Description:
The Counterpunch (and Other Horizontal Poems) / El contragolpe (y otros poemas horizontales) brings English-language readers into the distinctive poetic world of acclaimed Cuban writer Juan Carlos Flores. Set in Alamar, Havana's vast housing complex and a defining landscape of contemporary Cuban experience, these eighty poems transform everyday urban life into extraordinary literary art. Through inventive structures, sharp observations, and vivid prose-poetic imagery, Flores captures moments of survival, imagination, memory, and renewal at the margins of the city. Presented in a bilingual Spanish-English edition and expertly translated by Kristin Dykstra, this landmark collection offers the first complete English translation of one of Cuba's most original poetic voices, making it an essential resource for readers of contemporary poetry, Caribbean literature, and Latin American studies.
Review Quotes:
"Kristin Dykstra's translation of Cuban poet Juan Carlos Flores's El Contragolpe (y otros poemas horizontales) breathes interpretive and musical life into the exciting syncopated prose poetry written by an author whose voice is genuinely distinctive among that island's post-revolutionary generation. As well, Dykstra's work is a solid scholarly contribution. It features rigorous translator's notes and an essay that frames the work in its social circumstances and historical moment. Dykstra is widely recognized as one of our most accomplished translators devoted to contemporary poetry of Latin America. This translation will be welcomed by specialists in the field and general readers of poetry, as well as by those devoted more broadly to Cuban arts and culture."--Roberto Tejada, coeditor of the journal Mandoria: New Writing from the Americas and author of National Camera: Photography and Mexico's Image Environment, Celia Alvarez Muñoz, and the poetry collection Exposition Park