90 Miles: Selected and New Poems

by Virgil Suárez

Ninety miles separate Cuba and Key West, Florida. Crossing that distance, thousands of Cubans have lost their lives. For Cuban American poet Virgil Suárez, 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," Suárez 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 Suárez's six previous 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, Suárez'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 Suárez is one of the most important Latino writers of his generation.

Genres: Poetry

114 pages, Paperback

First published March 23, 2005

Reviews

[Lauren · Rating 5 out of 5]

90 Miles: Selected and New Poems is an impressive body of work. Poems from six previous works are sectioned in the book, with a final section containing new poems, all on the overarching theme of displacement from the Cuba of Suarez's childhood. Mightily present, too, is the death of the poet's father, and its accompanying symbolism of mourning for the old land. Numerous motifs, such as mangos, palm trees, and birds are also threaded throughout this moving, technically-superb collection. These are gorgeous poems, full of voice, memory, and pain, as exhibited in these lines from "The Alchemy of Self-Implosion": "Once the filament breaks in the heart, / like in a lightbulb, you cannot repair it. // Blood stops dead on its tracks. A glass / house cannot withstand the weight // of a lover's breath. It crumbles with desire / and cannot be resurrected from the ashes // of the forsaken." Honestly, I didn't want this radiant and poignant book to end. Suarez is a treasure in American letters, and should be recognized as such. His poems sing with beauty and love, and the nourishment of nature; consider this excerpt from "Orange", my favorite of the new poems, which I'll leave you with:

... The baby will learn
to see orange, dream of oranges. At night
the moon will be mother orange. The sun,
well, father fire from which all earthly hues

borrow their names. We are here in the middle
of the middle of midnight. Even now, on this
moonless night, the golden orbs hung from trees
shine, release their bittersweet essence into air.
The air carries it for free, as it's learned to do.

[Dave · Rating 4 out of 5]

The poetry was really beautiful, if slightly one-dimensional. It's not that I have a problem with all Cuba, all the time, but it would be nice to have a few different poems. That being said, it might be my fault as a reader for grouping all the poems under the Cuban umbrella. This collection is best read a little bit at a time as, I think, most anthologies should be.

[Poptart19 (the name’s ren) · Rating 4 out of 5]

4 stars

Vivid & colorful, the taste of sun-ripened mango from the tree in your backyard