Contemplacion Contemplation

Poetry. Translated from the Spanish by Margaret Randall. Winner of Cuba's prestigious National Literary Critic's Prize, 2009. In this book, as in others, Marimón creates unforgettable images in a voice uniquely her own. But her poems are more than images. They convey a sort of triumphal loneliness characteristic of her generation, a deep reverence for the symbols of her national landscape and culture laced with the personal dreams she is unafraid to express: "She only wanted to escape to a different place / feel the nostalgia of exile, be truly sad / apart, / a weightless autumn leaf," she says in "One day in 1980."