Aloud: Voices from the Nuyorican Cafe

Browsing the aisles this week, I stumbled on a volume titled Aloud: Voices from the Nuyorican Café. The Nuyorican is a cultural center for writers in New York. It began in 1973, in the living room of writer and professor Miguel Algarín. His goal was to provide a venue for emerging writers and artists to showcase their work. By 1975, Algarín realized that his living room salon was much too small for the large number of new artists in the city, so he rented an Irish Bar called the  Sunshine Café and converted it into the Nuyorican. Over the course of the last 30 years, the café has hosted innumerable emerging writers, musicians, and filmmakers as well as established artists, including Allen Ginsberg, Bob Dylan, and Amiri Baraka.

The Nuyorican is located in the Lower East Side, a neighborhood that has seen significant changes. In 1975, the Lower East Side was certainly not among the most sought-after neighborhoods in the city. Now, the LES houses young professionals and the few remaining artists who haven’t been priced out of Manhattan by skyrocketing rent. But when asked whether he believes this transformation will have an impact on the café, Algarín has asserted that it will not, because the café was never intended to cater to any particular group of artists, but rather to provide a meeting place for artists with a wide range of backgrounds.

(photo by Raúl)

Aloud is a comprehensive collection of poems that have been performed at the café and works by artists who have appeared there. True to Algarín’s philosophy, the poems vary widely in style and theme. They’re edgy, personal, and often experimental. It’s an eclectic anthology with a history just as diverse, and it’s definitely worth a read if you’re a fan of poetry that’s honest and emotionally unfettered.