90 Miles: Selected And New Poems

by Virgil Suarez

Overview

Ninety miles separate Cuba and Key West, Florida. Crossing that distance, thousands of Cubans have lost their lives. For Cuban American poet Virgil Suarez, 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," Suarez 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 Suarez'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, Suarez'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 Suarez is one of the most important Latino writers of his generation.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780822980339
Publisher:	University of Pittsburgh Press
Publication date:	03/23/2005
Series:	Pitt Poetry Series
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	144
File size:	922 KB

About the Author

Virgil Suárez is the author of four novels, a collection of stories, two memoirs, and eight poetry collections, and he has coedited two anthologies with his wife, Delia Poey. Most recently he has published an anthology of Latino poetry titled Paper Dance. Suárez is the recipient of a fellowship in poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts and a recipient of a Florida State Arts Grant.

Table of Contents

Contents from You Come Singing Rice Comes to El Volcán The Nuns in the Family Clotheslines Luis Navarro Rubio Comes Singing White Wall The Valet’s Lament Heavy Metal Speaks from Garabato Poems Lazarito & the Habanero Chilis The Dirt Eaters The Hatchery The Night Trail Called El Lechero Mazorra, or House for the Incorrigible The Seamstress On the Assembly Line Song for the Royal Palms of Miami from In the Republic of Longing Bitterness Free Gallos Finos Cuban American Gothic The Trouble with Frogs A Song at the End of the Cuban Revolution from Palm Crows Song to the Cucuyo Song to the Mango Song to the Passion Fruit Study in Shadow Nocturnal Duende In the House of White Light The Great Chinese Poets Visit Havana El Exilio The Stayer from Banyan Cancionero del Banyan Beyond a Street Corner in Little Havana No Work Poem #1 Mango Eating in America Recitative after Rembrandt’s “The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp” The Table from Guide to the Blue Tongue La tempestad de las palabras blancas Prospero’s Papermaking Recipe The Alchemy of Self-Implosion Prospero in Havana The Reconciliation Between Los que se fuerón y los que se quedarón Curved Geometry, a Botero Beauty’s Retrospective Isla At the Somnambulists’ Convention Shakespeare Visits Havana The Old Soothsayer Enters Santiago de Cuba American Drag Rhapsody: J. Edgar Hoover in Havana New Poems Indigo Bunting’s Last Molt The Exile Speaks Poem for Eliades Ochoa, Maestro del alambre dulce La Florida Japanese Magnolia The Seed Collector The Burning Tea Leaves, Caracoles, Coffee Beans Orange Purple Finch Poet-Warrior Dance My Need of Bruce Weigl Virgil’s Crib The What of Rocks Upon Hearing that My Poetry Is Being Published “Everywhere” Acknowledgments

Editorial Reviews

It is 90 miles from Cuba to Key West, a distance many have died trying to cross. Suarez, a poet, novelist, and memoirist, has worked hard to bridge the gap. After six collections in as many years, Suarez should reach a wider audience with this volume of new and selected work. The core poems are personal narratives of a family and its history-a cast of unforgettable, displaced characters finding their way in Cuba, Spain, and, finally, the United States. Suarez cuts even the most painful moments with wild humor and inventive twists of language. His attention to detail is a delight, and his energetic voice, with the tint of his native tongue, is powerful and compelling. "The best way to eat a mango,/ my father-in-law once told me,/ is in the shower, how juices// run down your chin/ and neck, when the seed slips/ out of your hands like soap// and you bite down on the soft/ meat." In these poems we see the "other America," often full of surprises. Suarez is one of today's more important Latino voices, and this volume should be included in any serious contemporary poetry collection.-Louis McKee, Painted Bride Arts Ctr., Philadelphia Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Suarez’s voice is a heartbreaking combination of outrage and longing . . . ‘90 Miles’,  a selection of one poet’s previous collections of poetry, is a rarity in the industry. That this poet is Latino is additional cause for celebration and  sincere pride.”
—El Paso Times

“Virgil Suarez has emerged as a major voice in Cuban American literature, as this collection clearly demonstrates.  Suarez is a poet of praise: for his working-class immigrant parents, for the music of Cuba, for the mangos of his beloved island.  His range of reference is impressive; Li Po, Shakespeare, J. Edgar Hoover, and many others walk through the Habana of his poetic imagination.  Virgil Suarez is a trustworthy guide in this world, and any other.”
—Martin Espada


"These poems, at once exuberant and sophisticated, are driven by the desire to preserve. Suárez holds onto the precious country of family, and he skillfully recounts its history. He is constantly aware of his environment, both what it is and what it is not. How the language is his and is not. He explores the magic and wonder of the everyday where everything is new and is not new. This is poetry of grand appetites, longing to take it all in everywhere, to savor the rich sweetness of this world."
—Jim Daniels

“His attention to detail is a delight, and his energetic voice, with the tint of his native tongue, is powerful and compelling. . . . Suárez is one of today’s more important Latino voices, and this volume should be included in any serious contemporary poetry collection.”
—Library Journal

“The music of the poems oscillates internally between the fluidity of a few Spanish words and the harsher syllables of English, offering a compelling sense of dislocation, true to the book’s primary concerns.”
—ForeWord Magazine

From the Publisher