The Whole Island: Six Decades of Cuban Poetry

Front Cover
Mark Weiss
Univ of California Press, Nov 25, 2009 - Literary Criticism - 602 pages
LA CASA DEL PAN

“Entra en la nave blanca: mira la mesa donde está la harina-la harina blanca.

“Fuera del pueblo, apenas tuerce el camino a la intemperie, allí está la casa del pan-la nave blanca.

“Donde un negro de sonrisa vaga saca del horno las palas con el pan crujiente. Saca del horno inmenso, quieto, las palas con el pan crujiente.

“¿Desde cuándo estás tú aquí-se le pregunta-, desde cuándo estás entre la harina?

“Responde con veloces zumbas: desde las ceremonias y las máscaras, desde el velamen y las fugas, desde las candelillas y las máquinas, desde los circos y las flautas.

“Desde que se encendió el fuego en el horno.”

THE HOUSE OF BREAD

“Enter the white shop: see the table covered with flour-white flour.

“Outside the town, the path barely twists towards the open air, and there it is, the house of bread-the white shop.

“Where a black with a distant smile removes from the oven palettes of crusty bread. He removes the palettes of crusty bread from the enormous, quiet oven.

“How long have you been here?” you ask him, “how long have you spent with flour?”

“He answers with ready jokes: since ceremonies and masks, since sails and escapes, since tobacco bugs and machines, since circuses and flutes.

“Since they lit the fire in the oven.”

Eliseo Diego

The Whole Island is a masterwork of cartography: a map of what is, for English-language readers, an almost entirely unexplored territory, full of poets—at home or in the diaspora—whom we ought to know.”—Eliot Weinberger

“An uplifting anthology of Cuban poetry that is an excellent and timely resource for scholars and general readers alike. A worthy contribution to the canon.”—Oscar Hijuelos, Pulitzer Prize Winner
 

Contents

Introduction
1
Roberto Fernández Retamar
2
Luis Rogelio Nogueras
16
A Note on the Text
31
Eugenio Florit
51
José Lezama Lima
59
Virgilio Piñera
86
Isla Island 105
105
Antón Arrufat
290
José Kozer
296
Miguel Barnet
314
Belkis Cuza Malé
326
Nancy Morejón
332
Lina de Feria
352
Delfín Prats
358
Raúl Hernández Novás
368

Gastón Baquero
120
eliseo diego
140
Cintio Vitier
158
Fina García Marruz
170
Lorenzo García Vega
188
Francisco de Oraá
210
Roberto Branly
224
Pablo Armando Fernández
230
Fayad Jamís
244
Heberto Padilla
258
José Álvarez Baragaño
271
César López
281
Amando Fernández
386
Soleida Ríos
392
Lourdes
406
Abilio Estévez
418
Ángel Escobar
430
Ramón Fernández Larrea
444
Roberto Méndez
450
Rogelio Saunders
462
Ismael González Castañer
468
viii
484
xiii
486
Copyright

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About the author (2009)

Mark Weissis a poet, translator, publisher, and editor. His publications include six books of poetry; as coeditor,Across the Line/Al otro lado: The Poetry of Baja California; and as translator,Stet: Selected Poems of Joseacute; Kozer.

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