Poetry. Latino/Latina Studies. Women's Studies. Edited by Nancy Alonso and Katherine Hedeen. Translated by Jeffrey C. Barnett. These verses and prose poems offer difficult, hermetic verbal snapshots of Cuba--ironic and anguished but not without hope. One of Cuba's leading recent poets, Zurelys L pez Amaya's FLOCKS/REBA OS, constitutes the first full-length translation of one of her works into English. Recognized for its refreshing and unusual style, readers may find the poetic selections in FLOCKS/REBA OS to be polemical, on the one hand, and yet serene and detached on the other. In her prose poems, L pez Amaya finds sufficient space to develop the traditional allegory of the pastor and his flock, an extended metaphor that may lead the reader to consider disturbing questions about modern-day Cuba. As she portrays a society amassed in a pasture hopelessly waiting for an absent shepherd, her poems always lead our eye back to the flock, or rather the Cuban people. In doing so, she puts forth a complex and ambivalent view, one that is an instinctual lament but also one which finds solace in poetry. Despite the work's poignant socio-political insight, L pez Amaya's poetry is not limited to social thesis. Instead, she offers a rich and complex view of her world, all the while embracing simplicity and pondering aesthetic wonder. Throughout her poems we find a wide array of emotion, including empathy, loneliness, nostalgia, remorse, longing, and love. In short, whether posing disturbing images about her socio- political milieu or celebrating the mundane, FLOCKS/REBA OS provides the reader with a gestalt view of the poet's daily life, a vision that on the one hand is inextricably tied to Cuba, while on the other a vision that extends beyond the island to summon the universal.--Jeffrey C. Barnett

With FLOCKS/REBA OS Zurelys L pez Amaya ignites a string of bonfires that illuminate some of the most difficult contradictions and paradoxes of human experience. Here we are 'shadows' and 'emptiness' while also being 'light' and 'music'; we are 'alone and blind' while also 'welcomed on the Island that we meticulously create;' and we understand how the 'blood of Cain is everywhere, ' but so, too, is 'the splendor of nature because it exists.' The touch of the translator, Jeffrey C. Barnett, is as delicate as it is deft, gifting readers access to L pez Amaya's virtuosic verse in an exquisitely scorched new tongue.--Seth Michelson

The bilingual prose poems of FLOCKS/REBA OS, by the Cuban poet Zurelys L pez Amaya, beautifully translated into English by Jeffrey C. Barnett, vividly dramatize emotions ranging from despair to celebration of survival (albeit at a price). The poems examine the often sinister power of collective identities (the flock) that a shared society imposes upon us all and the fears and limitations that burden all living beings.--Mary G. Berg

In this provocative book, Zurelys L pez Amaya examines with lucid tenderness the collective existence of the flock. Encircled by the unknown, flanked by fear, the flock survives in cautious monotony but is not hopeless. Detached from tiresome political discourses, la libertad, freedom, is evasive yet constantly possible. In FLOCKS/REBA OS the reader experiences la libertad as an object just barely out of sight--like that bus taking forever to arrive. The English translation is full of felicitous resolutions. While the book is a courageous insight into Cuban reality, it will give pasture for thought to readers around the world.--Pilar Cabrera Fonte