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Puerto Rican poet and playwright, Rane Arroyo could be introduced with several more identifiers before his name. Perhaps the poet himself would add titles such as Intellectual, Gay, Dreamer, Comedian, American, and Friend. Invoking this multitude of identities, Rane Arroyo's collection of poems, Home Movies of Narcissus, playfully explores realms that are forbidden, imagined, and erotic. There are few borders in Arroyo's writing: his poems seamlessly fuse humor with sincerity as they capture the truths of loneliness, sex, culture, and history. At times merely a stream of consciousness while other times careful constructed stanzas, Arroyo's poems are structured as diversely as the stories which they reveal. Arroyo's poetry artfully recreates its subjects in terms of the emotions that they illicit, not just the linear definitions of or societal reactions to them. Such multi-dimensional reflection and writing are a testament to Arroyo, a poet with strong identities and a deep personal awareness. I think that you will find your own adventure as you read Home Movies of Narcissus. This book of poems reads like a cultural biography of America, featuring a multitude of fascinating worlds and people, both real and imagined.In the first section of the book "Yes, Si, Aha," poems such as "The Cousins" and "Delicious Parable" articulate truths of Arroyo's Puerto Rican identity during the author's childhood and adult years. In the poem "Cousins," Arroyo references his "tropics-starved parents" (9) while recounting a homoerotic conversation among childhood friends. This scene is among countless others in the collection which juxtapose multiple identities, in this case exploring notions of cultural relocation as a Latino and internal exile as a gay adolescent. The reader can only smile as he is left to ponder "Zorro's erection" or a childhood game about "the addict's attic" in the hometown "cha-cha-cha Chicago." Classic poetic devices such as alliteration describe unconventional or even taboo subjects, creating poetry that is both interesting and entertaining to read. Such poems relive moments which border between nostalgia and dysfunction, adding to the lure of Arroyo's dynamic writing.The poem "Delicious Parable" details a poignant sacrifice, an impoverished Puerto Rican mother who struggles to provide a traditional meal for her son. The speaker in the poem cries when he realizes that the dried codfish "with chance bones in it" is the "only inheritance she can give." As he describes the memory, Arroyo's tone is playful yet upfront. He avoids making a political statement about poverty (or any of the other numerous issues in the book). Rather, Arroyo's identity as a poet and his powerful honesty about life experiences (and dreams) awaken the reader without offending him.In the section of poems entitled "The Mask Museum" Arroyo reinvents traditional notions of identity, death, and art. In "Bad Disguises," a clever poem about Halloween with characters such as Antonio Banderas, Richard Nixons and Andrew Carnegies, the speaker ponders, "Someone in a devil's mask / demands my green card. / It's a joke, / but not for me. When is this home?" (12-14). Throughout the book, Arroyo's confessions of fear, loneliness, and pain can be intimate, sudden, and even haunting. In "Bad Disguises," Arroyo conveys the powerful pain evoked by racism, while the humor of Halloween deflects but does not undermine his message. This is one of several poems where Arroyo narrates struggles of discrimination as a Chicago-born Latino. A search for a home within a world of discrimination is a reoccurring struggle in his stories of identity."Unfunded Art" searches for beauty in a bizarre studio of nude models with "gunshot craters," "gang tattoos," and "stone testicles." In choosing to write about such a place, the poet celebrates imperfection and garners respect for it among his readers. Arroyo celebrates such characters not because they are marginalized but because they have discovered their own beauty. These triumphs of discovering personal identity give a voice to the marginalized without clouding the message with political protest.In the section "Hungry Ghost," a series of poems about Spanish explorer Ponce de Leon, Arroyo creates a clever banter between a witty poet and the arrogant historical figure who demands that the poet memorialize him. Arroyo expresses the shared frustrations of a poet and a historical figure, with statements such as "To be forgotten is a daily death" and "You are all memorialists with / nothing to confess." However, from the frustrations of the speaker arise humorous and playful images, and even a Ricky Martin reference. Arroyo reawakens the identity of a Puerto Rican with words that passionately long for a homeland and mourn a commercialized paradise. The Ponce de Leon sequence of poems explores an interesting concept that appears throughout poems of Latin American identity, such as Arroyo's: Spanish conquest wrote history with violence and a sword. The Latin American poet recreates history with his pen and words. Arroyo's poetry is particularly successful in such creation because he does not taint the art or history of his work with politically charged messages. If anything, his personal commentary merely adds humor that is both quirky and enchanting."The Black Moon Poems" contains some of the darkest moments of Arroyo's book. Sleepless nights and drunken moments paint images of struggle, anger, and confusion. Yet, in recounting his searches for identity, Arroyo's identities are never undermined. The reader is given a glimpse into the sufferings and frustrations of a self-proclaimed "double exile." Arroyo's yearning for mutual acceptance and understanding of his gay and Latino self's echoes throughout his poetry. His writing expresses the physicality of such yearnings. They are eroticized with frequent references to images such as pubic hair, hard laps, wet dreams, and masturbation.Underlying Arroyo's tales of exile and frustration are a message of acceptance and a desire for human dignity. Arroyo is an openly gay, Latino man who powerfully and successfully describes his experiences, creating an art form. Arroyo's existence alone is a political poem; yet, his life professes truth by experience rather than protest. His work is thought-provoking, clever, and funny; however, at its core is a sincerity of experience which makes it a worthwhile read. With an open-mind, the reader can understand Arroyo's search for identity. Along the way, he will find all of the realities of the journey: humor, discrimination, love, and loneliness. Whether to savor the cultural experiences of an artist or to grow closer to one's own identities, Home Movies of Narcissus is a rare and wonderful journey of discovery.
