that “Puerto Ricans are a people evicted: evicted from an island in droves in the nineteen fifties by a development program called Operation Bootstrap.”

Because Espada himself was born in America, he often focuses on the life of his Puerto Rican father, who was a very influential figure in his life. The poet in turn draws from the rich source of memory, myth, and dream found in his unique culture. Linda Frost, writing for Minnesota Review, calls this Espada’s “mythic urge — [which] collapses historical event into personal experience.” “This, too,” Vélez adds, “is part of the poetic function — to bring that dream material to our awareness, to help us remember or re-member ourselves to a lost wholeness via a re-reading of our dreams.”