LAST OF THE PO’RICANS Y OTROS AFRO-ARTIFACTS, the debut poetry collection of Not4Prophet, provides an incredible verbal and musical profusion of poetry that reflects the cultural landscapes of the perpetual islands of Puerto Rican and New York City through the eyes of a Puerto Rican born in Ponce, living in El Barrio/East Harlem and the South Bronx. As he elaborates this “otherness,” which includes the hassles of poverty, racial pride and racial discord, Not4Prophet pays homage to the old school cats from the Nuyorican and Black Arts movements. Written in free verse and layered with cultural and historical references, LAST OF THE PO’RICANS breaks boundaries and challenges us with iconic imagery and word play that dares to speak of the unspeakable. Cover design: Vagabond. Cover photo: Jeffrey Akers.

Contributors

Introduction by Tony Medina

TONY MEDINA, two-time winner of The Paterson Prize for Books for Young People, is the author/editor of eighteen books for adults and young readers, including I and I, Bob Marley, My Old Man Was Always on the Lam, Broke on Ice, An Onion of Wars, and The President Looks Like Me and Other Poems. Medina’s poetry, essays and fiction appear in numerous publications. The first Professor of Creative Writing at Howard University, in 2013, Medina was awarded both The Langston Hughes Society Award and the first African Voices Literary Award.

Cover art design, artwork and Afterword by Vagabond

VAGABOND is a filmmaker and multi-disciplinary artist born in Brooklyn to Puerto Rican and Jamaican parents. A graduate of Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & the Arts, he attended The School of Visual Arts but dropped out after his first year to work on independent black films such as Spikes Lee’s Do The Right Thing, where he quickly learned all aspects of filmmaking and forged his own alternative aesthetic. He has written, produced and directed the documentary, Ricanstructing Vieques and the award-winning feature film, Machetero. A former member of the Ricanstruction Netwerk, a politically radical artist collective in the vein of the “Situationist International,” Vagabond continues to work on films, create posters, pamphlets, videos and all kinds of other agit-propaganda for “the cause” or just because. http://nothingtobegainedhere.com.

Here's What People Are Saying

“Like a cool glass of water on a hot summer day…no…more like an oasis not a mirage on this desert we call earth…Not4Prophet comes to bring relief…to let you…me…all thinking people know…we are not alone. I can feel that breeze. I welcome it. There must be a sail cloth somewhere which we will hoist and ride until we find…no create…a new world.” ~Nikki Giovanni Poet and scholar

“In LAST OF THE PO’RICANS, Not4Prophet delivers ‘The Daily News’ of poetry in a Hip Hop beat entangled in blues/plena/rock ‘n roll/punk/fusion/folk jazz mixed with explosive emotions crafted into each outburst. He delivers rapid fi re political, apolitical, patriotic, treasonous, nationalistic, anti-capitalistic, take it or leave it, fuck it, in your face poetry that excites and incites. As he pays homage to old school cats from the Nuyorican and Black Arts movements, Not4Prophet breaks boundaries with iconic imagery and word play, creating a new school of thought by daring to speak truths we ought to be talking about.” ~Jesús Papoleto Meléndez Nuyorican poet and author of HEY YO! YO SOY! (2012)

“The poet’s nu, yo, and he’s rican as rican. He claims to be po’rican, and that po is for the poEMS you know, bro, as the rican is rich as a tostones slangwhich. It’s all write hear, twixt pages and ear. La tradición. Can’t beat it, off the street it’s coming through so clear it’s all you hear. The air is tattooed, gracias Not4, a Prophet for our time.” ~Bob Holman Poet, professor, cultural activist, founder and proprietor of the Bowery Poetry Club, and artistic director of Bowery Arts + Science

“Not4Prophet’s LAST OF THE PO’RICANS, is a BeBop collage of images that saturate the mind with images of an El Barrio word warrior. It takes you on his trip through the ‘hood in his heart and mind with a keen sense of alliteration as his signature.” ~Abiodun Oyewole Poet, teacher and founding member of the American music and spoken-word group, The Last Poets

“Beware those who enter here: this poetry burns and it hurts when it burns, yet it is agonizingly beautiful. This is the kind of Nuyorican cum Black Arts movement poetry that speaks not just for but to the voiceless, with urgency and clarity, scribing a reality that many of us live and endure but rarely see in print. With stark, lyrical, and bold illustrations by Vagabond, this volume bears witness to the rhythm, rhyme, grit, grime, and decolonized desire of an uncompromised Boricua aesthetic. Like thunder to lightning, Vagabond’s agit-prop artwork creates a powerful visual counterpoint to Not4Prophet’s raging verse. An unsettling joy to read and a phenomenal first collection of poems.” ~Lisa Sánchez González, author of Boricua Literature: A Literary History of the Puerto Rican Diaspora (2001) and The Stories I Read to the Children, The Life and Writing of Pure Belpré (2013).

“In these times of neoliberal barrios and their nuyo-literal MCs, Not4Prophet ups the anti (sic) on us all. There’s virtuoso flow here (“cutting umbilical cords / with a subliminal sword”) but there’s also a restless intelligence attuned to an inclusive Boricua affect that brings together everyone from de Burgos and Basquiat to Lolita Lebrón and Sylvia Rivera in a ‘puerto punk rock’—and—krylon mixtape. In the spirit of the Nuyorican tradition, this is a poet of the political imagination who is unafraid of keepin’ it surreal, leading us beyond the trendy real estate and into the mind-reel of the city as lived. The flow here is anarcho-global (‘between the front lines of fanon and magón’), yet these agit-prophecies are less about preaching to the choir than about an improvised explosive verbal energy as boundless as it is shareable —’ad-liberation theologies,’ the poet calls them. Although it is a first take, LAST OF THE PO’ RICANS Y OTROS AFRO-ARTIFACTS is already a keeper, its gut-rhymes poised skillfully between revolú and revolution.” ~Urayoán Noel, Poet, scholar, and professor at SUNY Albany

“The poems in LAST OF THE PO’RICANS Y OTROS AFRO-ARTIFACTS are intensely lyrical, rhythmic, heart wrenching, raw, painful and hopeful. Simultaneously furious and tender, they echo the song lyrics Not4Prophet wrote as lead singer for Puerto Punk cult band Ricanstruction in the 1990s. Alliterating his way into our hearts/ minds, Not4Prophet weaves together anything-but-linear poetic narratives with unpredictable twists and turns that are rich in historical and cultural detail. These details are in fact so rich (and often also surprising and rare) that I could only marvel at the ingeniousness of what I was catching while also wondering about everything that was flying over my head. While often relying on dystopian themes and imagery, LAST OF THE PO’RICANS Y OTROS AFRO-ARTIFACTS is at its core deeply committed to freedom, health and wholeness. It represents a strangely fitting way to be utopian in our times.” ~Raquel Z. Rivera, independent scholar, singer-songwriter, author of New York Ricans from the Hip Hop Zone (2003) and editor of Reggaton (2009)

“Not4Prophet digs deep to unearth a time capsule of sacred and subversive texts delivering poetic justice that transcends boundaries and crosses the intersections of identity, collective belonging and trans-Atlantic dispossession. These lyrical excavations of truth raging and loving and dying against the machine are more valid than any epidemiological surveillance of the health and disease of the Afro-Boriqua diaspora in Nueva York. I am filled with gratitude that this Griot has committed his canon of verses to the page to be properly savored and digested as what should be required reading for all.” ~Lynn Roberts, reproductive justice activist/assistant professor, CUNY School of Public Health

“What words can be offered a wordsmith who in saying that his words are ‘grenade pins getting under the thin skins of uncle psalm’s cabin’ has already said it all. After that there can only be words of encouragement, especially when his words have already encouraged a very necessary ‘common rebellion.’” ~ Jared Ball, Associate of Communication Studies, Morgan State University, and author of I Mix What I Like!: A Mixtape Manifesto (2015)