Otros Campos de Belleza Armada / Other Fields of Armed Beauty

Poetry. Translated from the Spanish by Margaret Randall. "Margaret Randall's splendid translation of Cuban poet Reynaldo García Blanco's fine collection does what translation aspires to do. It gives North American readers access to a social vision and imagination that until now has been invisible. Neither autobiography nor socialist realism, García Blanco's work is shaped by whimsy in which the hypothetical becomes matter of fact. He writes, for example, about 'My uncle the employee' who 'gets up at 5 a.m.' as well as 'My uncle the unemployed' who is a 'capitalist by profession.' In 'Body Art' he asks, in ludic spirit, 'why are you looking at me?' This is probably not what North American readers would expect of a Cuban writer, but it is precisely what this art has to teach us." —Renato Rosaldo

"So, Gramsci, Marx, Stokely Carmichael and Thelonious Monk walk into a bar in Havana…a bar with the lightest of German beers…because light beers mean 'friend' in German. No, this is not the set-up for some sort of joke. This is the fantastic world of Reynaldo García Blanco. This is the Cuba I've never been to, but always wanted to go to. The Cuba I hallucinate about. This collection of poems reads like a dream journal with some of the pages missing. It is beautifully unpredictable in its balance of wit, wonder, one-liners and worldview. García Blanco's cat, Tamburlaine, was absolutely right. A country cannot prosper without music or food…or poetry." —Hakim Bellamy