Beneath the Spanish

(Paperback)

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Praise for Victor Hernndez Cruz:

"Bilingual since childhood, Mr. Cruz writes poems about his native Puerto Rico and elsewhere which often speak to us with a forked tongue, sometimes in a highly literate Spanglish. . . . He's a funny, hard-edged poet, declining always into mother wit and pathos." The New York Times Book Review

"A fluent sensualist and rhythmic stylist." The Washington Post

"Like a salsa band leader coaxing and challenging dancers to more and more complex steps, Cruz dares readers with dizzying polyrhythms, polymetric stanzas, backstepping word structures and a sense of improvisation." Publishers Weekly

Beneath the Spanish tracks the way that languages intersect and inform each other, and how language and music shapes experience. Moving across landscapes from Puerto Rico to Manhattan to Morocco, these poems are one man's history and a song that begs to be performed.

From "Ay Bendito, Que Vaina":

Cuneiform tablet inside,
The maracas pencil orality
of remembered places,
the night stars,
the hammock, yucayeques
like beehives, a river crab
came to my feet to talk
with its mouth legs,
trembling like castanets.

Victor Hernndez Cruz is the author of several collections of poetry including, most recently, The Mountain in the Sea and In the Shadow of Al-Andalus. Featured in Bill Moyers's Language of Life series, Cruz's collection, Maraca, was a finalist for the Lenore Marshall and Griffin Poetry Prizes. He divides his time between Morocco and his native Puerto Rico.

Reviews

From one of the worlds most eminent poets, Beneath the Spanish is a trumpeting source to draw from in this unsteady time. This book is a virtual encyclopedia of poetics histories in colonial resistances. Thoroughly steeped in signature inimitable musicality and flourishing image verse, this encompassing, jazz-inspired, paramount collection brings us to our knees and delivers us back into the beauty of life amidst all its human complications and conditions. Into the spirit stains, perfumes, and lingual intensities bridging migrations, languages, and cultures to reel in lucidity and create a balancing nest of home. A socially artistic creation by a seasoned genius, Beneath the Spanish is on time, in time, and Victor Hernndez Cruz delivers one of the most gorgeously stunning and remarkable contributions to the canon to date. Go on, lose yourself in this. Allison Adelle Hedge Coke, author of Streaming

Author Bio

Victor Hernndez Cruz is the author of several collections of poetry including, most recently, The Mountain in the Sea and In the Shadow of Al-Andalus. His highly acclaimed first book, Snaps, was published the year he turned nineteen. Featured in Bill Moyerss Language of Life series, Cruzs collection, Maraca, was a finalist for the Lenore Marshall and Griffin Poetry Prizes. His legendary dynamic reading ability has led to him being twice crowned as the World Heavyweight Poetry Champion in Taos. Cruz was born in Puerto Rico and moved to New York at the age of five. After teaching for many years in the San Francisco Bay area, he has recently returned to the place of his birth. He now divides his time between Morocco and his native Puerto Rico.