Pedro Pietri

Pedro Pietri
Pedro Pietri
Born	March 21, 1944 Ponce, Puerto Rico
Died	March 3, 2004 (aged 59) New York, NY
Occupation	poet, playwright
Nationality	Puerto Rican
Literary movement	Nuyorican Poets Cafe

Pedro Pietri (March 21, 1944 – March 3, 2004) was a Nuyorican poet and playwright and a founder of the Nuyorican Movement. He was the poet laureate of the Nuyorican Movement.

Pietri was born in Ponce, Puerto Rico, however his family moved to New York City in 1947, when he was only three years old. They settled in the west side (Manhattanville) section of Manhattan where he and his siblings received their primary and secondary education. Pedro was greatly influenced by his aunt, who often recited poetry and on occasions put on theatrical plays in the First Spanish Methodist church in El Barrio. Pietri himself started to write poems as a student at Haaren High School. After graduating from high school, Pietri worked in a variety of jobs until he was drafted into the Army and sent to fight in the Vietnam War. The experiences that he faced in the Army and Vietnam, plus the discrimination that he witnessed while growing up in New York, were to become the main factors that would forge his personality and style of poetry.

Upon his discharge from the Army, Pietri affiliated himself with a Puerto Rican Civil Rights activist group called the Young Lords. In 1969, he read for the first time his poem, "Puerto Rican Obituary". The New York Times obituary of Pedro Pietri noted that the poem "sketched the lives of five Puerto Ricans who came to the United States with dreams that remained unfulfilled. By turns angry, heartbreaking and hopeful, it was embraced by young Puerto Ricans, who were imbued with a sense of pride and nationalism." Fellow Puerto Rican poet of the Nuyorican Movement Giannina Braschi, who performed with Pedro Peitri, pays homage to "Puerto Rican Obituary" and his sites his own obituary in her novel "United States of Banana." "Puerto Rican Obituary" is an epic poem published in 1973 and widely considered Pietri's greatest work.

Pietri helped found the Nuyorican Movement together with Miguel Piñero and Miguel Algarín founders of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe. The Café is an institution where many New York Puerto Rican and Latino artists perform. Pietri wrote the play El Puerto Rican Embassy. The theme was that an island, which was neither an independent nation nor a state of the United States, should have an embassy. The idea for the play came from Pietri's nationalistic views. During the performance, he would sing "The Spanglish National Anthem" and hand out simulated "Puerto Rican passports" prepared in collaboration with Adal Maldonado.

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