Description
Alamar, the home of award-winning Cuban poet Juan Carlos Flores, is the setting for his collection, The Counterpunch and Other Horizontal Poems) / El contragolpe (y otros poemas horizontales). Constructed as a self-help community in eastern Havana, Alamar is the largest housing complex in the world. Flores's highly structured texts, organized into "art galleries," present prose paintings of a big place in very small form.
Flores builds a poetic landscape with repeating structures that mirror Alamar's five-floor walkups. Exploring life and dream on the flat surfaces of the poems, he gives fleeting glimpses of perception and survival at the urban margins. As the poet ages, so ages Alamar itself. Yet both find renewal through poetry.
The eighty poems in this bilingual edition offer the first English translation of a complete Flores collection. It will also be of interest to Spanish-language readers seeking access to Cuban literature abroad. Award-winning scholar and translator Kristin Dykstra has compiled an introduction in which she presents Flores, his literary contexts, and references in his poems. Because Flores made specific requests regarding translation, fascinating notes also clarify and expound on choices Dykstra makes in the English version.
A deluxe edition with a handmade, limited-edition color linocut print, including a letterpress-printed poem signed by the author, is available directly from the University of Alabama Press.
About the Author
Juan Carlos Flores is a well-known and widely respected Cuban poet. He won the 1990 David Prize, a national award for emerging writers, for his first book of poems, Los pajaros escritos. His second collection, Distintos modos de cavar un tunel, won the prestigious 2002 Julian del Casal prize from UNEAC, Cuba's national union of artists and writers. His third book, El contragolpe (y otros poemas horizontales), was published by Letras Cubanas in 2009.
Kristin Dykstra, recipient of the 2012 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Translation Fellowship, translated Reina Maria Rodriguez's Other Letters to Milena / Otras cartas a Milena for the University of Alabama Press in 2014. She has also translated two books by Cuban poet Omar Perez, and her translation of Angel Escobar's Breach of Trust / Abuso de confianza is forthcoming from UA Press.
Reviews
"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 Munoz, and the poetry collection Exposition Park
"Kristin Dykstra's translation of Juan Carlos Flores's El contragolpe (y otros poemas horizontales) is a major literary event; it provides a complex and formally innovative understanding for the lives and culture of a distinct locale. Dykstra's translations are superb, and her concluding essay and notes are profoundly informative."-Hank Lazer, author of Lyric & Spirit, as well as seventeen volumes of poetry including N18 and Portions
Book Information
ISBN 9780817358136
Author Juan Carlos Flores
Format Paperback
Page Count 200
Imprint The University of Alabama Press
Publisher The University of Alabama Press
Weight(grams) 326g
Flores builds a poetic landscape with repeating structures that mirror Alamar's five-floor walkups. Exploring life and dream on the flat surfaces of the poems, he gives fleeting glimpses of perception and survival at the urban margins. As the poet ages, so ages Alamar itself. Yet both find renewal through poetry.
The eighty poems in this bilingual edition offer the first English translation of a complete Flores collection. It will also be of interest to Spanish-language readers seeking access to Cuban literature abroad. Award-winning scholar and translator Kristin Dykstra has compiled an introduction in which she presents Flores, his literary contexts, and references in his poems. Because Flores made specific requests regarding translation, fascinating notes also clarify and expound on choices Dykstra makes in the English version.
A deluxe edition with a handmade, limited-edition color linocut print, including a letterpress-printed poem signed by the author, is available directly from the University of Alabama Press.
About the Author
Juan Carlos Flores is a well-known and widely respected Cuban poet. He won the 1990 David Prize, a national award for emerging writers, for his first book of poems, Los pajaros escritos. His second collection, Distintos modos de cavar un tunel, won the prestigious 2002 Julian del Casal prize from UNEAC, Cuba's national union of artists and writers. His third book, El contragolpe (y otros poemas horizontales), was published by Letras Cubanas in 2009.
Kristin Dykstra, recipient of the 2012 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Translation Fellowship, translated Reina Maria Rodriguez's Other Letters to Milena / Otras cartas a Milena for the University of Alabama Press in 2014. She has also translated two books by Cuban poet Omar Perez, and her translation of Angel Escobar's Breach of Trust / Abuso de confianza is forthcoming from UA Press.
Reviews
"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 Munoz, and the poetry collection Exposition Park
"Kristin Dykstra's translation of Juan Carlos Flores's El contragolpe (y otros poemas horizontales) is a major literary event; it provides a complex and formally innovative understanding for the lives and culture of a distinct locale. Dykstra's translations are superb, and her concluding essay and notes are profoundly informative."-Hank Lazer, author of Lyric & Spirit, as well as seventeen volumes of poetry including N18 and Portions
Book Information
ISBN 9780817358136
Author Juan Carlos Flores
Format Paperback
Page Count 200
Imprint The University of Alabama Press
Publisher The University of Alabama Press
Weight(grams) 326g
