The Crazy Bunch

From a prize-winning poet, a new collection that chronicles a weekend in the life of a group of friends coming of age in East Harlem at the dawn of the hip-hop era

Willie Perdomo, a native of East Harlem, has won praise as a hip, playful, historically engaged poet whose restlessly lyrical language mixes city life with a sense of the transcendent (NPR.org). In his fourth collection, The Crazy Bunch, Perdomo returns to his beloved neighborhood to create a vivid, kaleidoscopic portrait of a crew coming of age in East Harlem at the beginning of the 1990s. In poems written in couplets, vignettes, sketches, riffs, and dialogue, Perdomo recreates a weekend where surviving members of the crew recall a series of tragic events: That was the summer we all tried to fly. All but one of us succeeded.

Author: Willie Perdomo
Publisher: Penguin Books
Published: 04/02/2019
Pages: 128
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.40lbs
Size: 8.30h x 5.40w x 0.50d
ISBN13: 9780143132691
ISBN10: 0143132695
BISAC Categories:
- Poetry | American | Hispanic & Latino
- Poetry | Subjects & Themes | Places

About the Author
Willie Perdomo is the author of three previous poetry collections: Where a Nickel Costs a Dime, a finalist for the Poetry Society of America's Norma Farber First Book Award; Smoking Lovely, the winner of the 2004 PEN Open Book Award; and The Essential Hits of Shorty Bon Bon, a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. His work has been published in The New York Times Magazine, Poetry, BOMB and The Common. Perdomo teaches at the Phillips Exeter Academy.