Where a Nickel Costs a Dime

by Willie Perdomo

Where a Nickel Costs a Dime captures the hip-hop rhythms and in-your-face intensity of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, a downtown Manhattan club where the hottest young poets are finding their fame.

Willie Perdomo's poems, in the tradition of Amiri Baraka, Langston Hughes, and Ntozake Shange, meet at the intersection of the street and the academy.

The world in these piercing and heartbreaking poems is Spanish Harlem, where night turns to day without sleep, where Puerto Rico stays on our minds when the fresh breeze of cafe con leche y pan con mantequilla comes through half-opened windows and under our doors, where babies fall asleep to the bark of a German shepherd, where Independence Day is celebrated everyday, where the police come into your house without knocking. They throw us off rooftops and say we slipped. They shoot my father and say he was crazy. They put a bullet in my head and say they found me that way.

Blending images of street life, drugs, and AIDS against hope and determination, Willie Perdomo is a cutting-edge bard who speaks to the soul of his generation.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0393313832
• ISBN13: 9780393313833
• Release Date: March 1996
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Length: 80 Pages
• Weight: 0.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.4" x 8.8" x 5.9"

Customer Reviews

Where a Nickle Cost a Dime

I have to agree with some of the others. Willie Perdomo is a gifted and talented voice. I recommend that people who buy this go ahead and buy Smoking Lovely. The combination of the two is very powerful

Sharp Collection

A couple of years back, a friend of mine gave me a grocery bag full of books. I found an exquisite piece of work beneath the pile - Where a Nickel Costs a Dime. I live down south - way south and life here can be homogenous. With this book, I saw el barrio without leaving mine. I walked up 125th street without moving my feet. I cried, lived and died in Harlem. The collection of images is sharp. I won't compare Willie Perdomo to anyone else. No se puede. (He can't be.)Where a Nickel Costs a Dime - a must.

Great poetry, CD is a little rushed...

I love the poems in this book, particularly one called "Postcards of El Barrio". Favorite line : the violent revolutions of red and white police sirens upset the sky blue peace of neon crucifixionsThese poems have a rhythm and a style than can only come from years of being exposed to life in the mean streets of El Barrio. So be aware, you'll need an inner city bent to fully appreciate the language in this book. But, there is no denying the lyricism in its pages. As for the performance CD included, it's not bad, but it feels like Perdomo is reading it at a break-neck pace. It makes it tough to sit back and appreciate his words. All in all, this is a great book. Worth the money.

OUTSTANDING!!

Willie Perdomo uses the language and flow of the people living and experiencing life in el barrio & the hood and introduces them to the masses. His style speaks to all who read him. It's as if wants to paint you a picture and include you in his recollections. I'm definitely feelin' him!

A treasure

Read it again and again -- always out loud -- and the extraordinary rhythms of Willie Perdomo's powerful poems will reach inside and grip your imagination. I never tire of picking this small volume up and enter once more New York City and the neighborhood of el barrio. The sounds of the streets, the cadence of young men and women as they boast and speak their affections, the sights of a Manhattan many visitors never see, all are integral to these poems. You'll be confronted with racism and poverty and violence. But, you'll equally face love and loyalty, family and hope. One of my students at the college in which I teach originally introduced Perdomo to me and I've been eager to share him with others ever since.