Translating Grandfather's House

Book excerpt: The poems in this first poetry book by a Cuban American writer explore a variety of contemporary and historical themes that combine to create a modern immigrant consciousness, not only immigration from nation state to nation state but also from states of culture and spirit. Beginning with poems that harken back over 40 years of lived experience in the mountains of Cuba, the hills of Galicia, Spain, and the paved streets of Brooklyn and Harlem to poems of love and loss, of life in the military and the high seas, the book grapples with the complex conflicts and tensions of identity, displacement, and autonomy while seeking beauty in all her forms. From the evocative lyricism of the delicately constructed décimas to the sprawling long lines and semantic plays of the free verse, this is a work by a poet writing in the full measure of his powers.