JULIO MARZÁN

Julio Marzán is a Puerto Rican-born, New York-raised American poet, novelist, essayist, translator, and literary critic, recognized for his bilingual body of work and for reshaping the study of William Carlos Williams. Having grown up mainly literate in English, he was influenced by the seventies Latin American literary "Boom" and determined to rescue his limited Spanish to the level of literacy. The most published of the first generation of English-language writers of the post-WWII Puerto Rican diaspora, he is acknowledged as "a major Latino writer."

Marzán's poetry, fiction and essay are inspired by the conflict of Puerto Rican and Latino as American minority, a status that behooves strong doses of solidarity at the expense of oversimplifying, following a template, while selling short the imperfect human complexity. While his generation is generally identified with global social consciousness, Marzán's work focuses on that experience from the perspective of the biographical, the microscopic.

BIOGRAPHY

He was born in Santurce, Puerto Rico, on February 22, 1946 and was taken to New York City as an infant of four months, returning to Puerto Rico for summers and a half-year of eighth-grade study at Colegio del Espiritu Santo.

EDUCATION

He studied at St. Jerome’s School and Cardinal Hayes High School in the Bronx. He earned a B.A. in English from Fordham University, an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Columbia University, and a Ph.D. in Hispanic Studies from New York University.

CAREER

Marzán's poetry has appeared in major journals, such as Harper’s Magazine, Tin House, The Massachusetts Review, Ploughshares, and Parnassus. His poems are widely anthologized and included in U.S. college textbooks, including The Bedford Series of Introduction to Literature and Introduction to Poetry. From 2007 to 2010, he served as the fourth Poet Laureate of Queens, New York, appointed by the Queens Borough President. His critical study The Spanish American Roots of William Carlos Williams (1994) is considered a landmark work that changed the critical understanding of Williams by foregrounding his Puerto Rican and Spanish-language influences. Marzán’s novel Don’t Let Me Die in Disneyland: The 3-D Life of Eddie Loperena (2018), explores diasporic Puerto Rican identity, as does his “novella-in-stories,” The Bonjour Gene. His fiction has been praised by Oscar Hijuelos, Rosario Ferré and Martín Espada. Julio Marzán has taught at Fordham University, Bard College, William Paterson University, NYU and Harvard University. He continues to publish poetry, fiction, and essays from his home base in New York.

WORKS

Poetry

     • Translations Without Originals - I. Reed Books, 1986. Marzán’s first English-language poetry collection.
     
   • Puerta de Tierra - University of Puerto Rico Press (1998) In Spanish. Poems that recollect a childhood growing up between New York City and Puerto Rico. Includes poems previously published in Boletín Federico García Lorca, Prometeo, Encuentros, Realidad Aparte, Poesía, and Últimas Noticias. "Mágico. Apela mucho a la nostalgia de crecer en familia y a la niñez en el Caribe, se siente muy cerca no a pesar de haber sido un par de décadas anteriores a la mía.--Goodreads reviewer

   • The Glue Trap and Other Poems - Fernwood Press, March 14, 2023 “... intimating what it means to be suddenly on the precipice of a revelation... always with the tantalizing potential for a moment of visionary insight...in the graceless contemporary moment.” –George Wallace, writer in residence at the Walt Whitman Birthplace “... a poet of intelligence and integrity, an original and independent voice for decades. He is a sharp-eyed observer of the urban world…. Julio Marzán has my deepest gratitude and respect.”-Martín Espada, winner of the 2021 National Book Award
     
   • Días por aquí y otras diásporas - Ediciones Oblivium, 2023. Includes poems previously published in Letral, Revista del Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña, Hispamérica, and ABC (Madrid) "...poems born of a consciousness torn between the postwar diaspora that Puerto Rico created, the iconic diaspora of West Side Story, and the islander criollo purism that today is in denial of that diaspora as Puerto Rican history and reality....That encounter might suggest socially conscious poems making prosaic pronouncements but Marzán's weapon of choice is art. The accomplishment of this collection are poems that offer the reader the pleasure of ingenious and unpredictable performances of poetry." [Translation]

Poetry Translation

 •Inventing a Word: An Anthology of Twentieth-Century Puerto Rican Poetry, Columbia University Press, 1980, editor and translator. First bilingual anthology to include diaspora poets. 
     
   • Selected Poems: Poesía Selecta/ Luis Palés Matos - Arte Público Press, 2015, Julio Marzán translated and edited this bilingual edition. “Although today Luis Palés Matos is virtually unknown to most American readers, he is one of the most important poets out of Latin America.’” 

Fiction (as J.A. Marzán)

   • The Bonjour Gene' - University of Wisconsin Press (2005).Interconnected like his Bonjour families, these stories of unpredictable and unforgettable characters transport the reader to a plane where ethnicity becomes universality. “Marzán displays the wit and intellectual verve rarely seen in contemporary literature. With every well-crafted line and insight (about a mercurial family....), accumulating to wonderful effect, this book will surely entertain and enlighten its readers.” --Pulitzer Prize winner Oscar Hijuelos “....told with a poet’s eye and a poet’s ear, a raconteur’s sense of humor and irony. Behind it all is the intelligent hand of a major Latino writer....”-- poet Martín Espada "That in Puerto Rico everyone is somehow related, that if you search a little under the plantain leaves, the stranger you meet in the street will turn out to be your blood cousin—this idea, in essence, is the impetus for Marzán’s novel and the inspiration behind its title. Writing in a style that combines poetic nuances with humorous touches, Marzán adds a new dimension to our understanding of what it is to be a Latino today. The ‘bonjour gene’ he evokes is a positive gene, a gene on the verge of a new day."—Rosario Ferre “Captivating…from the regretful assimilator to the Latina apprehensive of El Barrio…”--Kjerstin Pugh, Gathering of the Tribes “Marzán narrates with the evocative force of poetry.”–Carmen Dolores Hernández, El Nuevo Día, April 2019. “The Bonjour Gene is ... a kind of epic novel of the Puerto Rican diaspora but condensed into a smaller size novel, with all the fragmentary stories about various family members carefully woven together. I would have gladly read more about a number of these characters, male and female. ”--Louise O. Vasvari, Amazon Review

   • Don’t Let Me Die in Disneyland: The 3-D Life of Eddie Loperena – Open Books, 2018. "A picaresque, smart, and smartass memoir of Harvard Lawyer Eddie Loperena's Newyorican life in 'the country I was offered.'" "Marzán has created a dynamic protagonist...Eddie's persistent resolve, even as he's sorting out his personal convictions regarding Puerto Ricans in America, is a buoyant, appealing trait...Relays political notions of racial and social identity through a smart, sympathetic, and laudable lead.” - Kirkus Reviews. "Well-written...people who enjoy reading about the U.S. and its politics and all its issues with an air of grittiness will get much enjoyment out of this book.”–Bookmark and Stages "Interview with J.A. Marzán, Author of Don't Let Me Die in Disneyland"--Bookglow “Beaming with profound truths dressed in satire and humor, a thought-provoking and enlightening yet entertaining journey....The author’s writing style in vividly imaging places, characters, and events made for quite an evocative read. ... The author’s ...captivating writing style in vividly imaging places, characters and events made for quite an evocative read.” –Online Book Club

Nonfiction / Literary Criticism

   •The Spanish American Roots of William Carlos Williams - University of Texas Press (1994) Seminal study that reshaped Williams scholarship.

   • By Word of Mouth: Poetry by William Carlos Williams (Jonathon Cohen, editor)- Marzán contributed the Foreword to this bilingual edition of Williams’ translations.
   • The Labyrinth of Multitude and Other Reality Checks on Being Latino/x – Vernon Press, October 2023. Julio Marzán suspends solidarity to articulate the intellectual challenges of a “Latino” American identity.
   • The Numinous Site: The Poetry of Luis Palés Matos – Associated University Presses, 1995  The only book-length critical study of the great Puerto Rican poet.

AWARDS

Resident, MacDowell Colony, New Hampshire, May, 1990.`

Resident, Edna St. Vincent Millay Colony for the Arts, July 2-30, 1987.

New York Foundation for the Arts, 1986-87, Poetry Fellowship`

N.Y. State Writer-in-Residence, at Rockville Center for the Arts, 1986.

Creative Artists in Public Service Fellowship (CAPS), N.Y., 1975-76, Poetry.

Ford Foundation Fellowship for Graduate Study, 1972.

Discovery '71, The Poetry Center, YM-YWHA, N.Y., 1971.

Columbia University Urban Center Grant (full scholarship to Graduate Creative Writing), 1969.

The Dylan Thomas Memorial Award for Poetry, The New School, N.Y., 1969.

==References==

{{reflist}}