Cuba's cultural influence throughout the Western Hemisphere, and especially in the United States, has been disproportionally large for so small a country. This landmark volume is the first comprehensive overview of poetry written over the past sixty years. Presented in a beautiful Spanish-English en face edition, The Whole Island makes available the astonishing achievement of a wide range of Cuban poets, including such well-known figures as Nicolas Guillen, Jose Lezama Lima, and Nancy Morejon, but also poets widely read in Spanish who remain almost unknown to the English-speaking world--among them Fina Garcia Marruz, Jose Kozer, Raul Hernandez Novas, and Angel Escobar--and poets born since the Revolution, like Rogelio Saunders, Omar Perez, Alessandra Molina, and Javier Marimon. The translations, almost all of them new, convey the intensity and beauty of the accompanying Spanish originals. With their work deeply rooted in Cuban culture, many of these poets--both on and off the island--have been at the center of the political and social changes of this tempestuous period.
The poems offered here constitute an essential source for understanding the literature and culture of Cuba, its diaspora, and the Caribbean at large, and provide an unparalleled perspective on what it means to be Cuban.