90 Miles: Selected And New Poems (Pitt Poetry Series)

By Virgil Suárez

Book Overview

Ninety miles separate Cuba and Key West, Florida. Crossing that distance, thousands of Cubans have lost their lives. For Cuban American poet Virgil Su\u00e1rez, that expanse of ocean represents the state of exile, which he has imaginatively bridged in over two decades of compelling poetry. \u0022Whatever isn't voiced in time drowns, \u0022 Su\u00e1rez writes in \u0022River Fable, \u0022 and the urgency to articulate the complex yearnings of the displaced marks all the poems collected here. 90 Miles contains the best work from Su\u00e1rez'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, Su\u00e1rez'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 Su\u00e1rez is one of the most important Latino writers of his generation.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0822958805
• ISBN13: 9780822958802
• Release Date: March 2005
• Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
• Length: 127 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.1" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Excellen Cuban Memories

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.

Gorgeous words

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.

Compelling looking into the life of exile--and of the poet.

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.