The Latin Deli: An Ars Poetica

“The Latin Deli: An Ars Poetica” opens Judith Ortiz Cofer’s 1993 book The Latin Deli, which also includes prose selections like "American History." Cofer, a Puerto Rican immigrant who moved to the United States as a child, split her formative years between the two countries. As her work often does, this poem examines the tension between longing for home and life in a new country. Beginning in the 1980s, Cofer’s subject matter and lyrical style impressed American readers and critics alike, who were largely unaccustomed to Latinx literature. Cofer’s contemporary ars poetica, meditating on poetry itself, finds poems in the mouths of patrons who visit a saintly woman’s store and linger there, relishing its many reminders of lives they left behind.

Poet Biography

Judith Ortiz Cofer (1952-2016) was born in a small Puerto Rican town called Hormigueros. The child of a naval officer, she and her family moved to Paterson, New Jersey, in 1956. Throughout her childhood, Cofer traveled back and forth between the States and Puerto Rico. In 1967, her family moved again to Augusta, Georgia, the state that would eventually add her to its Writers Hall of Fame.