Publications

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Smoking Lovely

WINNER of the PEN/Open Book Award

Perdomo is a necessary and insistent voice in the current American literary scene.
— Publisher's Weekly

"Smoking Lovely sings to both the eyes and ears, placing oral and visual patterns in dramatic tension with one another..And the pleasure offered by this vibrant collection is precisely the pleasure of watching and hearing the polyphonic performance in vibrant poetic terms."
— American Book Review

"Whether we're talking Puerto Rico or the US, the Poetry Society of America or the corner of 123rd Street and Lexington Avenue, there is no poet alive who can match the lyrical intelligence, ferocious wit and searching humanity of Willie Perdomo. Perdomo is the hurricane we all write home about. He is to the word what lightning is to the sky. He is Langston and Hector (Lavoe) and Whitman and Mír. He is the heart in struggle with itself. Perdomo writes damnation as though it were heaven and breaks the ordinary -- a mother calling her children home, a weed-trip to Brixton, heartbreak -- into gold. He's the Puerto Rican diaspora's unofficial poet laureate and what he knows about being of color, being between languages, being poor, being a man, being in trouble, could save your life."
— Junot Díaz, author THE BRIEF WONDROUS LIFE OF OSCAR WAO, Winner of the Pulitzer Prize  

Smoking Lovely, Willie Perdomo's second volume of poetry, confirms his hard won place in American letters. Addiction, poverty, class and racial identity, love and recovery are examined with a devastating and streetwise voice, marked with irrefutable artistic integrity and craftsmanship. These poems sing, howl, and heal with a sad and searing wisdom akin to genius. Smoking Lovely is destined to become not just one of the best books of the year but of the decade."
— Sapphire, author of Push and Black Wings & Blind Angels   

Willie Perdomo is an electric poet. His poems crackle with energy. The poet knows his beloved barrio, what to celebrate and what to condemn. He also has the courage to confront his own demons. There is raw pain in this voice, and much more: humor, irony, music, intelligence."
— Martin Espada, author of City of Coughing and Dead Radiators and Alabanza

"Willie Perdomo introduces crack to poetry with the genuine craftiness of the gentleman who presents his ex-lover to his wife. What's said carries as much weight as what isn't. Each stanza looks you squarely in the eyes and holds the stare a moment longer until it is pressed into your mind that rock bottom is no different than sky high."
— Saul Williams, author of She and award-winning actor in Slam

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Where a Nickel Costs a Dime

"Where a Nickel Costs a Dime is all about time.  Where one learns that the cruelest prison of all is the prison of the mind.  Willie has risen above to express the clarity of truth of what life is all about in Los Barrios.  Punto!"
— Piri Thomas  

"In the words of Muhammad Ali Willie Perdomo's poems 'float like butterflies, sting like bees.'  They have grace and power and don't waste their time, but zoom down the subway tracks to the true heart of New York City, Harlem, which is brown and black, and talks back in its dialect of drugs, death and destiny."
— Ai

"Langston Hughes has been reincarnated and lives in Spanish Harlem.  His name is Willie Perdomo.  Where a Nickel Costs a Dime is a priceless, precious package of poetry."
—Claude Brown

"As you will see, Willie Perdomo is a new and important voice, a Djali (Griot), and here he is right on the gig.  Like they say, Djeli Djeli Djeli Ya (gettin down) and rising up!"
— Amiri Baraka

Clemente!

WINNER of the 2011 Amerícas Award for Children's and Young Adult Literature

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Visiting Langston

Coretta Scott Honor 2002

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Postcards El Barrio

"The poetry of of Willie Perdomo places itself with his own and singular voice.  Each poem reorganizes the canon of Nuyorican poetry and gives it a new life.  He goes beyond the issue of identity that in the beginning defined the works of New York based Puerto Rican poets."
—Mayra Santos Febres

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