On May 22, a large crowd gathered at the De Anza College campus center to hear Martin Espada read his poem, “The Soldiers in the Garden,” about the U.S. backed Chilean coup on “the first 9/11.” The coup occurred on Sept. 11, 1973.

Martin Espada is an activist, poet, essayist, editor and attorney who published 15 books.

His first book, published in 1982, was “The Immigrant Iceboy’s Bolero.”

Espada read his short poem “My Cockroach Lover,” then brought humor to the event, noting that “every Puerto Rican poet had to have a cockroach poem.” Some people claimed during the 1970s that Puerto Ricans brought cockroaches with them to the United States.

Espada read a bilingual poem from his book “Zapata Disciple.”  Emilio Zapata was a rebel leader during the Mexican Revolution of 1910.

Espada spoke of his father, who joined the U.S. Air Force at the age of 19.

While on a bus trip through Biloxi, Miss., his father was arrested for not sitting in the back with the other “colored” passengers.

Espada dedicated his poem “Sleeping on the Bus,” to his father.

The last poem, “Alabanza: In Praise of Local 100,” was about the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, when 43 workers at the Window of the World restaurant died.

The event ended with a book signing by the poet.

Espada’s recent books are “The Republic of Poetry” (2006) and “The Trouble Ball” (2011).