Ninety miles separate Cuba and Key West, Florida. Crossing that distance, thousands of Cubans have lost their lives. For Cuban American poet Virgil Su rez, that expanse of ocean represents the state of exile, which he has imaginatively bridged in over two decades of compelling poetry.

"Whatever isn't voiced in time drowns," Su rez writes in "River Fable," and the urgency to articulate the complex yearnings of the displaced marks all the poems collected here. 90 Miles contains the best work from Su rez's six previous collections: You Come Singing, Garabato, In the Republic of Longing, Palm Crows, Banyan, and Guide to the Blue Tongue, as well as important new poems.

At once meditative, confessional, and political, Su rez's work displays the refracted nature of a life of exile spent in Cuba, Spain, and the United States. Connected through memory and desire, Caribbean palms wave over American junk mail. Cuban mangos rot on Miami hospital trays. William Shakespeare visits Havana. And the ones who left Cuba plant trees of reconciliation with the ones who stayed.

Courageously prolific, Virgil Su rez is one of the most important Latino writers of his generation.

Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
Published: 03/23/2005
ISBN: 9780822958802
Pages: 127
Weight: 0.54lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.10w x 0.45d

Review Citations: Library Journal 06/15/2005 pg. 75
Foreword 09/01/2005 pg. 53
Foreword 08/19/2009