Review (PDF) 90 Miles: Selected And New Poems (Pitt Poetry Series)
Ninety miles separate Cuba and Key West, Florida. Crossing that distance, thousands of Cubans have lost their lives. For Cuban American poet Virgil Suárez, that expanse of ocean represents the state of exile, which he has imaginatively bridged in over two decades of compelling poetry."Whatever isn't voiced in time drowns," Suárez writes in "River Fable," and the urgency to articulate the complex yearnings of the displaced marks all the poems collected here. 90 Miles contains the best work from Suárez's six previous collections: You Come Singing, Garabato, In the Republic of Longing, Palm Crows, Banyan, and Guide to the Blue Tongue, as well as important new poems.At once meditative, confessional, and political, Suárez's work displays the refracted nature of a life of exile spent in Cuba, Spain, and the United States. Connected through memory and desire, Caribbean palms wave over American junk mail. Cuban mangos rot on Miami hospital trays. William Shakespeare visits Havana. And the ones who left Cuba plant trees of reconciliation with the ones who stayed.Courageously prolific, Virgil Suárez is one of the most important Latino writers of his generation.
Series: Pitt Poetry Series
Paperback: 114 pages
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press; 1 edition (March 23, 2005)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0822958805
ISBN-13: 978-0822958802
Product Dimensions: 6 x 0.5 x 9 inches
Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
Best Sellers Rank: #1,502,200 in Books (See Top 100 in Books) #161 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Poetry > Regional & Cultural > United States > Hispanic American #390 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Poetry > Regional & Cultural > Caribbean & Latin American #1931 in Books > Literature & Fiction > History & Criticism > Genres & Styles > Poetry
If you've followed the work of Virgil Suarez, you'll know that he began his life as a writer publishing novels about the Cuban-American experience, novels that were extremely well received ten to fifteen years ago. And then he changed: he drew in his personna as a novelist/story writer and churned the elements of exile and longing into some of the richest poems published about the American experience in the past fifty years. His work, mostly narrative, boils down the novelist's craft to a beautiful set of images, a fluid line, a melodic, tense voice that is as filled with humor as it is with love and pain. 90 Miles is not only an amazing collection--it's an amazing revelation of a man, speaking for his lost culture, turning it into a song, and in doing so, making a new type of culture for himself.
This is an inspired collection of poems. I've been a big fan of Suarez's poetry for a long time and this book is a must-have for anyone out there following contemporary American poetry. I highly recommend it.
Suarez writes with great gusto, and his work is memorable and exciting. His poetry rings true with a tremendous sense of history, family, and memory. Many of the poems in this colleciton are gems. Wonderful lyricism and nuance. I am proud of his work not only because I too am Cuban, and of the author's generation, but because I have been a fan of his work for many years and I believe Suarez has consistently produced good work.
Easily my favorite book of poetry.
90 Miles: Selected And New Poems (Pitt Poetry Series) Yevtushenko: Selected Poems: Selected Poems (Penguin Classics) Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude (Pitt Poetry Series) City of a Hundred Fires (Pitt Poetry Series) Hyperboreal (Pitt Poetry Series) Rumi Poetry: 101 Quotes Of Wisdom On Life, Love And Happiness (Sufi Poetry, Rumi Poetry, Inspirational Quotes, Sufism) My Poems: Selected Poetry Of Marina Tsvetaeva (English and Russian Edition) My Poems: Selected Poetry of Marina Tsvetaeva Poems of Jerusalem and Love Poems (Sheep Meadow Poetry) The Vigorous Core of Our Nationality: Race and Regional Identity in Northeastern Brazil (Pitt Latin American Series) Myths of Harmony: Race and Republicanism during the Age of Revolution, Colombia, 1795-1831 (Pitt Latin American Series) City at the Center of the World: Space, History, and Modernity in Quito (Pitt Latin American Series) Restructuring Domination: Industrialists and the State in Ecuador (Pitt Latin American Series) CLIVE CUSSLER COMPLETE SERIES READING ORDER: Dirk Pitt, NUMA Files, Oregon Files, Isaac Bell, Fargo Adventures, Nicefolk Twins, all non-fiction, and more! Cuba Under the Platt Amendment, 1902-1934 (Pitt Latin American Series) Dividing Hispaniola: The Dominican Republic's Border Campaign against Haiti, 1930-1961 (Pitt Latin American Series) A Revolution Aborted: The Lessons of Grenada (Pitt Latin American Series) For a Proper Home: Housing Rights in the Margins of Urban Chile, 1960-2010 (Pitt Latin American Series) Fujimori's Peru: Deception in the Public Sphere (Pitt Latin American Series) The ESL Writer's Handbook (Pitt Series in English as a Second Language)
