In the Vortex of the Cyclone
In the Vortex of the Cyclone
Selected Poems
The first-ever bilingual anthology by the Afro-Cuban poet Excilia Saldana contains a wide-ranging selection of her work, from lullabies to an erotic letter, from lengthy autobiographical poems to quiet reflections on her Caribbean island as the inspiration for her writing. Known in Cuba as a poet, essayist, translator, and professor, Saldana won the prestigious Nicholas Guillen Award for Distinction in Poetry in 1998 and the La Rosa Blanca Prize for La Noche, a children’s book, in 1989. Before her death in 1999, most of her work had appeared in Spanish exclusively in Cuba with only scattered translations. This collection emphasizes her construction of a personal and poetic autobiography to reveal the identity of one of the best Afro-Caribbean poets of the twentieth century.
A wonderful book, strong, with enormous energy, fast-paced, truly poetic, with a varied and rich vocabulary ranging from the vernacular to the exalted. This is poetry to be said aloud, sometimes chanted, sometimes shouted, sometimes sung . . . a book that is both original and significant.’—Cola Franzen, translator of Jorge Guillen’s Horses in the Air and Other Poems ‘A much-needed contribution to Afro-Cuban and Caribbean studies.’—Vera M. Kutzinski, Yale University
Excilia Saldaña (1946-1999) was a Cuban poet, essayist, translator, and editor of poetry and fiction for children. Flora González Mandri, professor emerita of writing, literature, and publishing at Emerson College, is the author of Guarding Cultural Memory: Afro-Cuban Women in Literature and the Arts and José Donoso’s House of Fiction: A Dramatic Construction of Time and Place. Rosamond Rosenmeier (1928–2011) was professor emerita at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, and was the author of Where Light Answers Light: Poems from Prince Edward Island.
