The Whole Island: Six Decades of Cuban Poetry

The Whole Island cover

Edited by Mark Weiss

The Tiger

Imprisoned, he paces his cage
of hard black stripes.
The metal which he roars
burns, is white hot.

(A gangster.
The sexual instinct.
A boxer.
An insane fury of jealousy.
A general.
The dagger of love.)

Calm yourself.
It's a real
tiger.

Nicólas Guillén from The Great Zoo
translated by Rebecca Seiferle

“ An uplifting anthology of Cuban poetry that is an excellent and timely resource for scholars and general readers alike. A worthy contribution to the canon.”

— Oscar Hijuelos

The Whole Island is a masterwork of cartography: a map of what is, for English-language readers, an almost entirely unexplored territory, full of poets—at home or in the diaspora—whom we ought to know.”

— Eliot Weinberger

University of California Press 2009 University of California Press

To return to Seiferle’s webpage

To return to The Drunken Boat